Isolation Log: Day 1,246

By now, getting COVID doesn't feel remarkable. Nearly everyone has had it. I hadn't thought to mention it at all, here in the newspaper. But then I went back and re-read my Isolation Log from the "uncertain times" at the outset of pandemic. I think I owe that log one final entry. If you want the context, the log is still up on my website, at heytomgeorge.com/isolation-log.

It comes to this, my trusty journal. I ran a good race, but the Dread Disease was inexhaustible.

When I felt the first inklings of fever, I made myself a quarantine room at one end of the habitat, hoping to spare the Habitat Mate, but alas I was too late. Both of us have succumbed. We keep to our sick-nests, watching videos from pillow perspective, in the horizontal.

I outran COVID through the early days, through the Delta spikes and the long Omicron bell. I outran it through the advent of the vaccines, collecting booster stamps like runic wards in my little spell book. I dodged it through the introduction of Paxlovid. I ran and ran, while mutation and medicine slowly dulled its fangs. When it bit me, it bit like a housecat.

By the time it caught me, I was tired. I actually welcomed the double stripe on my Emergency Test Strip. "Hello," I said to the Double D. "You can stop yowling at the door now. Come in, at last."

I had once hoped to outrun it forever. Long COVID scares me, enough that I'd just as soon avoid the chance of it. In the early glow of the first vaccines I thought I might have won the race, but that was a false hope, quickly put to rest. The virus is too good at throwing off new strains, and the vaccines wane. Even still, I've been cagey and careful. (The Dread Virus caught me at a conference, but one of the few that still requires masks and proof of vaccination.)

The goal was never to run forever, only to outlast the public health emergency, and to hold off the virus until medicine had tamed it. Whether we've arrived at either point is a matter of debate. On one hand, it seems bizarre that COVID leaves ten percent of its sufferers with permanent impairment, and this doesn't count as an emergency. On the other, the falling death rate speaks for itself. I read the other day that excess deaths from COVID are no longer visible in the national data. If that's true, it's remarkable.

Is this a victory then? A win by running out the clock? Or a loss to a tireless and cunning opponent? Time will tell. COVID changes bodies. It will change mine, too, no doubt. To what extent? The dice are still bouncing. Even knowing that, I'm ready to concede. No longer will COVID snarl behind me. It will live inside. Let it come in and curl up at the hearth.