My family treated my positive Covid test as exciting news, like they had been watching EastEnders for 17 years and finally something had happened
What I never noticed before I got Covid was the thriving black market in stories and speculation about the virus, the after-virus and the sheer unadulterated weirdness of the human body. The public sphere is, understandably, preoccupied with the disease at its most harrowing – “happy hypoxia”, ventilators, months of post-viral fatigue. I get that completely. If you’re going to make a social effort to understand a disease, it’s most helpful to start with: “It’s nothing like flu.” In the sphere of the private, meanwhile, we’re swapping weird, inconsequential symptoms, like a prehistoric culture trying to work out what a cold is. “Did you have snot? You’re not supposed to have snot, and yet I had much snot.” “No, but I had a pain in my eyebrow.” “Was it on the eyebrow or behind the eyebrow?”
Last time I overshared my health status, I had tested positive but Mr Z hadn’t, and shortly afterwards, he did too. I’d say it went on for about 10 days, and he had it worse than I did; he disputes this, and there is no way of saying who’s right unless Oprah Winfrey is willing to get involved (joke! Obviously Meghan is right). No one day was worse than a bad hangover, but you would never get a hangover for 10 days straight, so in aggregate it was worse. On the plus side, it wasn’t self-inflicted. I’m more or less certain Mr Z brought the virus home from the shop, and he was definitely getting something necessary, not a snacking chorizo and some banana milk. My friend T mulled this over. “I don’t think I’ve ever had any disease that’s worse than a bad hangover.” I ruminated on this for ages. What is worse than the worst hangover? Maybe childbirth?
