Here we go again. Struggling up the stairs to the extra bed in the attic, my contact lenses and something to read under my arm, while downstairs in the living room Mrs. Keulemans looks at the two lines on the self-test and grumbles: ‘How can this be? Four times I have been pricked and once I have already had it. And now positive again.’
We’re not the only ones who have had omikron variant number BA.4 or BA.5 – at least that’s what happened I suppose. The umpteenth version of corona, those vaccinated noses and throats again could contaminate a little† The last few weeks you see them everywhere, the two-stripe people. Some are quite ill from it, luckily for most it remains with a sore throat, fatigue and a cough.
Damn, we were supposed to go to a rock concert on Saturday, but my partner has to be in isolation for at least five days, she reads for from the internet† ‘That means that you stay at home and in your own room, to prevent contamination of housemates.’
But why, with so few complaints? It’s a question I get often. Corona isn’t that dangerous anymore. And with any other respiratory infection you would also just go to work or parties, with at most a precautionary precaution: ‘I’m not going to kiss you for a while, I have a cold’.
‘Corona is of course not a cold’, emphasizes Aura Timen once again, when I call her. Until recently, Timen was head of the LCI guidelines department of the RIVM, and is now professor of primary care in Nijmegen. “The numbers are rising very fast. And you also have people who do get very sick from it, or who get post-covid syndrome, for example. Insulation is the only reduction measure we have left. And I think it’s too early to let it go completely now.’
Corona, like it or not, is still a ‘group A infectious disease’. An illness that prevents you from going to work, for example. That sounds weird, corona between tough guys like smallpox, polio and Ebola† But, crucial misunderstanding: the seriousness of the disease is therefore not the criterion for inclusion on the list, emphasizes Timen. These are diseases that can disrupt society to such an extent that people want to be able to keep an eye on them.
Hence the notification requirement. And that is why corona has become a snotter virus for most people, higher on the problem list than many more nasty diseases such as, sorry for the language, consumption, typhus or the plague.
And if you still have two stripes: logical that it helps to stay at home, in isolation. In theory, according to a much cited study from The Lancet Infectious Diseases, that can make a difference to about one third of the infections in a country. Well worth it, if you look at it that way.
In practice, however, it is more unruly. The last time the RIVM Behavioral Unit investigated this, in March, only half of the positively tested Dutch people to really go into isolation† Especially lower on the socio-economic ladder, people are three times more likely to be unable to go into isolation, according to a british reconnaissance† People have to go to work, live too small, babies and toddlers need physical care, life goes on.
And home, the place where already most transmission takes place† What chance do attic room refugees like me have to avoid the virus? About eighteen times smaller, isolation increases the risk of infection between family members, suggested an early study from Wuhan fixed. Although there is an immediate caveat: that was in the early days of corona, since then the variants have become more contagious and more spreading through the air.
My partner meanwhile is walking around the house, clapping his hand over his mouth, chanting: ‘Move aside, get out, I’ve got the BA.5 variant!’ Fortunately, I don’t believe she is very sick, from this corona variant.