Opinion with Christine Tongue: Covid finally got me

Christine finally caught covid

Beware covid has not gone way, I’ve got it!

I’m toxic! Keep your distance! After three years of avoiding it, it’s finally found me. The plague is not over.

Vaccinations and mutations of the virus means it’s not the scary disease it was three years ago, but it’s not to be taken lightly.

I thought it was bad hay fever, brought on by a huge bunch of flowers from a friend. I gave away the flowers but went on sniffing and sneezing and then feeling queasy and exhausted. I’m still recovering from hip surgery and a subsequent thrombosis so I can’t really afford extra challenges.

I ring my best friend to grumble – write about it, she says. She’ s just had it worse than me so has no sympathy. So here I am grumbling.

To be fair my poor partner, Norman, has had the worst of it. I still can’t carry food or drink, or anything really as I need two crutches to walk, so he has to help a lot.

Being part of Save Our NHS in Kent, gives me access to medical friends. GP Coral said to keep Norman a bit safer ventilate the house and stay in different rooms. So we’ve had a howling gale rushing past us for two weeks and watch telly from opposite ends of the living room. Norman has diabetes and an unreliable heart so an infection like covid could be bad news.

But what are you supposed to do if you’re disabled? If you can’t walk, for example, like  me, you need help to do all the every day tasks from getting out of bed, washing, eating, moving around etc etc. You  can’t wear a  mask through all that so you risk passing your bugs onto anyone nearby.

That’s why so  many care workers and carers had the  disease in the early days – kind people just can’t abandon someone who is helpless.

Now most care falls on the hidden props of the welfare state – unpaid family and friends. And they’ve been brilliant.

Flowers from Aram

So in the midst of all this coughing  and aching – and grumbling – thanks to Annie for cake, Aram for flowers and eggs from his chickens, Catherine for gardening and everyone for listening, Including you!

Garden help from Catherine

UPDATE

After more than two weeks of testing positive (I got so fed up at one point I even tried doing the test badly to give something different from two miserable lines –  no use, still positjve) I’m finally clear. Covid is very generous with its time so the cough and catarrh are only slowly retreating, and I’m hoping there’ll be no long term aftermath.

Long covid is plaguing so many people, for example my 14 year-old great niece who has missed a third of the school year with exhaustion or my 92 year-old auntie who now has a heart condition and can’t walk uphill any  more. Doctors are mystified but the common factor is covid.

I got away with a lot of snot but others could be less lucky. Be careful!

43 Comments

  1. Hope you are feeling better now! Don’t forget, if you see supermarket staff masked up, they have tested positive and are still at work!

    • Yep and thats fine. I had covid last year and was allowed to return to work at a Thanet supermarket after 5 days, but wore a mask and was doing work in a quieter part of the store. Its a fair balance.

  2. We caught covid for the first time in December we think we caught it at a pantomime, we were really I’ll for one day positive for 6 days. Not sure if it builds the immune system to make one less likely to catch it again or not. Anyway get well soon and hopefully you’ll be back to normal soon. Well done Norman for helping.

    • I’ve had it 3 times (despite being fully vaccinated), and each time the symptoms have got milder. My partner, in her ’70s, tested positive twice, both times with NO symptoms!

  3. The unvaccinated I know (old and young) all seem pretty healthy to me with functioning immune systems. The vaccinated groups appear to be perpetually ill and the excessive death rate data globally is truly abnormal. Insurance companies are certainly watching that one as the critical illness and life insurance death claims could bankrupt them as analysts are saying in the US. So much detailed data is out there now destroying the official narrative on it all as the few truthful MPs such as Andrew Brigden and Sir Christopher Chope are revealing.

    • “The unvaccinated you know …” are a very, very small fraction of the total population.
      And the overall picture is that being vaccinated (despite its side effects) is far, far better for the population than not being vaccinated (because Covid is still a very unpleasant disease, and long Covid seriously impacts on people’s lives).
      Bridgen and Chope are not the best if authorities to quote.

  4. Domocrat. I would not believe a word that Andrew Brigden says. Neither did a court of law recently or his own family. He’s just another conspiracy merchant, He was even thrown out of parliament for a week or so. Thankfully, he will lose his seat at the next general election, go into oblivion where he belongs.

