I am emerging from my second bout with COVID-19. I have received two shots and one booster, and wear a mask whenever I leave the house. I do not fault the vaccinations.
Earlier in the week, I walked to an eye exam, because I was warned against driving after having been given eye drops. The return home was brutal and not simply because my eyes had yet to flush the drops. As I walked, I felt my temperature rise. I emailed the eye doctor to inquire whether the drops could cause a fever. She alerted my regular doctor who had a receptionist call me to book a COVID-19 test. That test was negative.
The day before my eye exam, my son, woke with what he thought was a mild cold. He left work early, but, the next day, he received a call from his manager, who also thought he had a cold. The manager, his children and wife had a family COVID-19 testing session. Dad and the kids were positive but Mom escaped with a negative. My son and his boss had matching symptoms on identical time lines. My son tested positive and pointed out that although my symptoms included an earlier onset of fever, I probably had COVID-19. I took a home test. This time, it was positive.
Our current strain of COVID-19 presents differently than its predecessors. As I type this, I am still under quarantine. I had planned to attend a staged reading of a new play at Shakespeare & Company. Even if I were no longer under quarantine, I would neither have been strong enough, nor alert enough, to make the trip. I am irritated because I missed the reading. However, I am not blaming Dr. Fauci or the Chinese, despite thinking the wet markets need to be closed. Viruses and bacteria — and the pandemics they produce — have always been with us.
Although the most famous pandemic, the plague, is bacterial in origin, it is still present and still has lessons to teach us. I knew the plague is found every summer. However, when I remembered learning in my ninth grade English class that Boccaccio witnessed and wrote about the plague, I immediately Googled his life span. Shakespeare’s London suffered through the plague. Shakespeare was born nearly 200 years after Boccaccio. There were centuries of plague.
But, wait! There’s more!
By the time the plague ravaged Boccaccio’s Italy, it already had a long career. Archaeologists found plague DNA in 8,000-year-old burials on the Steppes. It was a different strain, but, still an organism that can not independently reproduce and still the plague.
Granted, COVID-19’s context is in a world of science and “medical miracles.” However, that mindless organism with its tiny bundle of genetic code changes rapidly. Sadly, thanks to social media, there are far too many scoffers whose stand against science threatens all of us.
If the 21st century does not become the century of run-away global warming, it just might be the century of the virus. Traditionally, a virus was thought to be a sort of fragmentary organism, with a ragtag amount of either RNA. It is not a cell. It can not reproduce on its own. The phrase that best illustrates the end goal of the virus is, “It’s all about me! Me, Me, Me!” According to the National Library of Medicine, not only are viruses “the most prevalent infectious agents,” they are found in “every ecosystem on earth.” Despite their widespread presence, scientists are still speculating on their origin and whether viruses are alive.
We are still somewhat in the shadows about viruses. New information is found regularly, such as the existence of giant viruses, which are bigger than many bacteria but still microscopic. Viruses also vary in size, shape and how long they remain active. Some also have DNA.
The coronavirus is a zoonosis, or, a disease that can be spread to humans from vertebrate animals. COVID-19 joins the ranks of the most dangerous zoonotic diseases, including Ebola, avian flu, salmonellosis. Bacteria also cause zoonotic diseases. However, while bacteria can be treated with antibiotics, viruses can not. Testing is important in order to determine the source of the illness and, by doing so, prevents the unnecessary use of antibiotics.
Vaccines, which can be forms of the virus, prepare the immune system to the onslaught of a viral attack and are our best defense.
However, a recent article in The Atlantic confirmed what I suspected: that, like the plague, the coronavirus is here to stay. Scientists are predicting that people might face this virus three times a decade, which makes vaccination more, and not less, important.
Susan Wozniak has been a case worker, a college professor and journalist. She is a mother and grandmother.