Obligatory COVID post

As you may or may not know (though probably don't know because I kept it relatively to myself), I got COVID during March. I am (mostly) recovered after testing positive just over 2 weeks ago, and let me tell you, it was not an enjoyable experience. I want to talk today about COVID in our lives, getting COVID, and its impacts on New Zealand right now.

Let's go back to the beginning of the pandemic, COVID was pretty scary as a concept, and especially last year I struggled a lot with the fear of what COVID would do to me. Especially as for the majority of 2020-2021 in New Zealand, COVID was a foreign concept that we did not have to deal with in our lives. We had no cases in the community, no fear of transmission, it was this big scary virus that existed in other countries where it maimed and murdered almost what seemed indiscriminately. There was a lot of caution on the part of our government to ensure that we could keep this COVID free life, which was, looking back on, something I was thankful for.

Then delta and omicron got through our defences late last year and early this year and the caution eventually melted away about doing things to prevent COVID. In the last few weeks that has eventually turned into politicking along the lines of 'if we remove restrictions, COVID will go away'.

So why now do I choose to write about COVID, apart from the fact that I had COVID recently, and things are changing pretty fast here in New Zealand in regards to restrictions? I mean I guess a comment from my own experience of COVID and how that informs my opinions on the changing restrictions is the reason, and turns out I do have a fair bit to say.

First up, COVID sucks. I am young, no underlying health conditions (at all, which is actually quite uncommon), generally don't get sick, but yet it has been over 2 weeks on and I am still feeling the after effects of COVID. I still have mildly stuffy sinuses, don't have that much energy as I would usually, and definitely have lingering brain fog. During the throes of the worst of my symptoms, I was fully blocked in my sinuses, coughing, didn't really leave my bed, slept a lot and lived off instant noodles and soup. That lasted 3 days, which is like a bad cold for me. But it was the 8-ish days after the worst of it where I was functional but it just wasn't gone; so I couldn't leave the house, stuck in this horrible limbo of 'when will this finally end?'

And that's where I get to the first criticism of the changing COVID restrictions. Recently the government has reduced the isolation period for those with COVID to 7 days down from 10 (which actually was down from 14 days originally in the halcyon days of the alert level system). On day 7, in no way was I feeling better from COVID. Better from when I tested positive yes, but I was still sick. Other people I've talked to have also said that it took them about 10 days at least from testing positive to feeling 'better'. Where the hell is the government getting its information that most people will recover in 7 days? Because at least anecdotally that does not seem to be the case. If you have COVID you very much have to take personal responsibility for when you are OK to interact with people outside of your household contacts when those 7 days are up but you still have symptoms.

Which takes me further into my criticism of the loosening COVID restrictions; there is so much personal responsibility with the loosening of restrictions, such as the 7 days isolation and 'you can finish isolating when you feel better' (whatever that means). But the thing is, the whole idea of loosening restrictions is not about a health response. It's about the economy and politics. It's about getting people outside spending money so the government doesn't have to, and it's about removing restrictions so the opposition can't campaign on removing them in the next election. And then businesses kick up a fuss about the restrictions not being loose enough because nobody is patronising them when in actual fact, the problem is COVID. Because strange that, people don't generally want to leave the house when there's a pandemic on even if they're allowed to.

I do think that there is a fair bit of the 'pandemic being over because the government says its over' thinking going on right now in, well, government messaging, when we're actually at one of the highest case loads we have ever seen in Aotearoa, and no clarity about what COVID will do in the future (in part, due to the lack of a crystal ball). Not sure if the government or economists have noticed, but viruses don't generally tend to pay attention to local laws and restrictions. Mostly because it's a virus, and they're infamous for not being cognisant. 

Look, I want to go overseas, not get mask-acne, go to music concerts and all that, but really, I don't think now is the time to be loosing up restrictions and forcing things go back to 'normal'. Firstly, just by lifting restrictions, we can't go back to normal because oh look the virus is still circulating, and second, there are so many more people who are not like me who have and will get COVID - the old, the unvaccinated, people who have underlying health conditions (of which there are many!!!) COVID sucked for me; imagine how it could be for someone whose immunity is compromised. The pain that can cause for the individual themselves, but also you know, COVID can kill. Why are we OK with more people dying? 

In short, COVID sucks, don't get it, and this pandemic isn't over. But I honestly really, completely and totally hope it is over soon! And then we can loosen our restrictions, and I will be happy then.