Was that lurgy back in March my dose?
BACK on March 6th, my fiancé and I went to ‘An Evening with Floyd Mayweather’ at the SEC Armadillo in Glasgow. A Christmas present for my boxing-mad beau, it was an event so bizarre it made ITV’s The Masked Singer look like an Ibsen play.
The richest boxer of all time chose a children’s dance troupe for his opening act and turned up two hours late. When he eventually arrived, a compere in a tartan suit informed an increasingly irate crowd that Mayweather would only appear on stage if we all got to our feet and sang the Proclaimers’ 500 Miles. The audience stayed in their seats. Mayweather got booed. Welcome to Glasgow, Floyd.
Why am I telling you this? Well, four days later, I developed a terrible sore throat. As someone who had their tonsils out at the age of 32 after years of chronic tonsillitis I know the difference between a sore throat and a sore throat. This was most definitely the latter. Worse, though, was that I felt completely knackered.
As I wrote to a friend on March 10: ‘I’m full of aches and exhausted. Need a sit down after walking round the flat as I’m shivering and so tired and sore.’ My fiancé also felt extremely fatigued for a couple of days.
None of it lasted, though. The aches and chills were gone after one night, the fatigue after two, the sore throat after four. Just as quickly as it arrived, this mysterious lurgy vanished.
Now, two months on, I look back and think: did I have it? Was this the coronavirus? At the time I dismissed the notion. No one was talking about a sore throat as a symptom back then. I developed no cough, and although I may have had chills one night, any fever was gone before I could even find a thermometer. But looking back, it certainly seems possible.
Not only were there thousands of people in the Armadillo that night, there was also a Lewis Capaldi concert next door at the Hydro, and the train we took to the SEC campus was crammed with people. I distinctly remember standing on a packed escalator at Glasgow Central Station, hearing someone cough directly behind me, and cowering irritably.
Now, as many of us see the everrising projections of numbers and recall our own health at the start of the year, more stories are trickling out. One acquaintance with a barking cough in early March now reckons his whole family had it. A friend who shared an office with someone whose wife later tested positive thinks she’s had it too. Others who were laid low as far back as February are quietly reassessing.
How many of us went to some sort of mass event, like I did, or travelled on public transport, or went out for a meal, or did a shop at Tesco, or left the house? How many of us, in other words, took part in normal life?
One study this week from the University of Manchester suggested that a whopping 19million Brits have been infected by Covid-19. That’s just under a third of the population. It’s an astonishing number and, if proved true, could well be a gamechanger in how we tackle the virus in future.
But for now it remains anecdotal, mere speculation to be picked over among friends and family, backed up by academic estimates.
IT reinforces, once again, the urgent need for mass testing and tracing. It is, quite simply, the only way we are ever going to get a grip on this thing. But it is also why we so desperately need these antibody tests. Reports this week suggest that two have now been approved and could be rolled out in the coming weeks and months.
Of course the tests themselves could have consequences. There is talk of ‘health certificates’ being issued for those who are proved to have had the virus, possibly even bands round our wrists. It sounds sensible but could lead to a worrying divide in society.
What of those – of whom I may of course still be one – who have not had the virus? Are we simply to be left on lockdown ad infinitum? Awaiting a vaccine that may take years? It sounds utterly unsustainable. A two-tier society operating on different speeds.
For now all we can do is sit and wait, swapping anecdotes, wondering and worrying, wishing for a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
Did I have the coronavirus? Or simply a sore throat? Here’s hoping I, and millions like me, won’t have to wait months to find out.