It was right around Thanksgiving, when I wrote here in the Daily Post about ‘spiky balls’.
Since COVID first emerged — what is it, three years ago, already? — my family and I somehow had kept COVID, and all its variants, at bay.
COVID germs looked, to me, like the explosive World War II-era mines that were dropped at sea to blow up ships. In old pictures, the mines were shades of gunmetal gray. The COVID germs, as featured on TV, and in other media, often are bluish, and sometimes rather greenish.
Well… long story short, all of us in our household came down with something, but we tested negative for COVID, and the flu, and that respiratory bug, called RSV.
All negative, across the board. But whatever it was… was really something.
It turned into pneumonia — that’s what I’m still getting over — and a nasty respiratory infection of some kind, for the others in my family.
At the hospital, I asked how my pneumonia, and my family’s respiratory ailments could have occurred, since we hadn’t had a thing over the past three years. Not even a common cold. And we’re still taking precautions. But who can say for sure, we learned, since a whole lot of virus bugs seem to be buzzing around at the moment.
A few days ago, I got together remotely, on Zoom, with colleagues I’d worked with during my PR career. Before the pandemic, we’d get together at a restaurant around this time of year, and reminisce.
This time, we were on our computer monitors, or phones.
Things have changed, they surely have.
But we enjoyed getting together, we surely did!
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.