IS THAT ALL THERE IS?

Three days ago, I played basketball at the local Y with a bunch of spry men of various races in their early twenties; Central NJ is like that. As the token old Caucasian, I felt obligated to, as is the subtext in such settings, show them something. I did and, consequently, came home more tired than usual. Nothing a short nap couldn’t fix.

But when I laid down after eating lunch, I felt restless. I tossed and turned for an hour, unable to doze off. Thus, I got off the sofa and continued my day. That night, despite being tired, I slept poorly. The next morning, I felt unprecedentedly stiff and sore. I walked very slowly and achily across the room and said to myself, “Yeah, you overdid it. If those youngstas saw you shuffling around like this, they’d laugh at you.”

Given my stiffness, I decided to put my feet up and read a book about Siberian pianos that my son had given me for my 66th birthday. This early 2020 work of non-fiction, which combines art, history, geography and culture, started strongly.

But as that day proceeded, my aches deepened. I felt warm and my pulse was elevated.

My wife, Ellen, had an old FDA Covid test lying around and suggested that I take it. I question how accurate any of these tests are. But because Ellen demands little from me, I stuck a swab in each side of my nose and passed it to her. Doing so reminded me that during the height of the Scamdemic, I heard of people testing positive in one nostril and negative in the other. Mangos were also found to be infected.

My instant result: clearly positive.

I’ve gotten The Virus. Or so it would seem.

Thus, for the past three days, I’ve become a participant-observer to “The Pandemic.”

As the youngstas say, “Not gonna lie:” the aches, mostly in my torso, were strong on Days 1 and 2 until I took some Tylenol, which quickly knocked out the pain. As an empiricist/Follower of The Science, full disclosure also requires me to add that I’ve coughed up some especially slimy phlegm. See photo below.

But the pre-Tylenol aches weren’t as strong, or as head-to-toe, as the aches I felt a year ago when, though plainly infected with something, I had tested Covid-negative. And though my nose ran non-stop for four days a year ago, it’s run very little during the past three days of Ro-time. I’m also coughing less now than I did then, i.e., in late December, 2022, or than I had in pre-Scamdemic February, 2020, when I dry-coughed for several weeks after feeling odd for less than a day. Perhaps this lightweight 2020 episode was a case of early, scarcely symptomatic spread.

Regardless, I’m certain that many who know me and/or have read my many anti-Coronamania messages over the past four years would he happy that The Virus got me and that I felt bad for parts of two days. Undoubtedly, some would have exulted if I had died. Some websites would have exclaimed: “Substack Covid Denier/Anti-Vaxxer Keels Over!” I remember seeing some similarly gleeful headlines about two other—kind of old and heavy—lockdown/mask/vaxx detractors who had reportedly died from the virus. Over the past four years, I’ve certainly read a ton of naively wishful social media and broadcast media fantasies that the unmasked or unjabbed would die.

Sorry, haters: I’ve given up almost zero time to this discomfort. And my death from Covid is about as likely as having a piano fall on my head from a sixth-floor window. During a trip to Siberia.

Reciprocally, I’ll admit this: over the past three years, I’ve laughed each time I’ve heard that some vaxx pusher got sick. Served them right, after all that self-righteous, uneducated hectoring. Vaxx failure didn’t surprise me; like so many lies Team Panic told and believed over the past four years, I suspected from Day 1 that the vaxxes were grossly overrated. One might attribute the tens of millions of bad post-vaxx outcomes to karma. Or ignorance. Or groupthink. Regardless of the reason, vaxx failure, like shit, happens. On a mass scale. So, also, do widespread jab injuries.

The day my symptoms began, I started taking elderberry, reishi, probiotics, zinc, vitamins C and D, NAC and lysine, which we had in the cabinet alongside our kitchen sink. And, as noted above, Tylenol quickly, distinctly quelled the aches, though it wore off several times and I had to re-dose it. Today, Day 3, I’ve felt good, Tylenol-free. I just ate a full dinner of tasty fresh mackerel and vegetables.

I was agnostic about The Virus since the Scamdemic began. But I never ruled out the possibility that if a disease-causing microbe of some sort existed, I’d catch it. I don’t hide from people and microbes get around. It surprised me that it took this long for The Virus to find me. And it was less disruptive than even I expected; my Ro-time passed far more comfortably and quickly than does the span of the average cold. Cold effects take at least a week to clear completely.

I’ve said from Day 1 that occasional illness is inevitable. And that society should never have shut down because some old, sick people might be said to be dying with a virus. Above all, I never wanted to be an accomplice to the politicians, bureaucrats, teacher’s unions and billionaires who stole tens of millions of young peoples’ irreplaceable vital social time. I would say that even if I had been on my Covid deathbed.

My fleeting bout with Covid underscores my abiding message that society has massively overreacted to this virus.

Anyway, it’s a good thing my vaxxes kept me out of the hospital.

Hey, wait, I didn’t…

See you soon, youngbloods.