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My Family’s Two-Week Battle With the Covid Delta Variant
Fighting Covid taught me more than reporting on it ever could
For the past year and a half, my life has been consumed by Covid. I have been covering the pandemic as a journalist, I’ve given lectures about it, read hundreds of studies, interviewed dozens of experts, and spoken to many who experienced the disease. I’ve also written 33 stories about Covid on Medium (luckily there’s a new list feature to bundle all of them up). I felt like I understood the virus; I felt I knew it. But little did I know, my knowledge with Covid would become much more intimate.
I received the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Wednesday, July 14. I wasn’t actually supposed to get it. I’m 36, and the U.K. decided that those under 40 will receive an alternative vaccine due to the risks of blood clots caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine. However, as I received the first dose very early before these side effects were known, I was told I should carry on and receive the same type for my second dose as well.
I postponed my appointment several times. I tried seeing whether I could get a different type of vaccine for the second dose but with no luck. When I understood that the U.K. was going ahead with Freedom Day and canceling all Covid restrictions, I decided that the risks of getting infected outweighed those of the vaccine, and I scheduled an appointment for the shot.
In the hours that followed, I was mostly worried about blood clots and tried to pay special attention to how I was feeling. The first two days went by perfectly fine, but then, on Friday night, I started feeling weird. I started feeling really sick.
At first, I felt a piercing pain all over my body, especially my head, lower back, and muscles. Then my fever spiked, and my breath became heavy. It took a few hours for the coughs to follow. It wasn’t anything like I’d ever felt. I’ve never been hit by a double-decker London bus, but I can imagine that it must feel about the same. As hours passed, the symptoms got worse. I could barely keep my eyes open. It was clear to me that something unusual was going on in my body.
I contacted the British National Health Service and scheduled a PCR test. As I waited for the results to…
