Covid Paralysis Is Still On

The three-year mark of this planetary torment has brought many changes to our already confused society. Recently, the daily count of cases stopped existing in Québec. It had ceased to make sense a long time ago, when the Rapid Response tests were thrown at everybody’s face for free at any given time. I must say I was a bit surprised when they give our kids a box of tests lately, I think I had forgotten Covid altogether. Honestly, I stopped following the paranoia a long time ago. The problem is, the paranoia kept following me.

We had Covid last September for the first time my partner and I, but my oldest son and his father and stepmother had had it before. When it hit us, it hit harder than I would have expected. I was on my knees for over a week, and I could barely walk, my muscles were hurting like crazy. However, my partner and I had had many arguments over Covid before and we kept arguing after this episode. In a nutshell, I was and still am too loose about this. I apparently take it too lightly.

The whole pandemic changed my life for the best. I could finally be myself and not justify my hate of people for a long time by staying home with no one to visit. Restrictions were pretty harsh here, and the only reason I loved them was because it was finally quiet (winter and no snowmobiles in the street after 8). Even so, I knew that the restrictions were too much and that it was purely unrealistic to even consider them in a mid-term period. People were given fines for going outside after 8:00 p.m. and for having family over. Very basic liberties were trampled on, and science had not proven to me that it was justified. It even proved me later that the death counts were unreliable. Everyone dying in the hospital, whatever the cause of death, was tagged a Covid death if a positive test had been received at any given time of their stay.

What society taught me during the pandemic was polarization: there were a good side and a bad side. Worst even, both sides came with a premixed package. On the BAD side, you thought Covid was not as a threat as they said, you loved trash radio and didn’t believe in climate change, or racism (maybe in the holocaust and you considered the lab leak theory… I did). On the other side, the GOOD side, you believed in masking and protecting others, you also were a good person, you believed in the danger of white supremacy and Drag Queens reading stories to kids (it’s a bit anachronic but I needed another argument). There was no way the good and bad sides could even meet.

Last weekend, my ex-husband texted me that he was positive to Covid. When my son came for lunch on Monday, he told me his father had Covid (I knew) and I learned he hadn’t been tested, even with a runny nose and a sore throat over the weekend. I got super pissed. Then, I realized my nonsense and I got even more pissed at myself. The fucking paranoia had found me!

You see, I don’t believe in Covid control, in any way; controlling people not to spread and controlling virus not to exist. There is no way to put the genie back in the bottle. This is part of our lives now. Some still test, even without symptoms, and because of that, the global paranoia stays alive and attacks anxious people; it’s eating us. The old argument with the boyfriend resurfaced a little. The whole “social responsibility” guilt is back. I hear it, but it makes no sense. While we are here, freaking out, some people don’t have a friggin’ test a home and they go out and about like they should, or at least like they have the right to. People send their kids to school, daycare, cinema and life goes on. But the little green box (rapid tests), the one screaming at us to be good citizens, it offers way more guilt than pride.

Tomorrow should be my improv show, show I have been preparing for 10 weeks. Because of this Covid psychosis, I am sure I won’t be able to go, to a point of being sick. I barely sleep and I have a somewhat runny nose-ish. I tend to do that unconsciously, become my fear (fortunately, I am not afraid of spiders). This is the kind of symptoms I would not have considered before. I would have gone, no questions asked, thinking “If I stop living every time I have a cold, I won’t do shit”, because Québec, you know. The land of the winter-long cold. Because of Covid and free rapid tests, there is an extra burden, a heavy mental charge added on the top of everything else. I could make tens of people sick. I could kill people. I could be the villain.

Sunday night, I cannot do anything anymore. Taking Echinacea and witch herbals to make me feel good. May the shadow of Covid disappear, so that I can focus on every other fake debate going on out there.