Through the Prism: A Quarantine Tale

Two weeks ago, in Amused, Horrified, and Confused Gratitude, I shared our family had contracted the Covid-19 virus. I wrote:

Well, it's finally happened. After 18 months of looming dread and countermeasures, we are having our turn infected by Covid-19. There's been a sense that it was ultimately unavoidable and was bound to happen sooner or later, so it comes with a bit of relief to finally get it over and done with. Not that it's been fun. Days of full body aches, complete fatigue, and some fever and hot and cold spells. Lots of extra mucus in my sinuses and hints of some in my chest and lungs--which means I've avoided to worst of it, the awful respiratory infection that has sent so many to the hospital and to death. So far; the hint of cough and chest mucus lingers. My wife is similar. But we're hopeful we're on the road to slow, gradual recovery due to the fact that we have "breakthrough" cases--ones that broke through our vaccinations, which is happening more all the time with the Delta variant but which are milder than unvaccinated cases. If this is all the worse it gets, I'm incredibly grateful.

I have updates.

For the most part I'm copying or modifying things I shared with my community on Facebook. I like to capture and compile everything here as a better record of our experience. First I wrote this:

We completely understand and aren't mad in the slightest, but, just as an indication of where everyone is with the pandemic, our school isn't even trying to send home work for our boys while they're out with Covid.

All told, they'll be out for over three weeks: 10 days for my quarantine from the date of my positive test, the end of which starts their 10-day quarantine to make sure they didn't catch it from me. They're only 1st and 2nd grade so their work is not particularly deep and we already planned for giving them things to work on even before checking with school, but I think it shows how overwhelmed schools and teachers must be that they didn't even try to give us anything.

(I'm sure it doesn't help that the wise KS legislature made it illegal for schools to offer more than 40 hours of remote instruction for students this year.)

I wrote that about the same time I shared, Covid update: we feel stuck at 70% recovered. But did I say 10 days plus 10 more? Let's throw in another 10. This is from yesterday.

So, our Covid tale continues. (Though this chapter is really my wife's to tell.) Until recently she worked for a lab that runs the tests. When I took three tests the same morning, two were positive but the one from that lab was negative. She decided to let them know, in case they wanted to investigate.

On Friday we got the guys tested so their negative results would get them back to school. [Younger's] negative result showed up early on Saturday, but we heard nothing on [Older]. Finally, Saturday night [Spouse] was texted by a former co-worker. [Older] had trace amounts of the virus--low enough that his official result would be negative, but high enough to indicate he was either at the start or end of an actual infection. She set up extra tests for the two boys yesterday so we could find out which.

Within a few hours, [Older] came back negative, but we heard nothing on [Younger]. Finally, this morning [Spouse] got a call from the director of the Covid lab. [Younger] had trace amounts of the virus--low enough that his official result would be negative, but high enough to to indicate he was either at the start or end of an actual infection. So, [Older] just got done with an asymptomatic case and [Younger] is just starting one. Ten more days of quarantine and we're hoping [Younger] also never feels sick.

Plus! Plus, our back-and-forth with the lab has led to investigation on their part. They've taken another look at things and decided they need to lower the threshold number for a positive test, since children and vaccinated adults are actually getting sick at a lower number than the previous standard. They're going to amend our previously negative test results to positive; not sure about anyone else. (I'm sure [Spouse] will have more to add in the comments.)

Science in action.

[Spouse] added this clarification as a comment:

Apparently kids and vaccinated individuals are not producing anywhere near as high of antigen levels as unvaccinated adults. If the threshold is too low, then people continually test positive for months even though they are asymptomatic and no longer contagious. We had a lot of that at the start of the pandemic. Nurses were unable to return to work for months even though they couldn't infect anyone. This is good science. I'm very proud that my former lab is able to adjust with new knowledge and data.

And that's where things currently stand. I've been back at work for a week since I'm not (supposed to be) infectious now that I'm through the main infection. Some fatigue and minor aches linger for both of us, by the way, even though we are basically recovered. Here's something I shared last week:

When I told my chiropractor today that I've just gotten over Covid, his eyes bugged out. "You're so lucky! I'm so glad you were vaccinated. I have 8 patients on ventilators right now and six who are dead. None of them got vaccinated."

