The COVID-19 Test Results Came In
After one of us was exposed, everyone in my house waited eagerly for COVID-19 test results to come in. The answer made me think about the disease in a whole new light.
Thankfully, the results were negative.
A quick recap from the post last week -- my best friend is living at my house after her divorce, and she was exposed to COVID-19 by one of her co-workers.
A second person in their office did end up testing positive for COVID-19 as well, but everyone else in the office has tested negative and they're outside of the fourteen-day self-quarantine period as of today.
The person who initially tested positive was feeling better after just a few days and said she felt completely recovered just one week after the diagnosis. From everything I've heard and read about the virus up to this point, that's a best-case scenario, if not a small miracle. But then, we never hear much about how severe the cases are. We only hear the word "positive," and that number is added to that ever-growing total which makes us a little uneasy.
I, in no way, want to minimize death or someone's loss of a loved one. The disease has recked havoc on a lot of lives and for that, we are all doing our best to contain it, stomp on it and minimize the damage it can do.
But what if the vast majority of cases are milder than we first thought? The second person who tested positive at my friend's office said she was convinced they got her test mixed up with someone else's because she felt pretty good, and compared her issue was a minor bronchial infection. She also recovered quickly and didn't feel like she had that awful virus that makes the nightly news.
Aside from the lack of severity, I also noticed through this experience that being in the same room with the virus doesn't mean it's going to get you. My friend's office follows some strict cleaning protocols and the employees wear PPE most of the time, and that may have been the saving grace here, and kept the situation from getting worse. But even those without perfect proactive hygiene tested negative.
To keep protecting vulnerable populations we've got to practice social distancing, sanitize, wear masks when they're appropriate, and do all of the things we've been doing to flatten the curve. If we can prevent one more person from getting the virus, let's do it.
I just wanted to share this story to provide hope and say that statistics never tell the whole story. People are more than a number, and even with case numbers continuing to increase, there is a lot we can be encouraged by.