The last embers of sunrise were still burning when I left home on a mission. For the past couple of days, my husband, Cameron, had been feeling a little lousy. Nothing dramatic, just some muscle aches, exhaustion, the sensation of feverishness without any measurable fever. We’re both fully vaccinated, as is Cameron’s 13-year-old son, and the whole family are diligent mask-wearers when in public. Could it be a breakthrough case, though? We wondered.
True, he and I both are existing in a permanent-seeming state of exhaustion, and added on an especially grueling day earlier that week: those factors would be enough to leave anybody dragging. But — what if this were a breakthrough case? And so, before the day began, when the sky was still half-molten, I went out in search of an at-home Covid-19 test. Reader, I did not know what I was in for: Evidently the entire city of Memphis has been buying at-home Covid-19 tests, because I stopped at five different drugstores before finding a single test kit for sale.
Our collective anxiety levels are rising as we mutter under our breaths: Not this again. I never stopped wearing a mask in public settings like grocery stores, but now I’m masking up once more even around colleagues whom I know to be vaccinated.
The test was negative. As of this writing, my household is free of Covid-19. My husband swabbed his nose, we inserted the swab into a little cardboard doohickey along with precisely six drops of solution, waited 15 minutes, and there it was: a single deep-pink line, indicating no presence of the virus. Like so many of us, Cameron needs less stress, plus more and better sleep. (For more on the topic of sleep, see John Branston and Dr. Merrill Wise’s remarkable account) External circumstances are not entirely favorable when it comes to stress reduction and sleep improvement, not these days of ratcheting-up case counts and bleaker reports from front-line workers than we’ve heard in almost a year. Our collective anxiety levels are rising as we mutter under our breaths: Not this again. I never stopped wearing a mask in public settings like grocery stores, but now I’m masking up once more even around colleagues whom I know to be vaccinated. I also know that one of us could still contract Covid, despite being cautious, despite being vaccinated. We’re markedly less likely to wind up on a ventilator because of it, though.
Anna Traverse Fogle
Our goal, individually and collectively, needs to be risk reduction, not risk elimination. Being mortal means we can’t live risk-free; we’re simultaneously strong and frail creatures. Just like we wear our seatbelts and take our vitamins, the tools available to us won’t render us invincible. What they will do is put us in a position to overcome whatever it is that external circumstances throw our way.
My household may be Covid-free, for now, but my family isn’t. Cameron’s sweet mother, Nan, who lives in New York City, completed a quarantine period after testing positive earlier in August. My mother-in-law, thankfully, was fully vaccinated as soon as she could be, and has continued to be cautious, but contracted Covid anyway. After her experience, she’s an even stronger advocate for vaccination, which is saying something. Sure, she was glad to get out of the apartment where she had been cooped up, glad to walk the reservoir and sit in Central Park and heck, even glad to go to Trader Joe’s, she told me. But other than being bored and claustrophobic, she was fine, and that’s remarkable. “Pre-vaccination,” she said, “I was certain that I was toast if I got Covid because of my crummy respiratory system. Now, testing positive, I am essentially asymptomatic and feel perfectly fine. I need to do a PSA for the vaccine!”
Listen to Nan’s PSA, folks. Now’s the time. I, for one, would sleep a whole lot better knowing that a few more of us were following her example.
But just in case, I bought a couple extra home test kits. For next time.
