Thoughtful Tuesday – COVID-19 edition

Tuesday is supposed to be about recipes. Or food. Or, you know, tasty stuff in general. Today it is not. Unless you want to talk about a recipe for disaster….

In addition to my shout out about the COVID-19 on Sunday, I’m doing a follow up.

I may – or may not – have contracted the virus.

I started having a sore throat on Saturday, and my chest started feeling a little tight on Sunday, but hey, lots of pollen in the air, so I used my inhalers as much as I should in these cases (bronchitis, asthma). They just seemed to not work very well. Didn’t have a much of a fever (99.4 F/37.5 C), so I wasn’t too worried.

I called the doctor on Monday. Stayed home from work (just in case…) and explained the symptoms to the nurse, and waited for a call-back. Now, that took a while (similar to actually getting through to the doctors office), but understandably because of the pandemic and so forth.

They asked me to come to the parking lot, call them, and them someone would come out and sign me in etc.
Did all that, and the took a swap of my nostrils (not the most pleasant experience, but not too bad either). Now I was under the impression, that that was for the virus, because, that was implied over the phone. That I should come in to get ‘tested’.

It was not. That was a flu test. Which was negative. Now I get that they should test for stuff like that too.
Doctor comes out, checks me out and listens to my lungs. There’s a crackling sound on the lower left one, so I get equipped with a mask to go inside for an x-ray. X-ray is fine, and I’m escorted to the doctors office for an additional lung-listening-session, which sounds better, so I probably coughed the crackle away.

Doctor then informs me that it is highly likely I have the COVID-19, but because I don’t exhibit all of the symptoms, she cannot test me. Those are their recommendations. They simply don’t have enough kits to test everyone, that comes into their offices.
But, just to be safe, I should quarantine myself for 72 hrs after fever is broken or until symptoms are better. Quarantined does not just mean sit at home. It means sit in a separate room, stay away form my family, avoid touching anything they will be touching and clean/sanitize, clean/sanitize, clean/sanitize.

I’m a bit frustrated, that they don’t have the resources to test people, that don’t show all the symptoms. Because part of me feels, that maybe, just maybe, I don’t have the virus, so I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs for no reason at all.
But mostly I’m frustrated because that means, that the numbers we are seeing are wildly wrong! And celebrities have come out testing positive with no symptoms at all! So how are we to know the full scale of this thing?

That’s the scariest part. Not being proper informed. Not knowing.

It isn’t about creating a panic, but it is about making people acutely aware of the severity of this virus.
Keeping people in the unknown is a recipe for disaster.