Excuse me for not posting for a while. I actually haven't posted anything since the new year came about. The reason was my experience with Covid 19. Here we are in April of 2021, and the article you are about to read is from late January of 2021. Here I am now though finally posting this article. Remember, this was written in late January of 2021.
Recently, I've personally felt the impact of the Corona Virus invading my home. Up to this point, I have been like most people just hearing all the terrible stories on the news about Covid. Hearing about what we should do to protect ourselves and our families, etc. Unfortunately, this invisible disease finally hit my home.
Why did this Doordash driver get tested for Covid?
Usually, when a person decides to get tested for Covid, they have a pretty good reason. Most people that go and get tested have flu like symptoms, or they found out that they have recently been around another individual that had Covid. Neither of these were the case for me.
If my wife had never got tested, I would have never known to this day that I was infected. There was no reasonable reason for me to go out and get tested. To this day, I have never felt ill from the Corona Virus, and I don't ever expect to. My wife had a slight headache in the middle of December of 2020 and thought no big deal of it. It was just like any other headache that she had experienced before. While out one day, she thought why not get a Corona Virus test. She did, and a few days later received an email showing her positive status.
Immediately I had everybody in my house isolate. Yep, it was time to do all that quarantining that we have heard about on television almost every single day since all this crap started. My wife quarantined in one room, the kids in their rooms and the older folks in their rooms. I was the lone wolf that camped out in the living room and nobody ever came out of their rooms. As far as eating was concerned, I would buy food for everybody from a restaurant and leave their food at their door and knock so that they knew I had something for them. I also bought everybody lots of water to store in their rooms and a lot of snacks too.
Maybe the Covid 19 test gave a false positive result
While in isolation, I did as much research as I could about Covid 19. I knew the basics that we all read about or heard on television, but when your spouse gets it you want to learn as much as you can about it. Every day I would thank God when she was in a good mood and feeling well. Every day I would ask her how she felt and she would say she felt as normal as ever, and that was a terrific sign.
I did a lot of online reading, and I learned that there were a lot of false positive test results when people take the PCR test. This is the test where you put a swab up your nose and what is considered the gold standard test. The lab then receives your swab and checks to see if any viral genetic material is present. The whole testing process is kind of questionable, but it is what it is. If you research it enough you will find out that if they run enough cycles on a person that eventually they will come out with a positive test on anybody. I'm not going to get into that here, but you certainly do learn a lot when you spend time researching all of this.
With all of that said, it was all hopeful thinking. I am no scientist and certainly am no expert on how the Covid 19 tests work. All I had to go on was what I had been studying for a little more than a week. Again though, I was in high hopes that it was nothing but a false positive result.
Another bothersome issue that was running through my mind was that I probably had the Corona Virus too. If my wife had it, wouldn't it be almost definite that I also had it? I felt fine and have never really been sick for about three years. If I had Covid wouldn't I at least feel a little something?
It was time for me to get tested, and for my wife to get re-tested. After about day 10 of isolation me and my wife decided to go get tested together. Of course we would not ride in the same car together just in case I didn't have it. We didn't even walk out the house together and were still keeping our distance from one another. We decided to go to a different location this time from where she initially got tested. This time we were going too the Walgreens drive thru testing. The hope here was that she would come out negative which would kind of prove that the first test was a false positive. Of course we were also hoping I was negative.
The results from this test took about a week to come back from Walgreens. On December 30, 2020, I had a disturbing email come in telling me that I tested positive for Covid 19. I had to open up and stare at the email more than a few times thinking that I was hallucinating and would see a negative result the next time I opened up the email. Was this some kind of joke? How in the hell could I test positive for Corona Virus? How in the hell did my wife test positive for Corona Virus?
Yes, this email freaked me out. We'd taken all of the precautions that we were supposed to take. We wore our masks all the time and kept away from people. Yet, there I was reading an email telling me that I tested positive for Covid 19. I actually had to calm myself down for a moment as I was having a small panic attack.
What's kind of funny though is that before taking the test, deep in my mind I knew that I had it. If my wife had it, I just knew I would test positive. Even with all of this though, seeing the result live with my own eyes freaked me out. So there I was thinking that I may get sick. A good sign here though was that since I got tested it had been seven days, and I had not felt sick at all. Who knows when the initial infection happened. Everyday I would wake up thinking "Okay, do I feel sick now?" Fortunately, I've never felt sick from the Corona Virus and nobody in my house has either. Not the kids, the older folk in the house nor us. All I could do was thank God for putting his armor of protection over my family.
Is the Corona Virus a big scare tactic?
Maybe. Who knows. I am not a big conspiracy person, but I am also not surprised by anything. I definitely believe that this whole Corona Virus thing is very over exaggerated, and a lot of that blame goes to the media. The way the media has made Covid sound has always been terrifying. It made you think that if you were infected with Corona Virus that you were just going to get sick and die. That is simply not the case and at least 99 percent of people infected with Corona Virus will be just fine.
Some people will get flu like symptoms, but a large percentage of those that get infected with the virus will be asymptomatic. Yes, many people will not feel al thing. They will not get a fever. They wont lose their taste or smell. They wont feel anything abnormal. They will feel as normal as they always have.
The media over exaggerating Covid 19
As I have already mentioned, the media has impacted our feelings and fear toward Covid 19. All during 2020, when we looked at the news on television, or read articles online through social media outlets, all we ever seen and heard was about the people that contracted Covid 19 and that past away.
I remember one story about a family that had all contracted Covid. A husband, wife and 4 kids all tested positive. The kids were all asymptomatic, the wife had a slight fever that she got over quickly, but the husband that was the sole provider for his family ended up passing away from Covid.
