I have wanted to write this post for a few months now but as I know it is such a controversial topic, it has been hard to put pen to paper without speaking with some actual experience.

So here I am, 3 weeks after having tested positive for Covid-19 and this is my personal experience.

Firstly the reason I went to be tested was that I was supposed to go to a Christmas Eve Dinner with some close friends. It is a tradition formed quite a few years ago where a small group of us get together for a proper sit down meal and our host prepares an amazing meal for us, followed by Santa arriving secretly with big sacks of presents for the children which they go out to find in the field.

We didn’t have any specific symptoms that we thought were Covid related but there was some doubt at the back of our minds. So out of respect for our host, we thought we should test before attending.

So what were these doubts?

My partner had been having some stomach trouble a few days prior with some diarhea and general uneasiness. He normally has a sensitive stomach so we didn’t think it was abnormal at the time and certainly didn’t think it was Covid related. A few days earlier he had also had a mild fever for about 36 hours. Again probably related to gastric flu and it did not ring any alarm bells.

I had felt slightly off for a day or 2, again nothing major. Just feeling 90% rather that 100% well. And looking back after the fact, I had an episode where I falsely accused my dearly beloved of putting sweetener in my tea. My system seems to be intolerant to sweetener as it makes me really ill. This includes any form of dietary supplements, meal replacements, diet drinks etc. I get quite ill from it so I know to stay away from it all. I also don’t keep any sweetener in my grocery cupboard. So thinking back, this was probably an indication of Covid affecting my taste buds. But again, my taste buds are compromised due to a battle with Throat Cancer a few years prior and again I didn’t have a second thought as to why my taste was off. Again this was short lived with my taste returning to normal 2 days later.

So on the surface of it all, we did not think we had Covid and were quite surprised when we came back positive. We had been careful of who we met with and to this day we have no idea who we could have contracted if from. We always wore masks when going out and sanitised as required and limited where we went to and who we saw.

Once we tested positive on the 24th December 2020, we isolated immediately and started on the following medication (we had these on hand):

• Vitamin C (We had been taking loads of Vitamin C prior anyway but upped our dose to a few chewable tablets per day.
• Azithromyacin – An antibiotic used for upper respiratory infections

The health department also sent a team out to visit us on the 26th December and they gave us the same medication as above but added Zinc and Asprin to the list.

We had also done extensive research on the benefits of Ivormectin and took some orally on the 27th and then again 3 days later. Ivormectin had been banned by South Africa a few days earlier but as we deal with animals, we took the vetinary grade (injectable version taken orally in some juice – slightly bitter taste but am alive and well to tell the tale). There is extensive studies about the benefits of taking Ivormectin for Covid-19 on the web and YouTube so please go and look it up.

The following week or so was followed by us feeling not bad, but fatigued is as best as I can describe it. We were not sick, but found we tired quickly. We were up early everyday. We had a swim in the dam most days, sat outside in the fresh air and functioned fairly normally except we found we had to rest and slept more than usual.

My partner also found his blood pressure increased considerably so we kept a close eye on it and he also started with a dry nagging cough which he struggled with for about 2 weeks. He thinks it was a side effect of taking Azithromycin as he found it dried out his system.

Now 3 weeks later we are back to normal and haven’t had any symptoms for probably 12 days.

We live in a small farming community and we personally know about 40-50 people who have tested positive. All are well and none of them have had any adverse effects and have experienced no more than mild symptoms. A friend of ours yesterday described his experience as a mild flu with a mild hangover.

We also know of a one or two people within our extended community having died but I am unable to give context to this as to what exactly their circumstances were and if they had any underlying causes.

My father-in-law also tested positive. He is 77 years old. He had some bodily aches for a few days and we treated him with Ivermectin and the same medication we had when he first complained. Other than that he has had no other symptoms, no fatigue and has carried on with his daily routine despite being positive.

So what are my thoughts on it all? And this is where it gets controversial.

I have lived the experience and I have watched others live the experience so I can only comment on this.

Prior to “lock-down” towards the end of March 2020, my company employed some 194 people. Due to the lock-down we had to stop operating with only a small part of our company re-opening in the last half of the year. But with the effects on not being able to operate fully, we have found ourselves unable to recover and 194 people are now unemployed. A very sad state of affairs. My heart goes out to them and their families as I know they will not find alternative employment with the majority probably not finding employment at all for a very long time. We live in a country where the unemployment rate was well above 25% at the start of the outbreak and I am sure this figure now sits at above 50%.

The Government offered a benefit to companies for their staff to accommodate the loss of income. However we managed to claim for 1 month out of 8 successfully with it being extremely difficult to use their online portal with no support or assistance and no hope of the other 7 months being paid out for no other reason other than the Governments inability to manage their systems correctly and I won’t go down the road of bringing up the fraud and misuse of tax payers money as part of this post. That aside, our company has been a victim of not of Covid itself, but of Governments inability to think of the consequences of their actions. Every single 1 of our 194 employees would rather risk Covid than being unemployed and not being able to put food on the table.

The daily Coronavirus Death Toll numbers are staggering – or are they? That is the million dollar question. The real facts are that people are not dying in the streets and statistics need to be taken in context. And yes, people are dying. Can one put a value on life? Is 1 death too many? So where lies the line one may ask.

Just for some perspective, I found the following information on Worldometer for the 2021 year to date. Almost double the number of people have died from Cancer so far this year than from Covid-19 and we turn a blind eye to this. I am a Cancer Survivor and I can honestly say that I would gamble with Covid-19 anyday over Cancer.

The negative effects to lockdown has caused poverty, malnutrition, unemployment, loss of income, destruction of businesses, disruption to food supplies and food security, distress sale of assets, suicides, long term mental effects, disruption of education, chronic loneliness, increase of domestic violence, the list is endless. How will we mitigate all of this against the virus itself is the question. There are a privileged few who can work from home or are able to sit at home and wait it all out, but the vast majority of us have to go out to work to put food on the table. Finding a way forward in dealing with the virus will require a reckoning with the harm, the hurt and the death that lockdown, not the virus itself, has caused.

There is not a day that goes by where I do not do some form of research on Covid-19. I have read hundred’s of articles on the subject from scientific papers to government statements to conspiracy theories. And the only thing I am sure of, is that there is no consensus. And I am flabbergasted at this. How can there still be such controversy a year later. So in the absence of truth, all I can base my opinion on is my own personal experience.

I am not sure I have convinced you one way or another that the virus is nothing to be scared of. But then I didn’t set out to change your mind. All I wanted was to share my personal experience.

I hope the powers that be find a solution quickly to not only curing the Virus itself but also to the catastrophic consequences of the lockdowns for it is killing us one way or the other.