Who is the Federal Foreign Affairs Minister?

The impression that I get..

In December of 2019 Chinese authorities in the city of Wuhan announced that they were dealing with a new virus that had infected dozens of people. Health officials announced they were monitoring the situation to try to prevent it spreading further…that went well.

About two weeks later they announced the first death from the strange new virus, shortly before one of China’s biggest national holidays when hundreds of millions of people travel across the country. By late January the virus had spread into neighbouring Asian countries, as well as cases starting to appear in other countries around the world.

I think we’ve all got a pretty fair idea of how things progressed over the next two and a half years. Early this week I received the text message from SA Health which says POSITIVE but isn’t positive in any way. I have the Covid. I’d like to start by expressing my dissatisfaction at having a life threatening illness communicated to me as positive. I think they made a mistake there.

“So if someone has this potentially deadly disease, we’re going to tell them it’s positive?”

“No, we’re just telling them that we’re positive that they are positive.”

“So we’re positive that they’re positive…which is really negative.”

In our house it played out like this. LeBron was a bit unwell, so we did the right thing, kept him home from school, got him a PCR, and it came back negative.

Next Donna got really quite sick. Some of you will remember that she had the Covid back about three months ago so is outside of the window and could potentially have it again. o she did the right thing, took the day off work and went and got a PCR. Negative.

Next our eldest Shaquille and I had a mid-strength cold over the weekend, so thought we might as well go and get a PCR test done. Two days later Shaquille’s came back negative, and shortly after mine came back…positive. I was pretty surprised to be honest. Everyone else in the house had been sicker than me, I actually felt fine and was getting ready to go to work, and now I was going to be stuck at home for a week. Nothing you can do about it though. It is what it is.

I feel like I’m David Boon facing the West Indies fast bowlers peppering my body with short balls during the 80s whenever the nurses give me a PCR test. I can’t rub it after it happens, or let them see there’s a tear in my eye. That’s what they want. They like it. It feeds them.

I know exactly how I got the Covid though. Some people can pinpoint the person or situation where they think they got it. Maybe it was from someone in your house who you knew was positive. Maybe it was from a workmate or at school. Maybe you went to an event with lots of people and found out afterwards that multiple people ended up with it. For me the story goes like this.

I was telling a friend how lucky I felt I’d been to have avoided catching Covid. I work in an environment where I cross paths with lots of people, and many of them had contracted it. I’d made similar statements previously to people about how lucky I felt and stating that I was hoping I’d be one of the people who managed to simply avoid it…but on this occasion I forgot to say “touch wood”. And that’s how I got it.

“Did the person you were talking to have Covid?” you might be asking.

No, you’re missing the point. I forgot to say “touch wood”. When you make big statements about your hopes for the future, you have to say “touch wood” or it jinxes you. It’s a good luck thing. It comes from the ancient pagans who believed that there were nasty spirits who inhabited wood and prevented people’s hopes and dreams from coming true. Now today we don’t actually need to knock on wood because that’s superstitious rubbish, but if you don’t say touch wood it brings horrible bad luck. And that’s what happened to me. I remembered eventually, but it was too late and the wood spirits got me.

Donna decided that despite the children being negative and being able to attend school if they tested negative daily on RATs, she would prefer they stay at home. She wanted to avoid the possibility of them having it, it not showing up on a RAT, and them sharing it with others at school. Very responsible of her. On the other hand she was going to test daily and continue to work.

So to get this straight, when she had Covid, it was during the period where the rest of the family had to isolate at home, and we could shorten the time if we quarantined her away from the rest of the family. So when she had Covid, I was cooped up in the house responsible for looking after and entertaining the children. And when I have the Covid, I am cooped up in the house, responsible for looking after and entertaining the children. Somebody tell me how that’s fair. This Covid is so cruel.

The good news is that I have extremely mild symptoms…touch wood.

If you get the reference in the title of my article this week, email me at robbietansel@gmail.com If you don’t get it, you might get it Someday I Suppose. And if you get that one, you’ve got good taste in music.