My blog

Day 1. Thursday. I bet all my money that I'll get infected that day because I spend two hours in the crowd at the Independence March and then eat dinner at a crowded bar in a Japanese restaurant where I waited in line to get in.

Day 2. Friday. I work from home. I run. I go to Lidl.

Day 3. Saturday. I'm going to the market with the kids. I'm going to Auchan with the kids. I'm running.

Day 4. Sunday. I'm at home with a break for running.

Day 5. Monday. When I wake up, I feel like I might be catching a cold. The symptoms are familiar to me. A slight runny nose and slight bone aches. Despite this, I run in the afternoon. I have a stationary training trip planned for Tuesday and Wednesday. The trip is to take place today, in the afternoon. I call the person I'm going to travel with in the same car and tell them what the situation is. We agree that, like all the training participants, I will take a test before leaving. I do the test in the afternoon. I use the SGTi-flex COVID-19 Ag rapid antigen test, which costs a few dozen złoty each. The result is negative. I get in the car with two women my age. A three-hour journey awaits us.

Day 6. First day of training. Twenty people are taking part. Small, poorly air-conditioned room in a hotel. All participants are vaccinated. All participants have an antigen test (the same one) done immediately before the training with a negative result. I feel no worse. I sniffle a little. When I lie down, I have shivers.

Day 7. Second day of training. I wake up sweaty, I must have had a fever during the night. I feel worse, but not too bad. I sniffle and snort harder. My car mate has been catching a cold since morning. She suggests we repeat the test. My result is positive. I repeat it after 10 minutes. The result is positive again. I interrupt the training and return to Warsaw alone. I call my family doctor. I ask for a referral for a government test. The doctor says she won't give me a referral because if I have a positive result from a pharmacy test, the government test is not repeated and the patient is considered infected. So I ask if there is any form of treatment, some medicines or something. She replies that it is adequate to the condition, and in my condition you don't need to do anything, just rest and drink lots of water. The doctor does not inform me whether I should report the fact of infection. After the remote consultation, I go to the website patient.gov.pl. I fill out a form in which I indicate that I have had contact with an infected person. Twenty minutes later I receive a text message with a referral code for the test. I search for a facility in Warsaw and at 7:10 PM I take the government test. The result is supposed to be ready within 24 hours.

Day 8. I feel even worse. Fever at night. Muscles ache. My head spins. Cough and runny nose. But my throat doesn't hurt. I breathe normally. My sense of taste and smell are getting a little worse, but not to the point of losing them. I eat pasta with tomatoes for lunch - basil and garlic taste weaker than usual. And although I feel worse, I would rather describe my condition as a common cold. I feel exactly the same as I did during the colds I've had before - nothing serious. Around ten o'clock I go to the lab's website. The result is positive. In the document I download, I read that the test method is "qualitative determination of the presence of SARS-CoV-2 virus RNA using real-time polymerase chain reaction technique preceded by reverse transcription" and that the specificity of the test is "lack of interference with influenza A virus (H1N1, H3N2, H7N9, H5N1), influenza B virus (Yamagata, Victoria), respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), respiratory adenovirus (type 3, type 7), Haemophilus influenzae, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae". Whatever that means, it probably sounds positive. Two hours later, I get a call from the district sanitary inspectorate. The lady asks me where I think I got infected. I say most likely at the Independence March. The lady asks me to provide the first and last names of all the people I have had contact with in the last 7 days. I say that I was a participant in a training session among twenty people. The lady asks me for my name and surname and the phone number of the organizer. I say that I am the organizer and that I can give you the contact details of the participants. The lady asks me to ask all of these people to report for quarantine, unless they are vaccinated, in which case they don't have to. I do this immediately after the conversation ends. The lady asks me to provide the PESEL numbers of the people I live with. For each of the people listed, she checks in the system whether the person is vaccinated - if they were not, she would order quarantine. The lady informs me that she is ordering isolation for me, i.e. a ban on leaving the house for 11 days. An hour after the conversation, I get a call from an automated system informing me that I am not allowed to leave the house until November 27 and that I must install the government application "Quarantine", which will give me tasks that I must perform.

Day 9. I feel better. It seems that day 8 was the turning point and the peak of my illness. I am in contact with the training participants. No one has any symptoms of illness, except my fellow passenger. She feels worse, has a temperature, but the test result is negative.

Day 10. That's today. I feel good. I still have a slight cough and a slight runny nose, but the worst is behind me. If all goes well, I'll be running tomorrow. My fellow passenger feels similarly to yesterday, i.e. badly. But the test comes back positive. So it looks like she's the only person out of twenty training participants that I've infected.

From my story I draw the following conclusions.

First. If you have any symptoms of illness, for the good of others, always stay home, even if you are vaccinated.

Secondly. It is not true that testing can limit coronavirus. Testing can be misleading. A negative result does not mean that you are not infected. A negative result does not mean that you are not contagious. The only way to look at tests is: if you have a positive result, you know that you are 100% infected, and if you have a negative result, you know nothing and do not draw any conclusions.

Third. Just because you're vaccinated doesn't mean you can't get the virus. You can. Although not as easily as if you weren't vaccinated. I infected one in twenty vaccinated people - 5%. If those people weren't vaccinated, the rate would be completely different.

Fourth, just because you are vaccinated does not mean you cannot infect others.

Fifth. If you are vaccinated, even if you are over fifty, the infection is mild.

Sixth. If you are vaccinated, you will not die. At least from COVID.