Another story I remember was of a guy that got out of prison. Upon his release, he went and got tested for Corona Virus. A couple of days later, he excitingly went to visit his mother at her house. He had not seen her for years, and it was a special moment for the mother and son. A couple of days later, the guy ends up getting his test results back and it is positive. This is followed by his mother getting sick, testing positive herself and then passing away from Covid.
Over and over again we have heard the terrible things that Covid has caused. Don't get me wrong, these terrible life changing events that are taking or impacting people's lives is true. I would never downplay what Covid 19 can do to an individual. I know that many hospitals have been at full capacity with more than they can handle. All of this is real, and if somebody calls all of this fake news they are an idiot.
With all of that said, these terrible events make up less than a percent of all positive Covid cases. The news outlets never talks about the other 99+ percent of positive Covid cases. You know, all the people that have been infected but never feel a thing. They never get sick. They never have a fever. They never have a headache, have a stomach ache, get diarrhea, lose their taste, lose their smelling ability or any of the other symptoms that go along with Covid 19. By the way, it is reported that 30 to 40 percent of those infected with Covid are asymptomatic. That's a lot of people! The news outlets should preach how there is a good chance that if you are infected with Corona you won't feel a thing. They should also preach that if you do test positive and do feel symptoms, chances are (99+ percent) that it will be mild.
Why doesn't the news media talk about all the positive Covid cases with no symptoms?
Does the news media not report this stuff because they don't want people to downplay the disease? Would they rather have people terrified of something more than they should be? I don't have the answers, but it sometimes seems that way.
I mean, if they constantly talked about the flu and all the people that die from it every day on the news it would make the flu much more scary to us wouldn't it?. How about reporting all the people that die from car accidents. If they continually reported these numbers everyday and talked about it constantly, we'd all be scared to drive our damn cars! Of course, 99.9 percent of people that get the flu will be fine as will all the people who drive their vehicles. But, if we continually hear about the very small percentage of people that have their lives threatened by the flu or a car crash these things tend to seem much more worrisome.
If you are infected with the Corona Virus you will be fine
When I say that, I am generally speaking of course. Yes, I know there will be a lot of people that will have complications from Covid and some people will even pass on, and to those people my heart goes out to. If you have recently contracted the Corona Virus and are reading this, I'm telling you that you will be fine. You have a great chance of not feeling anything. If you do, it will be something very mild and will not be a big deal.
I will be right 99+ percent of the time. Of course that leaves leeway for me being wrong. For that small percentage, I sincerely sympathize. Anybody that has a severe reaction to Covid or passes away from it we should all have compassion for. Many people will lose their lives to this disease. Again though, I must say it once more. If you have contracted the Corona Virus, you are going to be fine. It is ALMOST certain!
Should a person be scared if infected with Covid 19?
In Los Angeles County, the latest reporting is that one in three tests are coming back positive. This tells me that the Corona Virus sort of has a you can run but can't hide agenda. There are lots of areas in the country that are reporting tests that show at least a one in five positive rate. It has spread like crazy!
Again though, generally speaking, if you get it you will be fine. You should not worry about getting Covid. If it happens then it happens. This does not mean to be a careless fool. Wear your mask and be as careful as you can. Don't be one of these idiot nosers out there. What's a noser? You know, the morons that walk around and wear a mask over their mouth but leave their nose exposed. I'm not going to go on a rant about that. Wash your hands and do all you can to decrease your chances of getting infected. Nobody contracts Covid purposely!
My point here is that nobody should be living in fear. Take all precautions that you can to decrease your chances of getting it. If you ever do one day receive a test result showing that you are positive for Covid, have no fear. There are just too many damn people living in fear from this disease and that is not right.
Another thing that I want to mention is that if you do receive a positive test for Covid in your inbox, expect the lab to start calling you everyday after that. They would call me about every other day after I received the positive result email. This went on for about two weeks. I never answered. To me, there was just no reason to answer. What were they going to tell me that I didn't already know. Of course, if you like chit-chatting, by all means go on ahead an answer your phone. To me, there was nothing they could do for me or anything useful that they could advise me of that I didn't already know so there was no reason to talk.
Don't get offended if you think I am downplaying Covid 19
In closing, I would like to say that if you think that I am downplaying the Corona Virus you are entirely wrong. I am fully aware of what this disease can do to people, but we cannot ignore the fact that 99+ percent of people will be fine. We cannot ignore the fact that most of those people will only have flu like symptoms that are nothing unordinary from any other time in their life that they felt under the weather. We cannot ignore the fact that a large chunk of these people will not even have any symptoms at all.
It's easy for somebody that had a loved one pass away from this disease think I am downplaying Corona. That's because it took somebody they love away and that's understandable, but for most of us it's simply not the case. We get this crap, we don't feel anything or we get a little sick and then its done and over with and we continue living our lives.
My main point of sharing this article was to try and help stop the fear of Covid 19. I want people to know, Dashers or anybody else that if they test positive for the Corona Disease that they will be fine. When your odds are 99.9 percent of being alright then I am going to tell you that you will be fine. I am not going to make you think that you're going to get sick. All I can share is the statistics and my personal experience.
Covid invaded my home, and I'm sharing the truth with my readers here of how it affected me and my family. I will not lie and pretend it did more than it did. Covid 19 did absolutely nothing to us. We did not get sick or anything. Half of the battle against Covid is fear!
With all of that said, I'm looking forward to writing more frequently here and posting more often. At the beginning of the year, I did experience some of that Covid fear, after all was well I became heavily involved with some other projects, but I have been dashing quite a bit lately and have new articles to post up. I would like to end this by saying to all Doordash drivers out there once again - Happy Dashing!
No comments:
Post a Comment