COVID and Me: A Memoir in One Part

My wife and I were so careful.

We wore masks everywhere we went, and we didn’t go to all that many places. I shopped for groceries solo. We ordered carryout and delivery, only occasionally eating on patios when the weather allowed. We avoided family get-togethers.

COVID found us just the same.

My wife texted me at work a couple Fridays ago to tell me she had tested positive at her job. Because she works in long-term care, she is swabbed several times each week.

Minutes before her text, I had finished a morning of teaching and doling out Halloween candy. I had made a big production with the candy bars, pouring liberal amounts of sanitizer onto my hands, touching only the edges of the wrappers instead of allowing students to rummage around inside the bag.

An hour later, armed with a doctor’s referral and parked outside the local emergency room, I waited as an employee dressed in a spacesuit got too up close and personal to my nostrils with a cotton swab.

I was, by the way, completely asymptomatic. No fever. No shortness of breath. The week before, I had run more than 20 miles. The portrait of middle-aged health.

But when I woke from a nap later that night, I had a fever and the chills. My memory of the next two days is foggy. Holly and I woke periodically to shuffle around the house and grab a bite to eat. At some point, kids passed on the sidewalk outside, dressed in their trick-or-treat finery, yet I was the ghost, peering out the windows at them from quarantine.

I didn’t need the confirmation from the hospital a few days later; I knew the ’VID had taken root.

The Alliance City Health Department was stellar. A nurse called several times to check on us. During the first call, she asked pointed questions about my job. Had I been within six feet of any students for longer than 15 minutes? No. Was I sure? Yes. Did I always wear a mask? Yes.

What about lunch? How many colleagues did I eat with? Had we stayed far enough apart? Was there sufficient air circulation?

I confessed the candy distribution, afraid it would be a dealbreaker and my students would be quarantined. It wasn’t, and they weren’t. Maybe it was all the sanitizer.

After the first weekend, I started feeling better quickly. Ten days later, I was cleared to return to work. My wife has needed an extra week because of respiratory problems. (She is improving.)

We were lucky. Our symptoms were mild. Our families brought us food and left it on the porch. Our friends called and texted to check on us.

Many people have not been so fortunate. In the United States alone, COVID deaths are 241,000 and counting. I’ve read about people who have been hospitalized for months, breathing through tubes. The term “long-haulers” refers to survivors with lingering, life-altering symptoms.

And yet, in the local Walmart a few days ago, it was like the Wild West where masks were concerned. I saw parents with school-age children, older couples, younger couples, people who undoubtedly drove on the right side of the road to get there, who wore seat belts, who acceded to the state’s mandate to wear shoes and shirts inside the store — all deciding a strip of cloth across the nose and mouth was one public-safety requirement too far, a line in the sand where they could prove they weren’t sheeple, where they could thumb their noses at the man.

I see deluded people on social media, hinging their well-being on one or two mavericks in the healthcare field who say masks are worthless or they restrict our breathing, betting against the preponderance of evidence showing they are effective and safe, like the colleague who drove fifty-plus miles round trip to the one area pediatrician who said it was okay for her to smoke while pregnant.

And, yes, herd immunity sounds appealing, a throw-up-our-hands-in-surrender solution to absolve us of personal responsibility, until we realize how many millions of people need to die to make it a reality.

Sure, a vaccine is coming, but not right away. So, before you mock Gov. DeWine for reissuing mask orders and cracking down on businesses that won’t enforce them, or President-elect Joe Biden for proposing a more comprehensive federal response than any we’ve seen so far, remember there’s a long cold winter between most of us and immunity.

We can’t extract ourselves from this predicament with magical thinking, conspiracy theories or “Don’t Tread on Me” stubbornness.

Wear the damn mask. Stay home when you can. Live to fight another day.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter