I Had It Coming

          Well, I finally caught covid, just as I was beginning to feel smugly invincible. In which case, you could say I had it coming. Fortunately, the symptoms have been nowhere near as severe or frightening as they once might have been – thanks, I suppose, to vaccinations and a milder strain of virus. In fact, for anyone who can remember the ‘flu, (a disease that has not crossed my path since routine inoculation became available for elderly folk like me) my symptoms were similar – give or take a sniffle. And so, as I revel thankfully in the luxury of feeling better each day, I also contemplate what might have been, remembering March 2020, when the slightest hint of a Coronavirus symptom was liable to bring on a panic attack in the middle of the night.

          I also spend too much time trying to work out an impossible puzzle: how and where I became infected. I mean, my defences were formidable – four shots of Pfizer’s finest, two brazil nuts a day, plenty of fresh air and exercise, endless face-masks and bottles of sanitiser cluttering up the coat-cupboard – and my risk-taking minimal, with avoidance of strangers in crowded, ill-ventilated places studiously observed. Up to a point. And all the while, not a peep out of my NHS track-and-trace app. (I assume it still works?) I suppose an element of complacency played its part. That and a three-week sojourn in London that involved a fair amount of socialising. While it’s true that I was one of the few tube travellers who took the trouble to mask-up, it counted for nothing when I spent the rest of the evening maskless like everyone else in the pub/club/restaurant that must have counted among its customers plenty of aforesaid maskless tube travellers. Speculating about exactly where and when I ‘caught’ the virus is pointless, since its ideal environment for transmissibility is as just described. Yet still my mind will not cease trying to perfect its own track-and-trace algorithm.

          I actually felt the symptoms within 24 hours of getting back home, where, while unpacking, I found a leaflet in a jacket. It warns of the dangers of mRNA vaccines, particularly if administered to children. At first glance, I assumed it to be propaganda put about by ‘anti-vaxx conspiracist theorists’ with a propensity to get carried away but, on reading it I discovered a more considered and informative point of view than I expected – especially insofar as child-vulnerability is concerned. The argument centres on the ‘novelty’ of the mRNA type and the fact that the trial periods are years shorter than would normally be demanded of such medications before being granted approval for public use. But I got suspicious when, at the end, the blame for this dereliction of duty to public health was laid at the door of greedy, manipulative pharmaceutical companies. Now, it is true that this kind of thing goes on (Purdue and the opiod epidemic in the USA e.g.) but it seems unlikely that governments all over the world would conspire together to harm their entire populations so that a few pharma companies could make easy money. Therefore, a little background reading into the leaflet’s poster-boy, Dr Robert W. Malone, seemed in order. It soon becomes clear that conspiracy theories are rabbit holes down which no busy person wants to disappear – unless there’s money in it, perhaps.

          Anyway, I am determined to spend less time on historic track-and-trace and more on future calculations involving complacency, risk and gain. It seems to me that, with the risk of serious illness waning, it’s time to pick up the social threads where possible. By now, we all recognise that there is potential harm to our mental wellbeing when we endure prolonged social isolation. And there’s certainly no vaccine for that.