I Got a Test and You Didn’t

04/08/20

by Victor Grigas

The test result message

I have the virus. Five days ago, I had some chest tightness, and two days later I had it again. I scheduled an appointment for the doctor and actually received a COVID-19 test. Today I got the results back. POSITIVE. 

For the past three weeks, my family and I have been in isolation, more or less like everyone else. Since my wife is 8 months pregnant, I've been doing all the grocery and pharmacy shopping, and for the whole 3 weeks I've been wearing latex gloves and a p100 mask every time I go outside and then indoors, which doesn't happen much. Most of the time we are at home. 

I suspect that I got the virus earlier than three weeks ago, because around February 28, all of us got diarrhea one after another. Then we all started taking our temperature, which never went up. Over the course of March, my wife had a sinus infection and headache, my son had conjunctivitis, my daughter had an ear infection that needed two rounds of antibiotics, and I've had sore knees, mild chest tightness, and a mild sore throat. All of us have had a cough, which was at its worst two weeks ago. I want to get everyone at-home tested. The doctors here ration tests because there aren't enough of them. I wonder why there aren’t enough. I’m the only person I know who actually got a test, and it only happened because I said that my wife was pregnant. I guess that that’s the line---you have to be near death or near birth or both to just have a test. 

The table in the doctor’s office. That’s the test in the plastic container on the table.

Text message from February 28, 2020

Now we have to figure out how the birth will go. The logistics are crazy. I am to self-isolate until my wife gets a test result, and if it’s positive (which it probably is) then we can go back to “normal” and completely stay home for two weeks without worrying so much about disinfecting takeout surfaces while we wait for the baby. Assuming I’m not going to die from this, should I give my blood somewhere so people can search for antibodies or something? Am I totally banished from the hospital during the birth of our daughter? And what if I recover? Who will watch our COVID kids if I am allowed in the delivery room? How do I support my wife if I’m not there? Say “Bon Voyage,” smash a bottle, and hope to shit for the best? 

I’ve never seen more blood than when our first daughter was born. Birth alone could kill my wife. How do I know if the hospital will even have supplies? How the hell do we protect our infant? Did the politburo in China remove dead baby stats, because—dead baby stats? Is my kid actually at risk? I mean, the unknowns kind of make us want to be like that party idiot who is just blasé about getting corona. My wife wants to test positive, because it means she’s probably recovered. But damn, what the shit? 

Me in the doctor’s office

Are we lepers now? I mean, half the people I know told me they felt like, mid-March they got a cough or something, but nothing happened, and since there’s no tests and everyone is home, no big deal. But I actually got the test, my corona is a known-known. Do I strut into Uber Eats when recovered with my scarlet letter of clearance and proceed to deliver food because I’m invincible now? Am I the guy you want delivering your groceries?

I just want my daughter to be born and to survive. I look on the pregnancy subreddit, and when I can disassociate myself from myself, it’s generally positive. My guess is that I’ll recover and my family will recover. The numbers are on our side. I mean if I die from this thing, which I know is unlikely, will there be side effects later? Will I get early onset dementia? All these goddamn questions just eat at you. 

I read that between half a million to two and a half million Russians died of the flu pandemic a hundred years back. Can you imagine surviving World War I, and then a pandemic? I’d be like, fuck it! If I gotta check out, let’s kill that motherfucking tsar first. I think that state of mind might be where we will find ourselves after millions die, the economy collapses, and are in the second great depression with monopoly men in charge of things. 

There’s this amazing movie called King Corn. It’s about the US industrial agriculture system, and at the end, they talk to the guy who invented it. Earl Butz worked for Nixon when the country was close to a revolution. His goal was to make food plentiful and cheap, in order to prevent revolution and to give Nixon one less thing to worry about. He has some line in the movie like, “Every nation is nine meals short of a revolution.” I mean, the guy who invented our system knew that mass hunger causes revolution. He called this “America’s best kept secret.” I wonder if that secret will be ignored. 

Is there a breaking point? I just want my daughter to be born. Will she survive? Will I survive to see her be born? And what will be born of our collective grief? It would be pleasant to just slide right back to consumer culture, like it would have been nice to just rebuild the twin towers exactly as they were. But I don’t think we can go back to 2019. Ten million people just filed for unemployment. How many stores are out of business? The way the US government is run now is that everything needs to be raped by our dear leader so he can better understand what the limits of it are. It’s just abuse. It’s abusive for government to ignore and downplay a pandemic. How many revolutions were justified after the fact because of mass abuses? 

I got a test and you didn’t. You don’t even know if you have it or not. You might be infecting and killing your friends and neighbors. That’s abuse. You have been abused. You didn’t even get a test.