I was the most careful. For 20 months, I lived pretty much in a bubble. There were times when thinking that COVID was over, I ventured out only to get scared and scramble back into the rabbit hole. I’m a social person, but I didn’t go to parties. I wore masks until they were worn out. I was wiping down packages long after it seemed okay not to. I had two vaccines and a booster on time. I assessed risk and slipped up once and went to a movie theater, someone coughed, and I never went back. Haven’t seen a Broadway play, a baseball game, or a concert in months. I declined invitations to baby namings, weddings, meetings, business travel, lunches, and breakfasts. Dr. Fauci could have made me a poster child for COVID safety. I give myself an “A” for following all protocols.
In mid-December I took a chance and decided to go to a company holiday party in the city and see how people freed from the Zoom cage looked in real life. There were so many who had joined our firm over the months, and I was excited to meet them. The party rules were you had to test negative within 24 hours before going to the party and sign a health proxy. I did. You had to be vaxxed. I was.
But still I debated and debated. I couldn’t get the iconic Clash song lyrics out of my head: “Should I stay, or should I go now?”
The party was in a mid-town office building with low ceilings. Buffets were copious and people were breathing on trays of passed hors d’oeuvres. I felt the minute I stepped in I could be leaving with COVID.
The Clash song continued to ring in my ears: “If I go it will be trouble, and if I stay it will be double.”
After one drink and a 20-month hiatus, people picked up where they left off. Hugging, gossiping, close-talking and forgetting the virus horrors. It was liberating after so many restrictions.
I loved the party. My two-hour trip to a pre-COVID era was fun and enervating. We all let down our guard prematurely spewing droplets of happiness and freedom. It felt good.
That was a Thursday night. Friday night, my wife and I ate indoors in a packed restaurant in Water Mill. We had started to eat indoors frequently, leaving the makeshift outdoor shed dining world behind, and by Sunday, I said to my wife I had a scratchy throat. That night, I had chills, so in the morning I took another test and I was positive.
I told my firm, and they sent out an email to the party attendees saying that someone tested positive at the party (me). Naturally, they found many others who got sick that night.
I left my wife and daughter and began my quarantine miles away in Southampton. I canceled our family trip to the warmth scheduled for the following week.
It was 12 days of sore throat, coughs, rashes, crazy soaking night sweats, loss of smell and chest heaviness. No expert I consulted seemed to know anything; not my friends, or my doctor, and especially medical media pundits. Everyone seemed gob smacked by omicron and knew little how to deal with it and its effects.
Since I’m in the vulnerable age group, my son told me to get the monoclonal antibodies infusion so I wouldn’t deteriorate. I was able to get it at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital after I lost smell and just before the surge would cause them to run out. That was day five. I was sitting in a chair socially distanced from another COVID patient while I got the infusion. A firefighter, he seemed very sick. The nurse who had been working around the clock seemed to be wearing a hazmat suit. And we all thought this was over.
As I lay in bed coughing, looking at a deflating helium “get well soon” balloon and eating my edible “feel better” arrangements, it was clear no one knew or expected this latest wave. And they are trying to assess and advise with little knowledge. So I keep checking my oxygen levels and my temperature.
After a week, the symptoms were easing, but I still tested positive. After 10 days the binax test showed blue and pink, I was still positive. My daughter said she had a friend who after COVID with no symptoms tested positive for 30 days. The constant positive readings caused me tremendous anxiety and kept me quarantining. I keep Googling “What if you keep testing positive after the symptoms are gone?” The answer was stay isolated. The doctor said stay put two more weeks. Now it seems the CDC says you can stop isolating after five days with no symptoms without taking a test and that maybe the rapid tests are not that accurate. Confusion reigns.
I ran out of rapid tests. I drove to every pharmacy, CVS, and Rite Aid from Westhampton to Bridgehampton to get one and they were gone. Finally, I found one and tested negative on the 14th day. Into the third calendar year of COVID, and there still are not enough tests.
I’m okay now, but still am not breathing normally and have other symptoms.
Yes, the vaccines are keeping us alive and out of the hospital, but this disease is taking a great toll on everyone’s mental state. Those who thought they were safe and that vaccines were preventive are experiencing tremendous guilt and confusion during this unexpected wave. My mother-in-law told my wife I only have myself to blame for not being careful. The next day, she was coughing and tired but told my wife she had a cold.
Ilene Weingarten, a marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles, tells the Washington Post people cannot really process what is still happening.
“It’s the relentlessness of it,” she said. “We’re still absorbing the shock of March 2020, but we’re still in it. The normal trajectory of a trauma that resolves is you go through it, you may repeat it over and over in your head, and that aspect fades after time and then ultimately it gets metabolized into your system. … But if it doesn’t, it’s trapped in your nervous system and you’re reacting to it all the time … It has an immense mental health toll, immense; with omicron in particular, there’s been a spike in disheartened feelings, feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.”
And just like that, we are again avoiding indoor dining, not seeing family, taking out food, Zooming with friends, and listening to every word from Dr. Fauci and other experts. But the more this goes on, the less we know and the more fatigued and confused we are.
Let’s hope 2022 is better and we can get to the other side.
Edward Adler is a partner at FGH, a global strategic communications firm. He spent many years as head of communications at TimeWarner (now WarnerMedia). He lives in New York and Southampton.
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