Five Lessons From Getting Covid-19, For the First Time, in June 2022

Your number’s always up.

Two months and two weeks ago, I wrote about the odd sensation of feeling as if you were one of the only people left who had never had Covid-19. Well, scratch my name off the list: Last week, I woke up with chills and a headache and, yep, it turned out I was positive. I’m now symptom-free and through my quarantine period and generally stronger for the wear. I’ve also found, anecdotally, that the number of people who have never tested positive before but have in the last fortnight or so is, well, high. So be careful out there.

Here are five observations from being a late-in-life Covid-19-er.

1. It’s not a regular cold or flu. I did not get particularly sick, all told. I was freezing in the middle of the night — despite it being 100-plus degrees in Athens, Georgia, where I live — to the point that I had to put on a sweater, and I had some body aches and head throbbing. But it was not devastating, and I was never much in fear for my life, thanks, surely, to the vaccines and booster I have received. But to be clear: It was different than a regular flu. I could just feel my body working hard, like there was something unusual and disorienting that it (along with science) needed to expunge. It wasn’t deadly, and I’ll confess I was never all that…