I became complacent about COVID
Due to Covid fatigue, I let my guard down. I stopped being careful. Although still wearing my mask and washing my hands regularly, I became a lot more relaxed about the whole thing.
Last week, I got into the metro and when I came back home, I had a bad feeling about my metro ride. Sure enough, the next day I started feeling cold-like symptoms such as a runny nose and a sore throat.
I am self isolating
I considered getting tested, but the news about long lines at testing sites dissuaded me. With these cold temperatures, I wasn’t going to wake up early to stand a line. I figure that my best bet was to isolate myself. I have nowhere to go anyway and I work at home. I have no problem spending 10 days in my apartment.
I don’t know for sure whether I had the Omicron variant or a regular cold, but several websites I visited suggested that if I couldn’t be tested, I should assume I have the Omicron.
The isolation advice varies across the country, in the U.S. and Canada, though generally, the recommendation follows that if a fully vaccinated person with symptoms can’t get tested, they should consider themselves COVID-positive and self isolate for 10 days or so.
Fortunately, after six days, all the symptoms were gone. I am still in isolation, mostly because I have nowhere to go.
We should have more testing kits availble
I am upset that self-testing kits are not available for those of us who are not willing to wake up early and stand in line for a couple of hours. It’s been two years since we have been dealing with COVID, by this time, testing kits should be as accessible as masks. Although I am grateful for all the concern and government assistance, I consider the lack of testing kits a government failure.
We should let nature run its course
I am upset that as a society, we are giving so much weight and importance to this virus. I think that we should let nature run its course. We have to learn to live with this virus. So far, the price we are paying to eliminate the virus is too high. It’s not working, we should try to learn to live with it. Perhaps, a more worthy goal is to teach people how not to be obese, how to stop smoking, how to exercise regularly and to take better care of their bodies, that would probably be a better defense against COVID, but of course, we don’t want to call a fat person fat, we rather lock a whole society to prevent the fat person from dying.
Sure, by creating all these lockdowns we are slowing down the spread of the virus, but the social and economic cost is too high, and people are dying of lockdown related causes, like loneliness, depression, increase in drug use, not having access to other medical services, not to mention the despair of families who are being prevented from earning their living because we are killing the local economy.
We should re-open the economy
I think we should open our economy back up. Sure, some people will die, but that’s the same risk we take when we allow people to drive, we know that some people will die in car accidents but as a society, we decided that’s a risk worth taking.
We should stop all these lockdowns. If a person is immunocompromised, that person should stay home and isolated, not society at large.