First things first: I promise you that I won’t quit my day job once this all over and become a full time blogger. However, I think that this – our – story is an important one to tell. Maybe it saves a life or two who knows – certainty is not something we have a lot of right now.
We returned to Australia from Austria (via a short stopover in Doha) a bit over 2 weeks ago. At the time of our arrival the mandatory quarantine laws for all arriving travelers weren’t in place yet. Only for those coming from China, Iran, Italy and a few other countries. We decided to self-quarantine nonetheless and those few times I went shopping I was either wearing a mask and/or very conscious about what I touched and how close I was to others. Always thinking that if I have it that little old lady doing her shopping next to me really shouldn’t get it.
A week after our arrival we developed extremely mild symptoms (we only now a week later realised) and both Juliane and I wondered for a brief moment: is it possible that we are corona positive? Surely not, we thought! We had been so careful. We hadn’t spent any time at playgrounds at the airport, had sanitised our hands every hour or so on the plane… no one had coughed around us. We were still so jet-lagged, had worked on a hot day in the garden and thought that this was more likely the reason for what we now identify as potential symptoms: being tired and having to nap in the afternoon for 2-3 days, a scratchy throat, a pressure on my chest, which developed right after I researched symptoms for the disease and a temperature in the low to mid-37s for just one afternoon. Surely, this was all in our heads we kept telling ourselves, Juliane breathing through a panic attack that evening… who would be looking after our (probably virus-infected) son while we were potentially hospitalised?!?
However, those mild symptoms disappeared after that day of temperatures and we didn’t think anymore about it.
So then, yesterday morning we saw a list of flights that came into Australia including ours and the isles on which passengers were tested positive for corona. Our isle and the 2 behind us were on that list, which now made us believe that we have already contracted the corona virus. It’s another piece in the puzzle for us – we had been speaking with family overseas and they keep telling us about these mild cases in most younger to middle-aged adults who get it.
I called the hotline yesterday and asked to get tested – I was referred to our GP who did a phone consultation, took down all details and passed it on to a testing clinic. To be honest it won’t make much of a difference for us anyways we think, even though it would be somehow comforting to know that “that was it”, as by some accounts from overseas, once you had that particular strain of the virus you’re immune to it…
We are all fine now and will simply extend our quarantine into self-isolation. But what was important to us was that officials have our details on record now, just in case. Even though, we do wonder that no one contacted us directly with that flight list and that we only found out about that flight list by coincidence.
My point in writing all this is the following: you, our racers and most in our community, are cyclists, you are fit, the lung capacity of most of you is through the roof, your resting heart rate is probably super low. It is very likely that you would not even notice if you were carrying this stupid thing around with you! Assuming that we have it or have had it we can say: we did everything we could possibly do not to pass it onto anyone else. Make sure you are in the same position! Imagine if we had seen the friends last week who wanted to drop something off at their nan afterwards… we are so glad we didn’t.
I second what our Premier said this morning: pretend that you are a carrier of the virus and do everything not to spread it.
Our family doesn’t even show up on any statistic of cases in the country as we haven’t been confirmed positive. Odds are there are a lot of others out there like us who are and feel fine yet can pass it on to others who won’t be. Take care of yourself and your loved ones and think of the loved ones of others. We all need to work together on this right now. Thanks!
Martin
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