A few days ago I wrote to a friend –“I am tired of feeling vulnerable.”  In fact, I am probably less vulnerable than most in terms of Covid.  I am fully vaccinated and boosted, under 65 and without underlying health conditions.  So what’s the big deal really, if I do catch the latest Covid variant?  Why have I stopped eating at restaurants and avoided most indoor spaces? (Except for my hair salon, because they are very careful and we are all masked 100% of the time, and because I just can’t go back to the dark, dark days of at-home color.)

First, I don’t want to contract it and pass it on to someone else who is really vulnerable.  Second because who likes to feel sick and there is always a chance (although very small) I could get really ill. Which is the same rationale for getting a flu shot every year. Third, I want to avoid the inconvenience of isolating for 5 days.  Masking indoors I’m doing anyway.

Right now, where I live, the odds of catching Omicron are very high.  My clinic’s most recent positivity rate was an astonishing 52 percent. With odds like those, is it even possible to avoid it?  Maybe, I think hopefully, I’ve already had it and been asymptomatic.  Didn’t I have an on and off headache for 2 days last week?  Wasn’t my nose running for no apparent reason a few times the week before that? Perhaps, but no way would I tax a struggling health care system to try to find out.  Nor do I have faith in the antibody test as a reliable indicator of past infection. At this point it’s just wishful thinking and I know I am not alone in this.

In the next week or so, the numbers will recede.  They have to because there will be so few people left who have not been infected. We will never know the real numbers because there has been limited access to lab testing and at home tests are scarce and seldom included in the counts.  Plus of course there are the asymptomatics who never seek testing.  People like me will reemerge, tentatively, much as the Munchkins did in Oz after the Wicked Witch was killed. But as we know, the story didn’t end there, and most likely Covid won’t either. #Omicron #everyoneisgoingtogetit #Catch2022 #catch22 #comeoutcomeoutwhe #comeoutcomeoutwhereeveryouarereveryouare