According to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, the answer should be no, and yet…
In January of last year, I detailed having a terrible case of the flu (first referenced in this post). This was pre-pandemic and hardly surprising, as I usually don’t get a flu shot and rode public transit five days a week and worked in a large, open office at a college. People were constantly around me, and people are fantastic at sharing horrible things like cold and flu bugs.
When I wrote on February 16th about the cold I had, COVID-19 was not on my radar at all. I knew of it, but only on the periphery–it was yet to reach pandemic stage. But looking back, the symptoms I had match up almost perfectly with COVID (while acknowledging that they also match up with having a cold or flu)
- Loss of smell/taste
- Coughing
- Fatigue
- Sore throat
- Body aches
- Sinus issues (plural, because I hit both extremes of plugged/unplugged)
The loss of smell is a real red flag here, because it’s so specifically tied to COVID-19. In the end, it doesn’t really matter much, as I recovered with no apparent long-term symptoms and have been successfully dodging the super-contagious Omicron variant as I await my booster (third) shot, expected sometime in January. But it’s fun (?) to think that as I worked to avoid catching the virus, I may have actually been one of the first to have had it.
Anyway, here’s hoping the pandemic actually ends in 2022. That would be nice.
