Do You Have Coronavirus? How Could You Tell?

Y'know, if I were seriously trying to manage a "pandemic" cold, however nasty a cold it was, I think I'd let the age-old problem of inventing a vaccine for cold virus wait, and think about making it possible for people to observe quarantine. If they care enough to do so.

I live in a town where most families are "headed" by a grandparent, or even a great-grandparent--someone over age 70--so I do care. But do I have coronavirus? Does anybody? Has anybody?

Here are the data points for what they're worth:

* I woke up early Friday morning feeling lazy. Anybody would have felt lazy in that 98% humidity. I also sneezed a few times. I figured that had something to do with the mold I could smell trying to grow in the 98% humidity, applied a bleach solution to the suspected surfaces, and felt better. I went into town and worked and came home feeling reasonably tired.

* On the way home I found a little cable for some sort of electronic device in the road. It looked brand-new, as if it had slipped out of the package. I was tempted to hang onto it and try selling it in the market next Friday, but since it was in front of a house I knocked on the door. The grandparent who shuffled out to the door stood about as high as my oversized cat Graybelle used to reach when she put her paws up for a hug--shirt-pocket level. I kept the glass panel of the outside door between me and the old dear who reached around to claim the cable, wheezing "Where'd you find it?" I didn't linger to breathe on the person. I felt fine but I had been in the market all morning.

* Then on Sunday morning I woke up feeling "OLD," as in "what doesn't hurt doesn't work." Mostly my pulse and blood pressure were very high. (I don't normally have high blood pressure, and was able to get it back to normal with biofeedback from years of practice with a hypertensive husband. But because I'm not accustomed to having high blood pressure, it feels very uncomfortable.) It's simpler to list the common symptoms of health problems that I did NOT have: a fever, a cough, or loss of the sense of smell. I felt slightly sick, slightly dizzy, slightly short of breath and generally all the ways you don't want to feel. I had stiffness and occasional pains in joints. I did not have a head cold or the official signs of coronavirus. I did not have a very pleasant day, either. But I wasn't too ill to work. I walked slowly into town, went into a friend's empty basement without seeing or talking to anybody, worked all day, and walked slowly home, actually feeling better than I'd felt early in the morning.

* Maybe that had something to do with mold. The deal with the basement was that I got to use it on alternating days in exchange for watering plants. The attraction was air conditioning. The Cat Sanctuary does not have air conditioning. After six weeks of maximum humidity day and night, I couldn't see or smell mold in my home office. I'd bleached the daylights out of surfaces I suspected of being likely to grow mold. But when the heat drops below blazing hot, after this kind of summer you know there's going to be mold...I've not seen mold growing on an actual mothball, but I've seen it starting to grow within a few inches from one.

* It was still very hot, and very damp, with a few loud storms and heavy rains. Today was the first day since June when, in the morning at least, the air was cool and not terribly humid. I put off coming into town to water the plants because it was so much fun getting things done in the house and yard.

* But I still had that tightness in the chest, and when I did anything very energetic I still felt as if my legs were full of water, and other not very pleasant things. Basically, I felt (and still feel) as if I had a very mild chest cold. Very mild. But the congestion is down in the lungs, below the throat where harmless little streppy-bugs "bite" or sinus allergies start. Also I spent a good part of Sunday reading about how, when people get this strain of coronavirus, COVID-19, and don't have the standard fever and head cold symptoms, sometimes the heart is what the virus attacks. Some people get cardiovascular symptoms, which aren't part of regular cardiovascular disease, but of course make it easier for the usual kind of cardiovascular disease to develop later on...

* Funnily enough, the surges in pulse and blood pressure were what people were noticing as symptoms of last winter's flu, before we were told that COVID-19 had reached our shores. I feel just exactly as if I were fighting last winter's flu, all over again.

* So if it's last winter's flu, I should not quarantine myself but should go into town and take care of business, I told myself. And I will, whenever it gets too hot to be irresistibly pleasant at home. (This took until late afternoon.) I walked into town and saw a sign on the front door of the person who'd claimed the cable, warning visitors to put their face masks on before the door was opened.

* So I was...within three feet of someone who now has the dreaded coronavirus. Only for a few seconds and only reaching around a glass door, but that could have been enough. Or the person from whom that person got it could have been in the market, probably not wearing a mask. I don't know that I've been exposed to coronavirus but I could very easily have been. In fact, in view of the symptoms I've had...I'm like 95% sure I've got the wretched virus.

* But I also saw evidence that some wretched fool had sprayed some sort of poison all around a lot of private property over the weekend. It wasn't "Roundup"; I could tell because the horsetail rushes around their section of the drainage ditch were affected differently, as was the kudzu. It could have been causing me to feel that my heart, liver, and kidneys, rather than the usual digestive and respiratory surface tissue, were taking the damage of this latest round of poisoning. How far did the vapors diffuse? In all that rain?

* So how do I find out? At the town hall we now have a temperature-checking machine to make sure people who have fevers don't breathe on the town government officials. That's nice but I don't have a fever. I could still have the virus. I could still be a carrier. I could still kill somebody's grandparents just by talking with them...maybe. But for sure nobody's giving out free finger-stick blood tests to confirm or disprove the presence of active coronavirus in a healthy person with no fever. Hospitals are discouraging people who can stand on their feet from seeking tests--much less treatment, which I don't need.

The Grouch still doesn't know for sure. He thought he had it in May. He was discouraged from trying to get tested at the time. He finally got tested in June, and was told he'd definitely had coronavirus in July. Then more recently it was reported that a lot of veterans had been misled by tests that gave false positive results. The Grouch is a veteran and might have been in that group. Who knows about him, either. Who knows about anybody. If what I have is COVID-19, then it's entirely possible that last winter's flu was--unreported--COVID-19.

I don't want to use up friends' willingness to help unnecessarily...well, if this isn't coronavirus, and if I get coronavirus later this winter, the odds are heavily against the people I know being able to help.

Gentle Readers, I prayed. I asked for a sign. If I opened my e-mail and saw a writing assignment that required me to be online, this evening, I'd wait for proof before scaring people with any concerns about coronavirus. I may not have it now. I may have it later. I have no way of knowing.

If I did not find such an assignment in this evening's e-mail, I'd at least try to go into quarantine today. I arranged to go to the grocery store with the Grouch, who has probably already had coronavirus. I'll be working on arrangements to get bills paid, mail collected, and groceries delivered during the rest of this week.

I am really hoping it is coronavirus, so I can get that out of the way before the air turns cold and be able to repay errands for older friends this winter.

How much of this decision is due to the pleasure of being at home when the heat breaks, and how much to concern about coronavirus, I can't really say. But I can assure you that I'm not sprezzing or trying to pull something. This is an ideal time for me to build immunity to a virus that's not serious for healthy people my age, but if I could have convinced myself that all I'd had were mold allergies or even chemical sensitivity, I would have done that. I enjoyed working out in the sunshine today and intend to do so whenever the sun shines during the next few weeks. I would not have enjoyed breathing on any friends who might be more vulnerable to the virus, or live with people who are. While working outside today I set my mind to figuring out how errands could be done without putting unreasonable burdens on friends, or breathing on or handing things to friends. I think it's possible and will be trying to do it.

See y'all in three weeks, Gentle Readers.

If you get any say in the matter, please lean on your local "health care providers" to focus on making it easier for people to get themselves tested so they can quarantine themselves appropriately.