Superspreader

I went to work yesterday. I just couldn't face another morning of trying to find a library substitute, and besides, I just had the sniffles. An itchy, stuffy nose, basically. I didn't walk to work like I usually do, given the weather, but instead navigated the newly-fallen snow to the tube.

I worked all day, mostly feeling OK. I checked out books, I re-shelved. I helped manage a shelter-in-place drill, which is meant to rehearse our actions should be have a school shooter or some similar event that requires us to hide out in the building. (Those drills are creepy. I hate them.) And I put the finishing touches on our book display about dragons, using an old tapestry banner I found years ago in one of our library cabinets:

No one knows where this banner of St. George slaying the dragon came from or who made it, but it's pretty fabulous and I was glad to finally be able to use it. I think it's two or three decades old, at least, and it could use a good cleaning, but the age spots aren't readily noticeable when it's hanging up. (We also have similar banners featuring the Statue of Liberty and an eagle with the American flag.) Its only real flaw is that the shaft of George's spear is missing. Let's see if anyone notices.

Anyway, I plugged along until mid-afternoon, when I began to feel a bit worse. Just woozy and, well, sick. While talking to my boss, she mentioned another of our colleagues who recently tested positive for Covid and he'd been surprised because it "felt like allergies."

Alarm bells went off in my head.

Throughout this cold I've dismissed the possibility of Covid because I didn't have Covid symptoms -- no loss of taste, not much of a cough, no shortness of breath, no apparent fever. I just feel a sort of malaise and mostly nasal congestion. Dave feels the same and he was equally dismissive (and also went to work yesterday).

I saw the day through and came home, and the first thing I did was take a Covid test. Dave took one too. And of course, they were positive.

So, yeah, both of us basically super-spread Covid all day. I think I probably had it Monday too, when I also worked. I am SO mortified. I called my boss and confessed I'd tested positive, and e-mailed my co-workers with an apology. It's probably too much to hope they won't get it, but maybe we'll be lucky.

(Top photo: From my walk in the cemetery with Olga on Saturday.)