I criticized COVID-19 measures. Then I got COVID-19

I wasn’t critical of COVID-19 measures when they were first announced in March of 2020. I took my role in preventing the collapse of our health care system as seriously as I did the possibility of actually catching the novel coronavirus. I stayed home for weeks and had my groceries delivered, immediately wiping down every packaged item down with disinfectant. I handled my mail with tongs, leaving whatever didn’t go straight to the dumpster in a sunny windowsill to “sanitize” for a few days before opening it.

I returned to employment that May wearing a homemade Cyclones-print mask, complete with an insert where I’d place a single-serve coffee filter for extra protection. Every time I met a customer in person, I’d put on a hulking face shield, and afterward, I’d douse myself in WHO-approved hand sanitizer (basically grain alcohol with a splash of glycerin and peroxide. I had to hold my breath until it dried so I didn’t get woozy.)

Then weeks turned into months (and now years.) “Two weeks to slow the spread” turned into “until it’s safe” with no concrete or realistic definition of what “safe” looked like. So I began to question some COVID measures, taking to this column to tell the stories of people who were struggling with mask mandates and vaccine requirements. But for all of the experiences I sought to learn and write about, one question nagged me: Would I feel differently about any of this if I actually caught COVID myself?

I no longer have to wonder. Last month, more than two years after the shutdowns began, I developed cold symptoms and ended up finally testing positive for COVID-19. Though my symptoms were more annoying than worrisome — I had one bad headache and lost my sense of smell — having COVID nevertheless caused significant strain in my life.

While fulfilling my duty to notify every person with whom I’d had recent contact, I also had to explain to a family for whom I’d been pet-sitting why I couldn’t greet them upon their return from vacation the following day. When I learned later that three of those family members had tested positive, two of them 90 years old, I was wracked with guilt at the idea of leaving them an infected environment. (I later spoke with one of them and learned that their symptoms were mild and began while they were still on vacation. Phew.)

My 29-year battle with rheumatoid arthritis has suffered, too. An important surgery to alleviate bone-on-bone pain in my wrist, originally scheduled for four days after I tested positive, was delayed. When a concerning symptom unrelated to my wrist arose, the neurosurgeon from whom I sought treatment refused an in-person consult for any sooner than six weeks out due to my diagnosis, even though I’d completed quarantine by then and produced a negative lab test.

The suspension of my daily workouts wreaked havoc on my bones, joints and muscles as I learned the hard way that regular exercise is vital to my treatment of chronic pain. Getting back into that routine has been excruciating.

But the question remains. Having now had COVID-19 and having dealt with disruptions to my life as a result, do I feel differently regarding my skepticism over strict COVID measures? Without question, I do not.

It can’t be proven that I contracted COVID because someone failed to wear a mask or get their vaccination. I caught COVID-19 because it’s a rapidly transmissible disease, and the only way to prevent any transmissible disease is to not leave my home or be around other people at all. Americans have tried that (and more) already, though, and with sad results.

For the elderly in senior communities, social distancing even in independent living areas meant that residents were confined to their units alone with no visits from family or even their fellow residents. In hospitals and nursing homes, visitor restrictions prevented many from being comforted by their loved ones in their final moments, even when passing from non-COVID-related causes.

Masks were found by a November 2021 study to have “hindered the perception of virtually all tested facial dimensions (i.e., emotion, gender, age, and identity.)” For young children in the early stages of development, the reduced ability to identify and interpret facial expressions has likely impacted their ability to learn healthy social skills.

For older children, the closure of schools meant the absence of normal socialization altogether. Interactions that once happened organically in a school setting now happened artificially through social media apps, enticing kids to present obsessively crafted images of themselves online. Academics suffered dramatically: A McKinsey and Company analysis from July 2021 reported an average learning loss of four to five months in reading and math for K-12 students. That figure increased to six to seven months of “unfinished learning” in majority Black and low-income schools.

Heartbreakingly, the same McKinsey analysis revealed that more than 35 percent of parents were either “very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health.”

It begs an uncomfortable question: Which has actually caused us more suffering? The actual disease that is the novel coronavirus, or the measures we’ve taken trying to avoid it?

Though I don’t take lightly the morbid and mortal realities of COVID-19, I fear that for too many of us it is the latter.

As sad as these realities are, we seemingly find ourselves in a moment of calm. Though COVID-19 infections continue to occur, case counts and hospitalizations across the nation have dropped dramatically since the recent omicron peak in January, with some area hospitals reporting zero COVID patients as early as mid-March.

Perhaps this is an ideal time to assess what’s been done to us by both this disease and the measures we’ve taken to fight it and ask our communities and ourselves what we plan to do differently next time. And surely there will be a “next time”: a next variant, a next case surge, a next strategy for how to mitigate it.

We’ve worried so much about the risk of dying that we have ruled out the risk of living. But even His Eminence Dr. Anthony Fauci, the patron saint of government-funded science, has finally acknowledged that the future of living with COVID-19 is reasonably assessing the overall risk to one’s health as we all move on with our lives.

That’s what life is: one risk after another. The risk of catching a virus. The risk of losing money in an investment. The risk of provoking an argument at the dinner table because someone just had to bring up politics. We risk, we learn, and we grow.

Speaking of the dinner table, that where I intend to sit and feast with my family as we gather today to celebrate the risen Christ, who I hope to meet in person one day. Happy Easter and Chag Sameach to Gazette readers.

Althea Cole is a Gazette editorial fellow. Comments: althea.cole@thegazette.com

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