Covid-19’s First Visit
[Photos taken 24 – 31 January 2022, posted online 02 Jule 2022. Two weeks until summer vacation begins. I can hardly wait.]
It had to happen eventually: covid-19 gave us a personal visit. At the time, anybody who spent extended time with Bjarki the Friday before the onset of his symptoms on Saturday, was required to quarantine for 5 days, and then exit quarantine via a negative PCR test. To make life a little easier, authorities did allow adults that were fully vaccinated and boosted to be infection-“cautious” instead of fully quarantining, which meant that I was allowed to go to the grocery store etc, but not into the office. Masks were still in general use and required in stores.
As it happened, Bjarki spent almost no time with Emma or Finnur on the Friday (they’d gone to house #2 early), so keeping in mind that Emma was only a week away from her second covid vaccination shot, we decided to split up: I would stay at home with Bjarki and Anna, while Finnur and Emma would move in with Finnur’s parents – yes, into the apartment on their first floor where we’d lived for five years a lifetime ago! They had their bags from house #2, and I packed an additional bag and Emma’s school stuff and left it outside for them to pick up.
On the Sunday evening following Bjarki’s positive test result, I had to navigate a flood of official emails and questionnaires, from the tracing team, and the health monitoring service, as well as a call from the school principal. She asked Bjarki which kids he’d mostly hung out with on Friday, and so 2-3 of his buddies got sent into quarantine.
But, as omicron was turning out to be relatively ‘mild’ in our highly vaccinated population (read: not a lot of people ended up in hospital), the rules began relaxing quickly in late January. This led to an explosion in case numbers, and by the end of the week, schools were ordered stop tracking exposures.
Bjarki’s brush with covid wasn’t too terrible, he was knocked out for about 24 hours, and then spent the rest of the week slowly getting his energy back. I somehow convinced him to attend a remote music theory class on Wednesday, but when I went to check in on how it was going, I felt a little guilty as he was clearly still low on energy.
Anna was the one who was physically closest when Bjarki’s symptoms were blooming, so it wasn’t very surprising when she too got covid a few days later. She got quite winded, but didn’t quite get knocked out. I tried to control my exposure to both of them, as I kind of wanted to get mildly infected, but not overwhelmed by viruses. Thus I ventured into their rooms occasionally, and we sometimes all ate dinner together.
On the Thursday I was certain I was falling ill, got really tired, napped for a couple of hours midday, but no: According to the PCR tests I took Thursday and Friday and Sunday (!) covid didn’t get a foothold. Outside of those tired hours, I ran on adrenaline, not sure how things would turn out. This I channeled into finishing a list of odd jobs, some of which I’d tried to pawn off on Finnur for months, but he hadn’t taken the bait. Sensible man.
Be warned, there will be dust! (50-ish images total)
Monday 24 January 2022
