987 days

I tested positive for Covid this afternoon.

I haven't been as rigorously careful as I possibly could, but I'd be surprised if I'm not in the top 10%: my CDC card is full-up, plus one booster (and I've asked medial providers I was seeing for some other reason at least a dozen times about the latest (Omicron-targeting) booster, all of which were out). I've complied with all the social distancing protocols and continue to wear a mask whenever I go shopping (or really pretty much anywhere but at home or in my car).

Of course I've always understood that all those things were just about improving my odds, and there was no beating that without becoming the boy in the plastic bubble. (And throughout the pandemic I've raged under my breath at people who've failed to attain even the rudimentary numeracy necessary to understand that.) But in the last few months I'd let myself imagine the pandemic was going to run its course and Covid become merely endemic without my contracting it. That, given that by twenty years ago I'd already survived an average lifetime's allotment of medical problems, maybe the gods were going to cut me a break on this one. But of course life isn't fair.