  5. So glad I opted out of the vaccine program and my natural immune system is still as it should be, it seems a lot of the vaccinated are catching it or suffer problems due to being vaccinated – Get well soon.

  6. This is interesting, Christine doesn’t say if she was vaccinated, and how many times. I am older than her and classed as extremely clinical vulnerable, and have been vaccinated 5 times! The last was in September 2022, and in October I started to feel unwell, breathless, and only able to walk short distances 15 to 20 yards or so. It got worse, and even minor tasks left me breathless, and exhausted so I asked to see my GP.

    In fact my GP came and saw me, in November by which time I was practically housebound, and hyper-ventilating, even in my sleep which would wake me up! I had blood tests, an X-ray, and and an ECG carried out, but I never received a diagnosis! The symptoms slowly began to ease off in the new year, although I could have an occasional bad day.

    I had the Astra/Zeneca jabs, and its now thought a very few people can have serious side affects, including: Blood Clots (I am on blood thinners so may have avoided this!) Possible strokes, heart attacks (My GP did say he thought my heart was inflamed, another side affect!) Mobility problems, only able to walk a few yards. Biliousness (which I had) Eye pain (In my left eye!) Vertigo, unstable. Cognitive processing affected unable to find words. Anxiety. Fatigue. I am now wondering if I should have the Booster jab we are being urged to have?

  7. Covid never existed. It’s the vaxx which is the culprit. Don’t believe the establishment. It’s all about money and control. What’s next? The latest invention of avian flu, 15 minute cities such as Canterbury, Oxford etc? So take your tin foil hats off people, before you tell me the same.

    • Katmanndu is talking absolute nonsense.

      As for 15-minute cities, they are an excellent idea, and one which should return town and city neighbourhoods to what they were until quite recently- local areas which contained useful shops, dentists ,doctors’ surgeries, and schools.

    • Katmanndu, your mental get help! Extreme sports people have died, or been severely ill for months with Covid. Tell your daft opinions to the relatives of the over 200,000 people who have died of Covid just in the UK, and the millions world wide. Is it people like you that get off spreading your nonsense, just so people will get ill, or die? In fact the most people who ended up in hospital due to Covid were Covid deniers, and who wern’t vaccinated, Duurh!

      • PS. TDC used to enter the weekly death toll due to Covid on a website, but took it down when it reached 550!

      • You’re, not your. Learn your own language, peasant! And the milliomns who have died did so aftewr being vaxxed. Wake up.

    • You are talking rubbish. People in supermarkets were going down with unusually strong flu like symptoms at the start of 2020. I promise, it wasnt a normal illness. It knocked me silly at the end of Jan 2020 and I rarely get ill.

  8. Dear God, save me from the mad, bad, sad, and dangerous to know!
    If you mention Covid, it brings out the unhinged with their unsubstantiated rants about Covid being made in a lab, Covid doesn’t exist, and Covid is a way of controlling the population etc. Then they start on LTN’s as being population control systems, that we should return to using gold coinage, or Bill Gates is the evil one, and of course, Russia never invaded Ukraine.
    Well, to those who lost love ones and friends to Covid, and there are many of us, it is both insulting and harmful. It’s like saying cancer doesn’t exist.
    I don’t care if you don’t want to be vaccinated, it is a free country, but you have no right to stop others or to spread lies and deliberate falsification, that will stop the vulnerable receiving treatment.
    If any of you happen to catch a powerful dose of Covid and it lays you down, I hope for your sakes, that the NHS, will do its very best, to save you from yourselves, and no ,I have never caught Covid, but that doesn’t make me indestructible.
    We all live in a community, and we should care for others, instead of being self righteous humbug’s. I don’t want hear from any of you, or Laurence Fox, Piers Corbyn, Nigel Farage, Andrew Bridgen, or any of the shouty right or left. Enough already!

    • Brilliant comment, George.
      People are entitled to their (warped) opinions, but they are not entitled to try to dissuade vulnerable folk from potentially life-saving medical intervention.
      I was reading a piece in a recent New Scientist magazine. It seems that it’s pointless trying to argue with Conspiracy Theorists, because they will simply reject any evidence that doesn’t accord with their warped ideas as being the product of “Big Pharma” or “MSM” and so on.

