It finally happened. After two years of masking and avoiding indoor dining and having no social life to speak of, The Observer tested positive for COVID-19. It’s one of those “I don’t know how I got it,” “I’ve been so careful,” “I always wear my mask”  situations you see on social media. And it’s true. I was working from home, I upgraded my masks, I ordered takeout and occasionally visited the grocery store. That’s been my life.

On a chilly Thursday January morning I woke up with a scratchy throat and an intense thirst for something cold and carbonated. I noticed that my partner had been coughing a bit in the night, so I thought, “Is this it?” I got out of bed and slammed a zero-calorie raspberry seltzer (it was incredible) and thought about taking an antigen test I’d purchased a few weeks before.  Ordinarily I would’ve elected to save it because I didn’t really feel sick, but I had a meeting scheduled that day to sign papers to close on my first house. The signing would be my first face-to-face with people outside of my bubble since the holidays, so I figured the test might be necessary. Rather than getting dressed and going on with my day, I took the test in my boxer shorts. After completing the process, I walked over to my phone to set the 15-minute timer and saw some text messages from my Wordle group chat. The word that day was robot. Distracted by my almost preternatural word-game skills, I forgot to set the timer. It had been roughly four or five minutes when I walked back over to the test. It already had solid bold lines on both the “C” (control) line and the “T” (test) line, indicating that I was, indeed, COVID positive as shit.

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Standing there in my underwear with a nose full of COVID, I assumed I could no longer close on my house. A woman at the title office told me over the phone that they’d all contracted COVID recently and that I could sign the papers from my car. So, I put on a KF94 and a cloth mask over it and drove to the title office, and a woman who recently recovered from COVID fed me the papers through a small slit in my driver side window. It took less than 10 minutes. Was that in the best interest of public health? Probably not. Was there champagne and balloons? Absolutely not. But it seems worth mentioning that The Observer bought a house and got COVID on the same day. Could be tombstone worthy.

Days Two and Three were the worst. I woke up with flu-like symptoms both days and had congestion in my upper airways. I guess you could call it mild, but in non-COVID times, I still would’ve been like, “this fucking sucks.” I took my second antigen test on day seven. I was still strongly positive, which confirmed my suspicions that the new CDC guidance is more about business, the economy and lack of tests than about omicron’s contagiousness. It’s the Wild West out there. I wasn’t forced to isolate or report my test status. I could’ve walked into a store without a mask if I wanted to and faced a bunch of unmasked people. COVID isolation is about to be a thing of the past. Choosing to wear a mask is about to be the only protection we have. Personally, I find that wearing a mask is a fun thing to do; it’s a trip to Wild River Country (RIP)  compared to COVID.

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I had the faintest positive test on day 10, so I decided to move on my own. I borrowed a van from a friend who rarely uses it, and he threw me the keys from across his yard. Moving is always horrible, but try doing it with COVID, and on your own.

We ordered a pizza one night. The special instruction to the delivery driver read: “Sick, please leave order outside by the door. Thanks.” The note the driver left with the receipt had a little drawing of a masked face and a “get well soon,” which was one of the bright spots of the week, some much-needed empathy in a time when it’s fair to question whether or not we collectively care about each other anymore.

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Since contracting COVID, I’ve had unsettling heart palpitations that I feel in my abdomen. I also woke up one morning and could strongly feel my pulse in my right shoulder. I wrote my doctor about it because I think COVID is having some kind of effect on my circulatory system. Good stuff.

Some friends have told me how much fun I’m going to have since I’m fully vaccinated and have now been infected, as if it’s party time and I’m immune from ever catching COVID again. I’d love for that to be true, but I doubt I even have 90 days of immunity in me. There’s another omicron variant on the loose, and I don’t trust it. I don’t trust anyone. I’m going to continue to watch the numbers and mask in public because Wild River Country ruled back in the day. If those two damning lines show up positive again, it won’t be because I didn’t try.

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