Excellent account of what it's like to be Covid-19 positive

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/coronavirus-covid-19-positive-test-family-shame-stigma

Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News; Getty Images


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Earlier this week, I received an email from a reader in Seattle who’d tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. She lives with her husband and children; the rest of her family has not been able to get tested, but everyone who’s sick in their home is presumed to have the disease. Everyone has a fairly mild case except the couple’s infant, who required a brief but harrowing trip to the hospital. But this person has found herself surprised by the mix of shame and liberation that’s accompanied the diagnosis. She spoke with me at length, with the hope of destigmatizing a positive diagnosis: “We have no idea how we acquired COVID-19,” she said. “We were careful, and pointing fingers would do nothing.”

Answers have been edited for clarity and length.

1) Hi! I know you want to stay anonymous, but maybe you can tell us a little about where you live and your family situation, just to start — and how you experienced the growing spread of the virus in Seattle. How were you attempting to isolate, and what was hard about isolating in your situation?

Our family lives in the Seattle area and we’re a white hetero married couple with a number of young children. I am on staff at the University of Washington, which is an important factor in my being tested.
Seattle has been a strange place for the last month or so. As Seattle became a “hot spot,” everyone we knew was gradually becoming more concerned, especially in the last week of February. Scrolling back through my texts and photos, I see that I did a massive Costco run at the end of February and started ordering cleaning supplies that weekend. At the beginning of March, we started curtailing playdates and activities, having kids ramp up their handwashing, lack of face touching, and carrying hand sanitizer. We were more attentive to wiping down shopping carts with sanitizing wipes, not touching elevators buttons, etc...….