I started 2023 much like I have in 2020, 2021 and 2022: Covid-free. But I’m wondering how long that’s going to last.
For more than a year, I’ve seen headlines all over the place intimating that my fortune in avoiding Covid is going to come to an end and soon.
As USA Today reported this week:
“The newest Covid-19 variant is so contagious that even people who’ve avoided it so far are getting infected and the roughly 80% of Americans who’ve already been infected are likely to catch it again, experts say.”
So there’s that.
That USA Today article quotes an expert saying that even masking isn’t going to save you this time. I credit religiously wearing a mask for the first two and a half years of the pandemic, and a good one, as one big reason why I haven’t gotten Covid.
Yet. Why I haven’t gotten Covid yet.
After I got my omicron bivalent booster in early September, I stopped wearing a mask so much. In fact, I’ve hardly worn one at all. What is a booster for, I reasoned, if I also have to wear a mask? Of course, that’s another stupid example of the fuzzy logic that has kept infections going on and on for so long. And one day, I know, it’s going to catch up with me.
Might even be this week. I’m waiting for my daughter to be done with her music class and there are two people in this room, the receptionist and a five-year-old, who are coughing. I have a mask with me, but I haven’t put it on yet. Yeah, I should.
It would have a certain irony if I caught the latest omicron variant racing up the charts across the country, one that was first detected in Connecticut and New York in October and is now pretty much all over the country by now. Why would that be ironic? Because I’m from Connecticut and I lived in New York for many years. If there’s ever a variant that was aimed at me, then it’s XBB.1.5.
My father and I were in the Hudson Valley in New York the last week of 2022, as this latest variant swept through. We stayed relatively safe. But I do wonder, that USA Today article notwithstanding, whether my luck is about to run out.
Nows and Forevers 
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