Louise O'Neill: After two long years, is the end finally in sight?
Louise O'Neill: According to scientists, this could be the start of an endemic rather than a pandemic
My gym classes are still outside which is a source of great relief for me. (Except on the days when it’s freezing cold or lashing rain. On those days, I feel very, very sorry for myself.) But given the winter weather and the fact I’m, you know, exercising, my nose usually starts to run within seconds of class starting.
At first, I try and ignore it. Then, finally, I have to grab a tissue and blow my nose in front of everyone else. Who wants to publicly blow their nose in this climate?
I feel like announcing, listen, I regularly do antigen tests, and more importantly, I don’t have the sniffles at any other point of the day except for during jump squats. I’ve had a runny nose since I was a child — possibly an undiagnosed lactose intolerance but I love cheese and ice-cream too much to find out — and there’s not much I can do about it. But I don’t have Covid, I promise.
My mother had a similar predicament in December. Every year without fail, she gets a bad cough. It’s a bronchial condition, she has inhalers and an at-home nebuliser machine to help alleviate the symptoms.
When she got her annual dose of it this year, despite suspecting that it was more of the same, she followed the guidelines. She restricted her movements; she took an antigen test and organised a PCR test.
Both were negative. But when we went out for a meal the next week and she was hacking away like she was about to bring up a lung, I didn’t blame the other diners for looking at her in terror. “I should get a t-shirt made,” she said dryly as the people at the next table reared back, expressions of horror on their faces. “Printed with the words: ‘I’ve had a PCR test. I do not have Covid, I promise’.”
In the week leading up to Christmas, when it felt as if every second person I knew either had Omicron or had been named as a close-contact of someone who did, I was obsessively careful. I didn’t leave the house without my FFP2 mask, I didn’t meet friends, I stared down any stranger who was foolish enough to get too close to me in the supermarket queue.
I did everything I could, basically, to ensure that I wasn’t handed the turkey and ham through my kitchen window. (I also tried to get my mother to hibernate, despite her protestations that the butcher shop was far too busy for her to stay at home.)
“It’s sweet that you care so much about my health,” she said, to which I replied, “No, I just want you to be able to cook Christmas dinner.” (I am a great daughter.) But even now, at the end of January, when I should have just accepted that this is a highly infectious disease and it’s likely we will all come down with it at some point, I am anxious at times.
If you type ‘is stomach cramps/ a ringing sound in my left ear/ a broken ankle … ’ into a search engine, the automatic answer it supplies is, ‘ … a symptom of Covid?’ I yearn for the days when you could just have a sinus infection or a headache without wondering if it’s something more sinister.
Still, we have reason to be hopeful. The lifting of the restrictions this week may have seemed sudden — I know I can’t be the only person who felt a little panicked at the thought of such a rapid return to ‘normal’, whatever that will look like now — but I’m trying to remind myself that the data on Omicron suggests it affects the body in very different ways to previous variants. Far fewer people need hospital treatment or advanced supports with Omicron, and for those who do need hospitalisation, the length of stay required has reduced dramatically.
According to scientists, this could be the start of an endemic rather than a pandemic, where we learn to live alongside Covid (while still endeavouring the protect the vulnerable amongst us). Nightclubs are reopening, restaurants and bars can go back to usual opening times. Weddings are back, baby. As the days grow longer and snowdrops peek their heads above ground, dare we hope that spring is coming? After two long years, is the end finally in sight?
Now You’re Asking. In this BBC Radio 4 show (also available as a podcast), Marian Keyes and Tara Flynn try to solve listeners’ problems. It’s a delight – gentle, kind, and very funny.
Wahala by Nikki May. This debut novel is centred around three Anglo-Nigerian women, and what happens when the glamourous, dangerous Isobel infiltrates their group.
