Singapore’s unwelcome parting gift
Note: I’ve been back in Colorado for the past month, but still have a lot of stories to share with you from Vietnam. I first wrote this post in April and debated whether to publish it. People – especially in the US – get really sensitive when you remind them about the pandemic – or about masking. I wrote this mostly to process my own emotions around getting COVID for the first time (hopefully the only time, but I really doubt it). So, this post sat in a folder, neglected until this week, when, once again here in the US, I had a bunch of reminders that COVID is still floating around and impacting people’s lives every day.
Singapore sent me off with an unwelcome parting gift. When you have successfully avoided the plague for three years (especially while living in the US), you start to get a little cocky. You see advertisements for studies of ‘people who have never tested positive for COVID-19’ and you think: Yes, that’s me! I’ve never tested positive!
But when you wear a mask in public, avoid crowds and indoor gatherings, generally do your shopping online, and find yourself checking for hand sanitizer and a mask in your bag as religiously as you check for your phone and your keys, it IS possible to avoid the virus. N95 masks are spectacular protection, based on my experience on several trans-oceanic flights where I’m now sure there is always someone who is COVID positive on board.
In Vietnam I felt my guard drop. I felt myself relax. Unlike in the US, not so many people have had COVID. Outdoor dining options are ubiquitous. People always have masks on hand – even if it’s for the air pollution (see my other post on that). COVID hasn’t really been a worry.
But Singapore was different. Having dropped their public masking policy a little more than a month before I got there in late March, they were experiencing a surge. I didn’t know that, but it wouldn’t have made a difference in my behavior. I still masked in public places, as best I could – but there were so many people, from all over the world. So many languages, customs, and attitudes about masks. While no one looks twice if you’re masked in Vietnam, Westerners give some strange looks when they see you, another Westerner, wearing a mask. Maybe they think that because I have the mask on, I don’t see the strange looks they give me. With a mask on, people don’t really feel the need to talk to me. Maybe it’s just my imagination, or the paranoia I feel from having lived in a place where masks are seen as a political statement, not a tool for promoting public health.
I knew I had been exposed in Singapore. I tested negative the night before my flight back to Dalat, but woke up with a headache on the day of the flight. I sometimes get several headaches a week, so I didn’t think much of it, but early in that first flight to Ho Chi Minh City, my headache vanished suddenly and a telltale tickle that signals the start of most respiratory illnesses appeared in the back of my throat. I froze for a moment. Maybe it was just the dry air in the plane? I checked the seal of the N95 that I ALWAYS wear when flying or roaming around airports. As I mentioned, these masks have protected me so many times. But now I was asking myself a different question: is this enough to protect all the people sitting around me who aren’t wearing masks? There were really very few of us wearing masks, and most of those masks were surgical masks, not the 3M NIOSH-approved N95 respirator plastered to my face.
I could only hope. I refused to drink water on the flight, but found myself famished and needed to pop half a granola bar under my mask. Before lifting the mask, I took a deep breath in, hoping that would keep germs from flooding out. If I had germs. And as if that would help. I suppose it could have been just as helpful to say a prayer to the god of germs.
And, I did have germs.
Two mornings later, I finally had the positive test I have been expecting, along with a mild cough, body aches, continuing congestion, and a headache that wouldn’t quit. Except for a quick trip to the corner market (with N95 in place) the evening that I got back to Dalat, I hadn’t left my apartment in two days. And now I would be staying for several more.
Before I go on, I should say to Singapore: No hard feelings! Anyone who goes out into the world and tries to live their life will eventually be exposed to COVID. This virus has been very crafty and it’s hard to avoid. But in thinking about how easily and silently it spreads, I can’t help but look back on that week I got COVID and cringe.
At least on my flight back to Vietnam, the cabin air was probably being recycled through HEPA air filter every 2 to 3 minutes. But I cringe most thinking about my last day in Singapore, when I had no clue I was carrying the virus, and was probably contagious. That morning, I took a long elevator ride 56 floors up to the SkyPark Observation Deck at the top of the famed Marina Bay Sands Hotel. Tourists were packed like sardines in those elevators, both on the way up and on the way down. I probably heard five different languages on the ride up. There was a lady in a wheelchair, and an old man with a cane, some kids, and an assortment of middle-aged people. Of the 15 people or so crammed in that tiny space, I was the only one with a mask on. And it wasn’t my best mask. It wasn’t my N95.
And I cringe. Because I know I may have exposed all those people, and there’s nothing I could do about it. None of them had masks on. Maybe they’ve all had COVID and don’t worry about it anymore? Maybe they know they’re taking their chances and are ok with the thought that someone with COVID could be standing next to them? Now that I’ve had COVID, I really don’t want it again. I know some people are asymptomatic, and most people claim ‘it’s just a cold.’ Sure, my symptoms were mild enough not to need medical attention, but I was laid up for a week, utterly exhausted for another week, and it took about two months to be able to run again without my heart racing. I’d rather not have to experience it again. I know symptoms are different for everyone, and are different every time you get it, but I also don’t want to feel this guilt again, of knowing I likely exposed a bunch of people in a tight elevator.
I know there are plenty of people, especially in the US, who would think I’m being overly sensitive and would say that everyone needs to take care of themselves – that we are not responsible for other people if they choose not to protect themselves. That’s the American way these days: look out for yourself and let other people deal with their own problems – even if their problem is caused by your actions.
And this irks me. Because we are not going to survive the existential crises that we face (pandemics, climate change, biodiversity collapse, war, collapse of reality with AI) if we do not uphold a sense of social responsibility – a genuine care and concern for our fellow people. That is at the heart of the solution to every big global challenge that we face here in the 21st century, and some days, it’s hard to see evidence of us moving in that direction, especially living in a country so divided. All I can do is act on my best intentions and good will for others – and hope others do the same.
Maybe that’s what I’ve learned as I join the stream of humanity that have held coronavirus in their bloodstream. It was a reminder that we are all intricately connected on this planet by the space we share, the food we eat and the air we breath and we need to take care of these things for each other, as we take care of each other.
So, for the time being, I will continue to carry a mask with me wherever I go. Will I use it? Maybe not in an empty grocery store, or walking down the hallway in my building on campus. I really don’t want to wear it while teaching, but I will wear one at any sign of a scratchy throat or in crowded auditoriums and on airplanes. And I will still steer clear of stuffy restaurants in midwinter. I will also continue to rely on updated vaccines to train my T cells to attack the virus and keep me from getting anything but mild, temporary COVID.
COVID is with us forever. Hopefully its’ evolution settles into a lineage that’s more easily and predictably tackled by vaccines. In the mean time, I’ll do what I can to minimize the chance of having to give up more weeks of my life to COVID recovery, and to avoid giving it to anyone else.