COVID 19 - What I Didn’t Want for Christmas

I have COVID-19.

So first of all a big fuck you to every dumbass conspiracist who doesn’t think that it’s real. It’s definitely real and it definitely sucks. You are a moron if you think it doesn’t.

Having heard since March nothing but how potentially deadly this thing can be to asthmatics like me, I am battling both the physical symptoms (fever, fatigue, aches, congestion) and the mental ones (constantly worrying things may escalate and kill me…or that I will, or may already have, infected my wife and it might kill her). Which makes sleep hard - which makes me worry more. Still, I am hopeful. Feel rough, like I have a bad flu, but it’s Thursday now and my fever has been gone since Tuesday and though my chest feels full of crap I don’t seem to be coughing or struggling to breathe…yet. My wife is feeling tired and weird but thus far no temperature. I hope we get through this with just this kind of general yuckness and nothing more serious.

But…

Nothing annoys me more than being right about something awful which was so easily preventable. I have been to nowhere but my workplace - a school - since October half term. In fact, let’s be honest, since March my wife and I have barely left the house except for work purposes or specific and limited calculated risks we deemed absolutely necessary for survival or sanity. But since the end of October half term it has been home or school and that’s it.

So most likely I caught it at school. Which was so fucking obvious since day one in September when you could see that all the preventative measures we have on paper are meaningless in practice. The so-called “bubbles” which I have had to separate every single morning that I’ve done playground duty since the start of the year. The “bubbles” which mix on the buses and at home. The students who think keeping social distance means crowding around each other’s phones to play Among Us while breathing, unmasked, all over each other. The masks which remain, insanely, merely suggested for the classroom rather than compulsory. The doors which should be open but so often remain closed, the classrooms stuffy with an hour or more of unventilated air. The attitude of taking masks off to eat and drink despite the lessons which should have been learned from “eat out to help out” making every ten minute turnover between teachers a maskless flood of spit into the shared breathing space. The colleagues who never wear masks. The shared spaces we unbelievably still used as staff. So many cracks through which COVID could, and did, slip through. There were year groups out every week. Positive tests and negative ones with symptoms (no thinking went into the fact that the test needs to be taken within a certain timeframe to be effective and many of our students wouldn’t meet that timeframe. Negative just meant they could come back to school!) And in the last week of term two communal staff buffets! Not to mention bringing in staff from six different schools to interview for the new Head. Our school, like every other, was a Petri dish at the end of a very long term and people were getting tired and sloppy. Too many without masks having to be reminded. And several colleagues who TOOK THEIR MASKS OFF TO SPEAK TO ME!?!

That someone would get COVID at work was inevitable and I had been alerting school to the various problems with their system for months only to be generally regarded as a nuisance. What has pissed me off with this the most is that it ended up being me who got COVID! Because all of the careful stuff I did every fucking day since September was never for me, it was to protect everyone else, and it relied on everyone else doing the same for me to be protected, which far too many people failed to do. The mask I wore all day, every lesson. The hands burned red raw with sanitizer. The isolation as I ensured distance was kept even where the school failed to enable it. The loneliness. The stress. Showering as soon as I got home every day. Keeping all our work clothes in a different room. A million little precautions…and yet… It just took one lazy, maskless moron; one colleague not bothering to keep their distance; one student told it was OK not to wear their mask; one year group or student who didn’t isolate long enough or who didn’t get tested in time… The mask I wore was not to protect me. It couldn’t. And if all of us aren’t wearing them in a confined room for the hour or more we share in it, then if those unmasked people have it, it will spread.

Long story short - I got this thing at work. Forced to be there by a government intent on press-ganging us into dangerous service to keep their broken economy moving and abetted by a school leadership system overwhelmed by ever changing guidance which they implemented without always understanding or questioning its efficacy. If I die from it it is due to government negligence, yes, but more specifically the negligence of the school itself for allowing such a sloppy set of safety protocols.

And even if I don’t die (which I hope not to!), Christmas is already ruined. My favourite time of year and something my wife and I had so looked forward to as we only ever want to celebrate with the two of us anyway. A quiet Christmas at home is the perfect Christmas. But instead I’m in bed and worried my wife will get it next. We can’t spend time in the same room as each other unless masked, distanced and the freezing windows open. We can’t hug. We can’t kiss. And it’s not just about Christmas - it’s about the whole holiday. This is the only time to rest and recharge after the worst term ever and instead of getting to live life and repair, I’m sick and scared. Lonely in my own home.

That there are still assholes out there who think masks are an infingement on their personal liberty astounds me. Who can’t do the decent thing and protect others?

I don’t really know where I’m going with this other than to vent. I am angry. Very angry. Have been furious since my test came back positive. Furious at the government, but mainly furious at educators who should know better. A whole profession failing to understand the science of how this thing spreads and allowing themselves to enable such a dangerous state of affairs in schools across the country which was entirely unnecessary given the possibility of remote learning as an alternative, or blended learning. That there have been no calls to strike, no refusals to work, just blind obedience to a deeply flawed and highly dangerous model that has not only ruined my personal Christmas plans but contributed to the massive uptick in cases around the country that led to lockdown 2, tier 4, and all the other fun new vocab of the last few months. It was schools that did it and it was always going to be the case that schools did this. We are a cowardly profession that hides behind a misplaced sense of duty and, as a result, normalised dangerous behaviours across the country which have led us into this mess. “Just following orders” is never a good enough excuse. The government should be held accountable, yes, but more so the school leaders and unions who let them get away with it.

Merry Christmas.