For 24 Hours I had Covid

And then I didn't. Maybe. On Saturday I started getting a sore throat and ear ache. Saw the doctor on Monday, gave me a test, came back negative. Thursday go in for pre-surgery testing, which includes Covid testing. Positive. Rescheduled surgery, pulled the kids out of school, scheduled a set of rapid tests for them, all negative. Friday morning, do a rapid test and get a PCR test because, honestly, it doesn't feel like I have anything going on with the exception of the aforementioned ear ache and sore throat (which, by the way, still hurt). Both are negative. Saturday my son has some minor sniffles, we give him a home test, we give me a home test. All negative. So, from Thursday at 11 when the hospital called to tell me I had a positive test until Friday at 4 when I got the negative PCR test (the gold standard!) I had Covid, and honestly my perspective on a lot of things changed. Regardless of whatever symptoms I may or may not have displayed, it was, at least, finally done with. My family has spent two years being incredibly cautious, being overly cautious maybe. But we avoided Alpha, and Delta, and the first Omicron wave. And now, weirdly, I became less concerned not only for myself, but for others. As in, it made me think about masking and eating in restaurants. Eating in a restaurant was something I would never have considered before last week, but that first change of perspective was purely selfish: look at what I can do now, what my family can do now. Travel, eat out, go to the mall, toy stores, wherever. And in that imaginary world, we weren't wearing masks, because it was, at least, finally done with. And then it wasn't. Negative test after negative test made me wonder if it was a false positive at the hospital. A very rare occurrence, yes, but possible. A bad batch of tests, a poorly executed procedure, who knows. Shoot, there may be someone else wandering around my town with Covid who got a negative result because our test results got mislabeled. So I am now in an even worse spot than I was before, because I have all the annoying parts of a positive test (kids home for 5 days, multiple swabs in my nose, can't even go to the grocery store) and none of the advantages (when this is done, I will still have to be cautious, still worry about getting Covid). But it also makes me think about the progressives who are starting to push for removing restrictions, and I wonder if they havegone through Covid, and that shift in perspective, that really subtle shift from "we have to protect ourselves" to "we have to protect those other people" has changed the way they think about public health measures, and public policy. All I know is that for those 24 hours when I had Covid, it made me think about things a little differently, and now that I didn't have it again, it has given me a slightly different view. We still have remarkably poor systems in place for handling Covid. And not just the actual infection, but the societal and structural implications. The hospital where I got tested essentially called me, told me I had Covid, and then told me to suck it up, hope the cancer doesn't get worse, and see me in a few weeks. No follow-up, no requirements for a second test, just a smile and a wave. I mean, what the fuck?