  9. A common cold is a Rhinovirus or a Coronavirus, I don’t think these tests are that accurate enough to show what type of Coronavirus you have? So maybe they are showing up as a false positive for Covid 19?

    • For goodness’ sake, Central Scrutinizer, are you an immunologist or a respiratory disease expert? If not then stop spouting uninformed rubbish. Stop stating your OPINIONS as if they are FACTS. I have no problem with your having an OPINION, based on whatever rubbish you may have read elsewhere, nor with your expressing that OPINION as often or as loudly as you like, but that does not make it a FACT. And it should always be expressed as an OPINION (ie something you believe rather than something you know irrefutably to be a FACT).

      And I would say to you, as I do with smokers, if you wish to breathe near me, you are welcome to do so as long as your out breath does not affect me. It is my life in the balance, not yours.

      • ‘OPIOION’ is the header of this article and I am voicing mine – I am sorry if this offends you – The only FACT I have stated is that ‘A common cold is a Rhinovirus or a Coronavirus’ you could easily fact check that on google if you disagree.

        • I don’t know how that fact contributes anything to this thread.
          Here’s a fact: bananas are usually yellow.
          True, but pointless, in this context.

          • Pointless comment then – No point in this article – No point in commenting – No point in anything then? is this what you are saying?
            and there’s me thinking the article was about someone having Covid – I can be such a dumb ar*e at times – Thanks Andrew for correcting me and putting me in my place – You enjoy your yellow bananas but that fact is in fact not true as most bananas throughout the world are usually green and green bananas provide some additional nutrients and benefits that yellow bananas do not. They’re rich in resistant starch and pectin, which are filling, improve digestive health, and help lower blood sugar levels and are gluten-free. 🙂

    • LFT generally show positive if you are positive, but a negative result doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily clear.

  10. During the pandemic it was shown one third of people with Covid didn’t know they had it, because they were symptom free! This meant any of them that were Covid deniers, and went unvaccinated were infecting other people! I wanted to make vaccination mandatory, because these idiots were wantonly infecting people, and some of them died!

    • I think you maybe forgetting ‘Lock-down’ that lasted over 3 months here in the UK? This was replaced by local restrictions (“tiers”) across all of England for ages this was put into place to stop the spread the Coronavirus regardless of vaccination – ‘Stay in, save lives’ – Pump your veins with whatever you like and if the Government says jump you do it and follow the sheep – I most certainly wouldn’t trust this government with my life or my families – The same amount of vaccinated and unvaccinated caught Coronavirus because they couldn’t follow simple rules – even MPs were visiting castles and having parties. that’s why some of them died! Remember?

      • I don’t know what proportion of the vaccinated population caught covid. Since most people in the country have had at least 1 vaccination, it’s probably safe to say most of the people that caught covid were vaccinated.
        It’s also true to any that the vast majority of vaccinated covid contractors suffered few if any symptoms, thus freeing up space in A&E and acute hospital beds; unlike unvaccinated people who caught covid; I’m the main they were very ill.

        • Phyllis you’re bang-on ‘it’s probably safe to say most of the people that caught Covid were vaccinated’ – If you went and got a Flu jab and a few days later you caught Flu would you say that Flu vaccine was working? I think not 🙂
          A friend who is a nurse had to work in the pandemic on the Covid ward 1 out of 16 was unvaccinated with no difference in symptoms.
          I am an unvaccinated and have had Covid twice now, my natural immune system really did me proud and the second bout was just like having a common cold.

  11. You all believe in the mass media. Good luck. let’s see if the vaxxed are still in the land of the living in a year or two, and see who’s the nutcase then.

    • I don’t mind you calling me a nut case but I do hope we’ll all be in the land of the living in a year. But at my age that’s getting to be less likely! I also hope you avoid covid because I know some vaccine sceptics who now have long covid and regret avoiding vaccination.

      • My apologies if you think I called you a nutcase, CT. I hope that wasn’t how I came across. As for covid, remember it takes 10 to 15 years to test any vaccine for safety. Don’t think the government loves us.

    • People began receiving ani covid vaccinations in 2020.
      It’s now 2023.
      And the bodies are not mounting up.

    • I don’t believe in the “mass media”. It’s not a faith system.
      I do take seriously the peer reviewed publications of academic research, though.

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