5 Tips For Getting Through COVID That You Haven’t Heard Yet [NSFW, TMI]

As you may know, I recently had COVID. I’m not giving medical advice, but I have a few tips for getting through COVID you may not have heard yet. There is NSFW and TMI content in this post.

1) Improve Your Reading Comprehension Skills

I realize this blog is not exactly a ringing endorsement of my intelligence and competence, but please take my word for it that in offline life, I am generally considered to be a person of at least average intelligence. I majored in a scientific discipline. I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. I am not completely math-illiterate, and I was once hired by a university to teach something. My job pays me to, among other things, read shit.

And yet, in spite of my so-called intelligence and English language fluency, I struggled to interpret these guidelines from CDC on when and how to leave quarantine/isolation, guidelines written in English presumably for people of average intelligence. To make matters more confusing, others in the medical community disagree with the latest CDC guidelines, and the FDA and CDC disagree on how to use antigen tests. Then, because some doctors have seen instances where nasal swabs test negative for COVID and throat swabs test positive, FDA is telling people to only use the nasal swab tests as directed. I digress. My point is not that you should ignore all medical guidance. My point is that you should prepare to have a lot of fun reading information that is confusing and contradictory.

Have fun! Photo by alleksana from Pexels

2) Get Off the Internet

I know this sounds counter-intuitive. Look, the internet was a godsend for lockdown orders and for quarantine. The internet allows people to work, shop, connect with loved ones, get information however unhelpful (see #1), and entertain themselves. If coronavirus had hit hundreds of years ago, this would have been hell.

At the same time, I think spending endless amounts of time on the internet (especially because COVID-induced insomnia is a thing and I had it) is bad for the soul and mental health. In fairness, I might just be saying that because I had COVID around New Year’s which meant reading way too many humblebrags about 2021 and more inspirational shit than I could handle. Still, I think getting off the internet at least once in a multi-day quarantine period is better for your soul.

3) Be Nice to the Person/People You Live With

Even if you absolutely cannot stand the person/people you live with, you’re stuck with them for 5-10 days depending on you interpret the above-mentioned CDC guidelines. Longer if they catch COVID from you and then you’re all stuck in quarantine even longer. I will give credit where due and note that my flawed marriage has improved slightly and that Husband was, in fact, a rather good quarantine roommate. (Quarantine and slight improvement in marriage being an example of correlation, not causation). Also, we do not hate each other. But even if you do, it is worth being nice because otherwise, the days of quarantine will be even longer and more torturous.

If you behave terribly / if your household member(s) behave(s) badly, quarantine will feel even longer. Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Side Note [NSFW]:

I remember the early days of the pandemic when the NYC Health Department issued guidelines for safer sex in the time of COVID. The internet praised the guidelines for covering topics like rimming and sex work. And the updated June 2020 guidelines included suggestions like mutual masturbation, wearing a mask, and an express suggestion to “get kinky”, which the internet gleefully interpreted as the return of glory holes.

Anyway, I actually thought the most dubious piece of advice was back in the NYC Health Department March 2020 guidelines which was to basically have sex with someone living in your household, eg. your (potentially totally platonic) roommate. I mean, I get it from a public health perspective, but setting aside the fact that not everyone lives with a roommate they want to fuck, if you do fuck your roommate and it goes badly, you’re still stuck living with them for the duration of the pandemic. If I had been writing those guidelines, I would have rephrased this point to “The next safest partner is someone you live with, but only if you’ll be able to still tolerate living together after you have sex with them.“

4) Prepare for Re-entry

To the extent that you feel physically up to it, prepare for life after quarantine. Do laundry. Maintain grooming habits. Keep up your skincare routine. Wash your hair. Sure, you might be spending 5-10 days sitting on your ass watching dumb videos on the internet. And look, no one is going to judge if you attend virtual meetings braless while wearing the same pajama pants you’ve worn all week while strategically pointing your webcam away from your boobs. I mean, I won’t judge because I did exactly that. (That’s how you know it’s no longer a new job)

But even though I whined and carried on as if 10 days were a life sentence, 10 days, is not, in fact, forever. You don’t want to end quarantine like I did, realizing that my car registration and inspection had expired, that I was out of clean underwear, that my hair was an oily, tangled rat’s nest, that my face looked like I’d aged 10 years in 10 days, and that I looked like complete shit.

Fun fact: if you search a stock photo site for “ugly woman” you will get all these photos of hot attractive people in the free results. No wonder everyone has body image issues! I won’t post a photo of my actual unattractive face, but I also refuse to post one of those extremely attractive stock photos. Thus, I’m using this photo with the face cut off to represent myself emerging from the cocoon of quarantine as an ugly moth rather than a beautiful butterfly. Photo by Tirachard Kumtanom from Pexels

5) Add This to Your Shopping List: Incontinence Pads [TMI]

Every “treat mild COVID at home” list will tell you to have things like tea, soup, OTC acetaminophen, etc. on hand. And all that is useful. But what I also could have used was incontinence pads. All that forceful coughing combined with staying hydrated and an apparently small bladder led to me inadvertently wetting my pants more often than I would have liked to do as an adult. This didn’t make it to the household shopping list because I have a “sex with as little vulnerability as possible” marriage, not a “talk openly about bladder problems” marriage, which was awkward. This is the kind of “managing mild COVID at home tip” that would have been nice to know. Anyway, you’re welcome.

I did put a TMI warning on this post. Photo by Natracare on Unsplash

Bottom Line

Hopefully, you will not get COVID. Hopefully no one close to you will get COVID. Hopefully you will not give COVID to anyone else. But in the event you do, I leave you with these tips (and TMI). And this infographic from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that I ripped off their Facebook page because it caught my eye.

From Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Facebook page.