Happy New Year from the Corona Family

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29/12/21
“Where to start from?” is the chronicler’s eternal first question. Sometimes, the best is to start from the end (men el ekhir as we say in Lebanese): Evan, Nour, Racha and I are all infected with Covid-19. This is the whole family minus Alia who is (supposedly) immune since her infection in November.
But wait; how did all this start (this is usually the second question the chronicler worry about)?

Riding the Fifth Wave
(continued from part two)
By mid-November, we were waking up every morning to the news of a friend who met someone who tested positive and who had to quarantine for at least five days. Then it was friends who were testing positive themselves, bringing with them a sad fact that we were yet to get used to: yes, even if you are double-vaccinated, you still might (and most probably will) get infected. This new reality brought new rules for public events: on November 20th, Racha and I went to a friend’s birthday party where only vaccinated people who were tested negative were admitted. Vaccine alone was not enough anymore. On the same day, our daughters Alia and Nour were also invited to a birthday party and a sleep over at their friend’s. The next morning, they came back home very early and added some spices to our hangover: the father of one of the girls who slept with them in the same room was tested positive. Three hours later we learned that the daughter was positive too. We isolated Alia and Nour in their room until we knew if they got the virus or not, especially that Racha’s mother, Wafaa, was staying with us; she came to visit us for a couple of months and even though she is vaccinated, we didn’t want to take any risk with her.
Three days later Alia started feeling some symptoms (headache and a slight fever) while Nour was doing OK. Two more days and we got the confirmation that Alia is positive, while Nour is not. It was (and still is) quite unbelievable: they were both in contact with the same person to begin with, then they were isolated in the same closed room for five days without passing the virus to one another. Add to that they are twins, and that they usually react exactly the same way to all viruses and diseases since they were born. The only explanation I could think of was that Nour probably contracted a symptomless and noncontagious version of the virus earlier and was immune (today we know this was not the case since she is actually positive).
We already knew that the Covid-19 is definitely not your casual virus and that each individual reacts (very) differently to it, but twins cases like Alia and Nour’s are really hard to understand. I guess they could be a case study.

My Second Corona Christmas
Last year, I was tested positive on the 18th of December, and I spent my first ever Christmas alone in a room. This year, after we cancelled my mother’s and my brother’s family’s travel to Berlin, we decided to invite our Berlin-based Lebanese friends and family to a Christmas dinner. We were planning a big dinner with 20 persons (including 6 children). We decided the menu together and did some shopping together, bought gifts for everyone (er… I mean Santa Claus dropped by and left gifts for everyone under the tree) and were preparing for the big reunion, when, on the morning of the 23rd, we received a message that one of our guests (that we met a day before) tested positive. Three minutes later everyone was contacted and informed that the dinner was called off, and that we will divide all the food and drinks for each family to pass and collect them from our place (this operation took three hours!).
We decided to keep the good spirit and to enjoy our small comity Christmas (the five of us plus Racha’s mother and brother, Wafaa and Ahmad who were both sleeping at our place for the holidays and who also met the Covid infected friend).
On the night of the 24th, Evan said he is feeling a weird pain in the throat; not very strong, but weird, not like the usual throat pain. We did a rapid test that was negative, then we had our (great) dinner and opened the gifts and drank and danced until 5AM. The day after, we slept all day. Evan was feeling totally Ok. On Sunday 26th, Evan asked me to test him so he can go out see his friends the day after (fifth day of his quarantine). I tested him twice, both positive. We isolated him in his room. Later that night, I started to feel a weird pain in my throat but thought it might be psychological. On Monday morning we all went to the closest private test centre where all seven of us tested negative. We then paid for a PCR test for Evan only. The results came at midnight: positive. The next morning, Nour and I tested positive at home while Racha, Alia, Ahmad and Wafaa were still negative. Ahmad and Wafaa decided to pay for a PCR and, in case it was negative, to book return flights for Lebanon on the day after. The day after (Wednesday 29), Racha tested positive at home and Ahmad and Wafaa got their negative PCR and left for Lebanon. In the afternoon, the whole family except Evan went for PCR tests at a state testing centre. At this point, Alia was feeling symptoms too (severe blocked nose and extreme fatigue) but her home tests were negative and we were more or less sure she was negative since she was supposed to be immune for at least 5 months. On Thursday evening we received the PCR results: we were all positive, including Alia.
Another case study if there is any Covid-19 researcher reading this (we won’t charge you).

Our Second Corona New Year’s Eve
For New Year’s Eve, we were preparing to do it with a very small amount of friends (6).
Then we decided to do it alone.
We ended up doing it with Corona.
(We had fun nevertheless).

Are the German Private Test Centres Criminals or Just Plain Incompetents?
Before leaving you to enjoy a new Corona year, I cannot but tell you our story with the private test centres in Berlin.
First of all you need to know that in Berlin, everyone is entitled to one free antigen test per day. There are private test centres in literally every street, and the tests they do are paid back by the government. Last spring, a first scandal was revealed in the press, where one journalist counted all the people who visited one of these centres on a given day, and compared with the number of tests declared by the said centre for the same day: the declared tests were three times higher than the actual people who got tested. The scandal was in the newspapers and on TV for a week, and then we never heard about it again (we thought of course that the problem was dealt with, with the world famous German efficiency). Many of those centres do also PCR tests that cost between 55 and 100 Euros, depending if you want the result in the same day or on the next day; however, if you test positive with an antigen test, you are entitled to a free PCR test from the private test centres, and this is where our nice story starts.
After Alia started feeling symptoms in November, I tested her at home with an antigen self-test, and it was positive. We took Alia and the test to the closest private center, and asked them to do a free PCR test. They said that a home made test doesn’t count and that she should test positive at the center in order to get a free PCR test. They tested her and she was negative. We brought her back home thinking our home test was erroneous which is quite common. The second day, she had more symptoms, some that are clearly related to Covid-19 (loss of smell and taste); I tested her again at home, and she was positive. We took her to another private test centre a little bit further away, and we received the same answer; then they tested her and she was negative. Racha then asked the people there: should I send her to school then? Of course madam was their answer. We decided then to pay for the PCR test; the result came the same night: positive (as expected).
Fast-forward to a month later, when Evan tested twice positive with a home test. Since the whole family was already quarantining at home with him, we decided to all go and make tests at the close-by private centre. All seven of us were negative. And again the test centre was telling us to just continue living and going out as usual. We paid a PCR test for Evan to make sure, and it was positive. Racha, Alia, Nour and I decided then to go to the public test centre where we all tested positive. We didn’t go first to the public test center because it is very far and we had to ride the metro which we wanted to avoid for the safety of other people; besides, we had to wait in a 2 hours queue in the cold and rain, with a proximity to a lot of other people who were probably not infected.
So in short, Alia could have gone to school in November and infected as many people there as possible, and in December, the whole family could have visited friends, shops, restaurants, etc.
I wonder why no one is talking about this new scandal. I doubt that we are the only people to whom it happened. My theory is that the (efficient) German people do not like to have their face shoved in their own shit.
Is there a journalist reading this?

Things We’ve Learned in 2021
1- You can be infected – albeit with lighter symptoms – even if you are vaccinated. This was a difficult pill to swallow, but it took us very little time to swallow it, like all the rest since the beginning (I can see you laughing my anti-vaxxer friends).
2- You can be infected twice, and in the same month.
3- Covid tests and vaccines are two merchandise like any others.
4- We are far from done with this shit.

… and a happy new year.