By Kyle Sansoucie 

Have you gotten a COVID test recently? How recent was it? Are you sure the negative test you got eight months ago is up to date? ‘Cause mine wasn’t. I live in a pretty remote area, so typically I’m not really all that worried that I will get COVID from some random passerby.  That doesn’t make me immune to the disease by any means; even wearing a mask in public and going out as little as possible did not stop my roommate from becoming exposed to the virus while she was at work.  These things happen, regardless of the lengths you go to prevent it.  I’m a smoker, so I cough often enough when I’m “healthy,” which means my first thought is never “I’m sick” it’s “damn that was a big hit, better give a thumbs up while I’m dry-heaving so the people around me know I’m not actually dying.”  After my roommate’s exposure of course the household got tested, and lo and behold, mine came back positive.

Smokers are extra susceptible to COVID, according to the hundreds of YouTube ads that bombard me with guilt for my vices.  Immediately I feet bad about lighting up.  My underlying worry is that I will wake up one morning, struggling to breathe. This fear got worse as the days after the test went by. I began to worry that, while I didn’t really feel all that sick, the symptoms would hit me all at once.  They never did.

I did feel like my cough was a little worse, but that could’ve just been me getting into my own head.  I had a headache for a few days and a sore throat for a quarter of that time.  I didn’t feel like I had this terrible dangerous disease that the media is talking about. I felt like I had a light cold. Honestly my theory is that I received a false positive. I was barely sick, and here I was worrying that I was gonna be another statistic.