[310/366] Waiting

[cosmolinguist]

Yesterday was a tough day. I was hoping for a quicker, more resounding result to the U.S. election, both to make nastiness and violence less likely there and to make my personal mental health more stable. As it was I only got about four hours' sleep and stayed in bed almost as long as I could while still being ready for work in time.

And work exposed me to two people who have been exposed to someone who might have covid. That person is being tested and in the meantime it made my life immediately logistically more difficult and ongoingly more unsettled. Of course in this country there's no clear guidance about what someone in my position should be doing, no proper tracing or testing. I can't get a test unless I have symptoms (which is bananas for a disease that's so often asymptomatic! but even people who live with people who definitely have covid can't get an NHS test, they have to pay for a private one or go without!) so I guess all I can hope to do if I don't want to spend the next two weeks even more locked down than everyone else -- which will play merry hell with my already-awful mental health -- is hope the this other person's test comes back negative!

Hopefully I'll know those test results tomorrow. Hopefully we'll know the election results tomorrow. It's hard not to feel like today is just some time I have to waste.

Comments

[otter]

That's worse than here, I think. There are plenty of testing restrictions, but usually at least one organization sponsors a free test day about once a week in our area, and they've been hiring contact tracers, too.

I figure we'll know by tomorrow. And then the lawsuits will start, and waste more resources.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah as far as I can tell (I've been avoiding the news about it because it doesn't meet my standards for "is this at all positive/neutral and/or is there anything at all that I personally can do about it"), there's no proper contact tracing here at all. Andrew says I don't even count as exposed because the people I've seen had only been potentially exposed the previous day and that's too soon for them to be contagious even if they did get covid. But we are all having to muddle along with our own understandings/superstitions/prejudices/anxiety/personal calculations of acceptable risk as best we can, because we don't have any guidance for what procedures we should be a part of when these kinds of things happen.

[barakta]

That sounds really hard.

And yes, the lack of clear info, or a place you can phone/email for rapid advice is a complete fucking shitshow of a disgrace. I hate everything about how back test, trace and fuckery around isolating is.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, I don't think about myself this way because it's extremely part-time job for one person, but I'm one of these care workers that everyone's supposed to be so grateful for, and you'd think this kind of potential-indirect-exposure would be happening all the time for care workers, so there really should be advice on how to handle it...! But, nope.

[sfred]

Ugh. I hope you get the good answers, soon. <3

[lilysea]

Would it be worth your friends chipping in? A lot of people chipping in a smaller amount? eg 12 people, 10 pounds each?

Boots to offer 12-minute Covid nasal swab test (only if you don't have symptoms, costs £120)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54684985