Covid for the Second Time…
I know, I know. It’s insufferably cliché. I went on a cruise and got the Covid. =(
I’m actually surprised…unlike my brother who relishes finding the smallest tuft of a cloud on even the clearest of days. Camille and I are both fully vaccinated and the cruise required that 95% of persons on board be fully vaccinated. Those who were not had to apply for a special exemption that were granted almost exclusively to children under 6. Everyone going on the cruise had to test negative before we left and those with an exemption had to test negative 3 days before as well as at the cruise terminal before boarding. We were all required to mask in terminals and other transportation, and in general, we stuck to ourselves. It was pretty smooth and I feel that we were more protected during this trip than we normally are here at home.
I think I know where it went wrong. We did an excursion in Puerto Plata where we got to physically pet, hold, hug, kiss, and play with dolphins, sharks, and sea lions. It was a truly amazing trip, perhaps even one of a lifetime. It was a 5 hour water based excursion where we were in the water the entire time and you can’t really mask. We were in a general group of 20 or so and as the activities unfolded we were broken down into smaller groups and families for the actual activity. It had to have been here where we got it and I’m not entirely sure how to have prevented it short of just shutting the program down. You simply can’t effectively mask in a water based environment, hence the reason all those mask rules say to do so unless you are actively eating or in the water. We relied on herd immunity in our group but couldn’t know if any of the trainers present had it. This was, I believe, the failure point. Abby’s first symptom was Friday, the day before we got back, and she had just tested negative earlier that morning.
We started feeling pretty bad on Sunday afternoon. At first, we thought it was just fatigue from the trip, but it soon became clear that there was something nasty afoot. We tested positive the next day.
Here it is, 6 days later, and we’re all finally starting to feel better. Abby was the first and she is completely back to normal. Camille is struggling with vertigo but is also starting to come out of it. I am still getting somewhat breathless when I move around and I have a thick smoker’s cough, but I think I’ll be ready to go back to work tomorrow. Honestly, we’re all tired of sitting on the sofa. We still haven’t unpacked from the trip because we just haven’t felt like it. We hope that will change today.
-Ty