She is currently home with the boys, swinging back and forth from "Mommy School" to too tired to care while they run wild. Here are a few comments about the wildlings.

Overheard from Covid quarantine:

"Kids, recess is over. It's time to come in and get back to schoolwork."

"But we're right in the middle of an epic moment."

I didn't get a photo, but this moment of the boys playing while I mowed the lawn made such an impression I felt the need to capture it as a picture regardless. They were having epic quests and battles all that day, and I looked up to see them sprinting across the yard with a rake held high.

Our little barbarians hard at work early on a Sunday morning. Their quarantine game is a combination of Minecraft, Zelda, and more (last weekend the lawnmower was a "big boss" of some sort so they stalked me while I mowed). This weekend they've given themselves the "job" of digging for "ore" and have been working on this hole for a couple of days. (The image above is a screen capture from the video I was introducing.)

Last year the start of school was delayed a month while the district scrambled to figure out how to function with pandemic safety measures in place, then was remote for the first six weeks. This year we're having this interruption only a week into the school year. Sigh.

Before this post, today I composed Stop Being Reality-Based as a brief attempt to capture one of the factors that has contributed to the continuing spread of this pandemic.

And this article captures much of our experience in excellent detail.

I Got A 'Mild' Breakthrough Case. Here's What I Wish I'd Known

It was a miserable five days. My legs and arms ached, my fever crept up to 103 and every few hours of sleep would leave my sheets drenched in sweat. I'd drop into bed exhausted after a quick trip down to the kitchen. To sum it up, I'd put my breakthrough case of COVID-19 right up there with my worst bouts of flu. Even after my fever cleared up, I spent the next few weeks feeling low.

Of course, I am very lucky. I didn't go up against the virus with a naïve immune system, like millions of Americans did until vaccines were widely available. And, in much of the world, vaccines are still a distant promise. . . .

It's hard to disentangle what's most responsible for the rise in breakthrough infections this summer — whether it's the delta variant itself, waning immunity in some people or that much of the U.S. dropped public health precautions such as masking. . . .

Although, unlike this author, we never gave up masking or social distancing, as much as we could manage.

That's the Covid update. I have a few other bits of miscellanea to share, things I've enjoyed recently that I want to preserve.

This poem is excellent and I want to amplify it:

Amit Majmudar

THE MIGRATION DIARY OF HALA ALMASI

Fish would have eaten my eyes
if my eyes didn’t look
so much like fish eggs. Little black
dots suspended in jelly. My ovaries
are clumps of fish eggs. I will lay them
one by one in foreign toilets: Little red
drops between my thighs, curling
like ink in the water,
like smoke from your mouth.

*

Don’t ask me what it was like. I have no
similes for you. “But you’re a poet,
Hala.” No. I am like
a poet. I think a lot about what I have
lost. I wrap my head and hair
like I am still bleeding
from the ears. The face
it frames is not the face
I had back home. This face is just my likeness.
And that is where the similarity ends.

*

I have left a language
in the mirror over a cracked sink
in Kabul. That is why
left to right reads write I everything
in my head. Call it mirror writing,
like da Vinci’s notebooks: Women’s
beautiful severed heads floating
free among siege machines,
tanks, a giant crossbow … I was launched
by a crusader catapult
over the wall of your city. My head
with my tongue missing. My tongue
with my tongue missing. My tongue
missing my tongue.

*

Apocalypse means
unveiling, means
stripping away, down,
bare. What does it mean when the white
man trying to enter me
in a database asks
Sweetie, aren’t you hot
under all that
cloth?

*

The man on the bus who said
what he said did not see me. He saw
my average of 4.2 offspring. I am
a pomegranate refugee, a dirty bomb
full of placentas and human
shrapnel, a mama fly baggy
with maggots. I have imagined dying
continuously for the past
4.2 years, so it’s sweet of his
hatred to imagine so much life
for me, in me. I don’t know
whether to pat his hand
and tell him I like women
or point at the place where I
hunger and whisper Quintuplets.

