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COVID-19 hit me like a wall of bricks — in 2024
What to do if you come down with it, tomorrow?
I should have known better. After all, I am a professional virologist, but I gave in to the hybris that COVID-19 was done and done — like mono after high school. In 2024, it had been five years since the pandemic, and shrug off a little seasonal cold. Physicians are prone to the same illusion, which they used to call the god complex: “I am a doctor; I cannot get sick.”
Day 1: How it started
I was in the gym, not hitting my usual reps, and feeling unspecifically weak as if after a bad hangover. At night came the fever and then the coughs. I have no idea where I caught this virus, but the rapid test confirmed I had it. I was suffering from COVID-19 in 2024.
They don’t call it COVID-24, even though the virus and the symptoms have changed quite a bit.
The SARS coronavirus 2 is quite different in 2024 than it was in 2019, and we as a people are also different. This fact reflects the basic biology of any virus and has repeated itself over and over again. In 2019, there was no population immunity the virus was living carefree, infecting people at will. In 2024, COVID-19 is no longer the new kid on the block. Many of us have some immunity and the virus has changed as a result of it.
