Close call with Covid

Courtesy of Asahi News

The world has endured two years of relentless discussion of Covid* and its profound impact on society. Without question, coronavirus has changed the world. When the impact gets personal, though, it is wince-inducingly personal.

How would you feel if your pre-travel antigen test or mandatory-for-travel PCR test result was “weakly positive”? It's a clinical judgment rife with ambiguity. It means you cannot travel and must immediately self-isolate. The added significance is the medical authorities are not sure of your upper respiratory health status. Asymptomatic refers to folks who are infected by Covid or a variant, as detected by a PCR test, but who never develop any symptoms. Yet “weakly positive” stops everything in its tracks. “Uhh, we’re not sure if you’re really sick, but just in case, you can’t travel or interact with others.” Goodness gracious, Charlie Brown. 

This scenario happened to me as I neared the end of a business trip to Europe.

Graphic credit: Aida Amer, Axios

To prepare for my return home I needed to take a PCR test 72 hours before departure to Japan. My test result was the above-mentioned “weakly positive.” I stopped all work and immediately self-isolated in my hotel room. My colleagues on the trip took over my responsibilities.

We’re all aware of the human cost of Covid. At this point, 515 million infections with 6.2 million deaths. My feeling some anxiety about being infected feels petty in comparison to the anguish others have endured. But you can’t deny your feelings. I was marooned in a hotel room in Europe. I got busy doing back-office support for my co-workers, but that eventually ended and I had more free time to fret. Had I been too careless with prevention? Did my actions somehow cause this, or was I unlucky? Will it develop into full-blown Covid? How would I self-care, like monitoring body temperature or buying other medical needs, if I was prohibited from leaving my room? All this stuff revolves in your head. Your room phone, mobile phone, and laptop become your best friends. Yet, a pleasant hotel room is not Alcatraz, right? You suck it up and stick to facts, try not to become too mired in thinking about possibilities.

For roughly three days, my world narrowed down to the hotel room and numerous emails and texts. I will never forget the human element – the kindness of strangers – that made it easier to set aside negative thinking. One co-worker bought me a thermometer, self-testing kits, and extra masks that met local standards. Amid an arduous, high-pressure work program, another co-worker dutifully visited every day to make sure I was doing well and to drop off some morale-raising bread and beer.

Then my European colleagues arranged a new PCR test at a local clinic. That clinic appointment turned into a Marx Brothers slapstick trip. As the minutes ticked by to depart to the clinic by taxi as planned, the hotel front staff’s body language and whispers told me that taxi drivers were refusing to take me to the clinic. Likely because I could be Covid-positive. I was dismayed, but it is their right to choose their passengers. Yet, I felt like a pariah. Sensing my plight, two of the hotel staff heroically commandeered their boss’s personal car without permission and drove me pell-mell to the clinic. We got stopped at a train crossing for several minutes, imperiling my test appointment. No problem. We jumped out of the car and ran across the train tracks with the oncoming train in sight. It being a Latin country, despite my being ten minutes late, the clinic let me take the test without too much fuss. They swabbed my tonsil area and poked in both nostrils, inducing involuntary tears. I was done and outta there in 10 minutes. The good Samaritans felt sorry for my plight and took me on a small tour of the main attractions of their city. Up to that point, all I’d seen was the hotel room and its window views.

It’s worth pointing out these were two complete strangers. Turns out one of them had already endured real Covid twice. Yet they helped me without hesitation, potentially endangering themselves. If I take anything away from this experience, it was these small acts of human kindness by co-workers and strangers. It made a great impression on me.

Precisely one day later, I got the email from the clinic with one magic word: “negative." It immediately released me from these dispiriting three days in limbo. I drank Pellegrino sparkling water in celebration, like I was the winning driver of the Monaco Grand Prix.

Now, all I needed to do was re-arrange my flights and get back to Japan…

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(Ed. Note: Is it me, or are we all so tired of capitalizing COVID, thus giving it full command of our attention, that we’re consciously minimizing it by using only the initial capital “C”?)