*

First it was “Only a husband
will make you happy, Hala.” Now:
“Only a baby will make you
happy, Hala.” I will be happy only
if my body
sleeves another body. Ideally
a male one. If I fled in the heat
back home, I can flee
in the snow out here. In this new
country, I want new
blessings. May the icicles
in your mouth turn into
fingers. May the shudder
in your legs turn into
a daughter.

*

I rub my nose in old book smells
all day until 5 p.m., working
along each row of blossoms,
a systematic hummingbird.
Sometimes I’ll read one slowly
in a cushiony green chair and not
a single bomb taps me
on the shoulder
to inform me it’s time to leave
the country,
to close my life like a book,
like a whole library
shuttering its eyes,
left behind
for someone else to burn.

*

I have one friendship
that’s survived. One surviving
friend, I should say.
My husband worries
the internet will corrupt me.
If you write me about my poems, friend,
just know
it may be weeks before I tiptoe
back to this account.
The risk is not corruption,
it’s corrosion. All this rain
beats the wife
out of me. My bronze
skin bruises blue,
oxidizes green. One day
I swear the rust will
lock my legs shut.

*

Faith means defending
with your fists and teeth
a name, a scarf, a particular way
of bowing to the ground.
And then neglecting them
after the mob moves on.
Switching your focus
to cinnamon pecans
or a pot of basil.
The faith whose child I am
is a child in my care. There are your toys,
God: Amuse yourself,
Mommy’s busy. My child,
my oppositional
defiant child
demanding I oppose
and defy. Not
particularly wanted, really.
But no less mine for that.

*

The woman undergoes
the marriage. The woman goes under
the man’s last name. The woman goes under
the man. The woman undergoes
the parting of her seas so the man
with the staff can enter
her promised land. The woman undergoes
the miscarriage. The woman undergoes
the man’s war. The men say they promised
the women nothing. The country
goes under. The men put
the women on a raft and say:
Go. So we go. Some across, some
under.

—from Poets Respond
September 9, 2021

Written, of course, in response to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years.

A couple of quotes from books I've just read.

A wonderful life can turn someone into a terrible person. It makes you forget that there are people in the world who have problems, and this can stop you from really caring or worrying about others.

― Jack Meggitt-Phillips, The Beast and the Bethany

The most vulnerable among us always deserve the greatest blessings.

― Christina Soontornvat, A Wish in the Dark

Finally, this. Robots and dystopian stories first emerged 100 years ago. I have to admit I'm more interested in that simple fact than the rest of the article about the two authors' lives.

The 100-year-old Fiction That Predicted Today

Both works are celebrating a joint centenary . . . 1921 has become their shared birth date and thus the year that gave us both the robot and the mechanised dystopia – two concepts of which, it seems, we will never tire. As Čapek wrote in 1920, "Some of the future can always be read in the palms of the present".

RUR stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, Rossum being a pun on the Czech word rozum, or "reason", and Robota meaning "serfdom". Čapek's "comedy, partly of science, partly of truth" is a Frankenstein story for the age of mass production. Rossum's robots are more akin to the replicants in Bladerunner than to C-3PO or WALL-E: bioengineered artificial humans, almost indistinguishable from the real thing, who do most of the world's labour so that their masters can enjoy a post-work utopia. Inevitably, the plan goes awry. Humans grow lazy and infertile while the robots plot genocidal revolution. "We have made machines, not people, the measure of the human order," Čapek later wrote, "but this is not the machines' fault, it is ours." . . .

We is an equally important piece of work. A number of writers, including Jack London and HG Wells, had previously attempted anti-utopian novels but Zamyatin was the first to combine a coherent concept with a satisfying narrative to create something like a blueprint for dystopia. We takes place in the ultra-rational One State, where everything from work to sex to music is mathematically regimented, uniformed "ciphers" have numbers rather than names, and everybody is surveilled by the Guardians, under the command of an enigmatic dictator known as the Benefactor. The protagonist, D-530, is a drab and dutiful rocketship engineer who is seduced into an underground revolutionary movement by a charismatic female dissident called I-330. After a great deal of mayhem, the rebels are routed, I-330 executed and D-530 lobotomised into total obedience. Zamyatin insisted on the freedom to be imperfect, irrational and sometimes unhappy, which is to say human.

What will come next?