Getting Viral…

This is not what you think it is.

After two years of nimbly dodging it, I got caught. Or rather, I caught it. The infamous COVID-19.

Yes, clickbait title, it was too tempting!

I live in a country where rules are enforced quite strictly. Mask wearing mandates indoors and outdoors are very well respected, hand sanitizer available everywhere, social distancing more or less respected.

They call it social distancing since the pandemic started, I have always called it personal space.

Now, where did I get it from? My daughter attends a nursery, which is great in these times to interact and play with other children and have a glimpse of normality. Not quite normal, as the staff has to wear masks, but children at the nursery don’t have to wear masks.

My daughter just turned three years old. You don’t get three-year-old children to wear masks, and it is better this way. After one year and a half attending the nursery though, it had to happen.

One day, we received a communication from the nursery that one person in my daughter’s “bubble” (i.e. fixed small group of people including staff) has tested positive to COVID-19. At the same time, she started showing some mild runny nose and cough. Well, that was it.

A couple of PCR tests later, my daughter was a confirmed case. A couple of PCR tests later, my wife and I were confirmed cases.

Am I ashamed of saying it? Absolutely not. Let’s not stigmatize this disease, even if the last two years have just kept on doing that.

Then a 10-day indoor isolation adventure started. Keeping a 3-year-old at home for ten days is not a small feat, trust me!

My daughter had mild symptoms, but word on the street was that children were more likely to experience mild symptoms. That’s for the best!

Me and my wife also only experienced mild symptoms. We have received three shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. I am glad we did as we cannot be sure how bad things could have been without being vaccinated.

There was never any promise that a vaccinated person could not catch the virus. Especially the Omicron variant that seemed to be much more capable of by-passing potential immunity provided by the vaccine. However, scientific studies confirmed that the severity was significantly reduced.

Following this experience in isolation, freedom has a new taste. We take freedom for granted and always complain about it. However, when you are really deprived from freedom, things get a completely different perspective.

The little things that we have been prevented from doing over the past couple of years, such as travelling, going outside, shopping, eating at restaurants… All are also taking another dimension. Maybe this pandemic will teach us to enjoy the little things in life! Maybe not because we are humans and bound to go back to our old ways.

This whole experience has been terrible, and is not over yet. The future looks a bit brighter now, with the development of treatments and further advances in vaccines.

I cannot wait to see it end though. I doubt the virus will disappear, but it should just become part of our new normality, like colds and flu. It looks like one way or another, we might all just get it.

Let’s get a final push, keep it under control and move on. Back to a normal life, as we did before.