And then I still got corona. We had kept this disease at bay for almost three years, thanks to injections, mouth caps, washing hands, keeping your distance and staying home, but there it was still.
We were on our way to a sister’s birthday in the south of the country. Relaxing in the first class of the train on a quiet Sunday afternoon, bag of presents with us.
‘Awful message’, he app’d, ‘but I had a positive corona test this morning’
Suddenly the sound of an app: message from a young colleague, with whom I am making a podcast. We had been working together two days before, during which I sat in the car with him for a few hours. “Unpleasant message,” he wrote, “but I had a positive corona test this morning.”
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There we were, my husband and I, on the Utrecht platform, just about to transfer to the train to Eindhoven. I felt fine, nothing wrong, but then, to just travel on to my sister, who is in her mid-eighties and frail in health, that didn’t seem wise to me.
So to AH To Go and asked if they sold self-tests there. No Unfortunately. Then with the same question inside the Etos and yes, I could buy a box there.
All in all, we looked like a couple of drug traffickers, busy with unsavory business
Then, in a dark corner of the Starbucks, stuffed the swab into the nostrils and fumbled with the tube into which the swab should be dipped in liquid. My husband, more adept at this sort of thing, performed the necessary actions. All in all, we looked like a couple of drug traffickers, busily engaged in unsavory business.
Because the train to the south was about to leave and I didn’t know the outcome of the test yet, we got on anyway.
We were just driving when my husband, with a gloomy face, announced that the test was positive. What now ? Pulling the emergency brake and getting out seemed very rigorous. So travel on to Den Bosch, call my sister there and go back home.
In the meantime, our wrong tests had started a whole circus, because a number of people were involved in the podcast, where I might have been infected. Co-presenter Jan Slagter, who has been implementing all corona measures in his company for a few years now, but also our guest writer Maarten ‘t Hart, for whom we had traveled to his hometown especially because of his fragile health.
There was nothing for it but to warn everyone
There was nothing for it but to warn everyone. After a few minutes I received the message from Jan Slagter, amply provided with self-tests, that his test was negative. Maarten ‘t Hart initially did not respond to our calls, so that remained uncertain. Fortunately, he reported the same evening that he was not infected.
The next morning my husband tested positive, after which we hung rickety on the couch for five days in easy, but uncharming house suits. Cold, muscle aches, but no fever or barking cough.
Indeed: it was just the flu, as the corona deniers keep saying. But that it stayed that way was certainly due to the series of jabs that we have had in recent years.
Photo (c) ANP. This column previously appeared in More about Medical
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