It hasn’t gone away

  Barnes

You are no longer wearing a mask when in public; few of us are. And when you notice someone who is wearing a mask, assuming it registers at all, it is to wonder why. After all, we defeated COVID-19 long ago, right?

Yes, and no. The first symptom appeared at mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, a couple hours after you had shared a table with eight — count ’em, eight — lunchmates.

That early alert of something amiss: after a sun-drenched morning and a jovial meal and the unconscious presumption of perfect health, the growing sense of feeling not quite right. Shake it off, kid.

By 5:30 there was the shallow cough, as if from a single bit of black pepper adhering to the back of the throat. Still, easy enough to ignore. At about 8:30 the chills came on, little shivers that demanded the bed and an extra blanket pulled to the chin, and the dog in your clutches for extra warmth and emotional support.

The wife says, turn this way, and aims the little thermometer gun at your forehead. “101.3,” she intones. So maybe a bad cold, or the flu.

Maybe. But in the bathroom cabinet are a couple of home test kits that have not reached their expiration date.

“Turn this way,” she says again, and that long swab goes up the right nostril, then the left, both times in the specified five rotations. Leave me alone, you think, as she withdraws. Then returns.

“You’re positive.” With that you became one of the 1,683 Arkansans that week who probably, like you, had grown comfortable in the specious certainty that COVID was, for you, a thing of the past, only to have the virus slap them upside the head.

That 1,683: a false positive, you might call it, since it reflects only those cases diagnosed in clinical settings and reported to the state Department of Health. From the first appearance of COVID the epidemiologists have cautioned that the number of actual cases in such outbreaks is always significantly higher than the reported totals, owing to misdiagnoses or the failure (or refusal) of some of the infected to seek treatment. The same holds true for the death count: In non-clinical settings, or with unattended deaths, what was presumed to be heart failure or the effects of stroke, or simply “old age,” are in fact the direct result of viral infection.

Your symptoms — they already had mandated the cancellation of a dinner engagement; you weren’t entirely blind to the likelihood of something more serious than a common cold. Now, with the little test strip confirming as much, there went the next day’s luncheon engagement and the poker game that evening, and the church catfish fry the evening after, and the Saturday boys’ bull session, and … Poor you. What of those eight dudes you lunched with earlier in the day?

You had to let them know what your test said, especially since all of them were in the age group (60plus) most vulnerable to COVID and its worst effects, to include, well, death. In 2023, after all, the coronavirus claimed 559 Arkansas lives, the bulk of them in their Social Security years. That’s approximately four times the number that could be expected to die of seasonal flu. How much comfort, if any, should you take upon considering that all eight of your companions, who were only inches from you for 90 minutes, had never entertained for a nanosecond the various coronavirus conspiracy theories, nor the temptation to untested pharmaceuticals or livestock deworming treatments as preventatives? They were sane men, and to a person had readily rolled up their sleeves for the jab.

The clinician you consulted that night said to take plenty of water and stay in bed and you would probably have a mild case, would probably not join the almost 160 Arkansans whose COVID infection would require their hospitalization that week. Why? Because you had ignored the political noise and followed the best scientific advice and stayed up to date on COVID immunizations.

Less than 24 hours later your temperature had returned to normal, the chills were gone and you were hungry. And feeling well enough to remember that a scion of the Kennedy clan continues his campaign against vaccines of every variety while waging, with some early success, an independent campaign for president, no matter the condemnation of his effort by his own family. Came to mind as well the former presidential candidate from Florida, standing by his hand-picked surgeon general, who not only pooh-poohed the COVID vaccine but, amid an outbreak of measles, takes a similar approach to immunizations for children and the temporary quarantine of the infected. Arkansas has had its share of disdain for scientific consensus.

Almost 14,000 Arkansans have died of COVID. You knew some of them.