I did this sketch of Pam using the hammock to do her office work. I sat inside looking through a glass panel of the back door. Since there are no interruptions she apparently has been getting a whole lot more work done. Today is day three of living with the COVID-19 virus in the home. On Saturday July 16, 2022 the positive test was confirmed with an at home test for a member of the household. Pam tested negative as did I. The open air back patio was a safe space for the two of us for the first few days of quarantine.
Everyone is sleeping in separate bedrooms and the person who tested positive is staying in a guest bedroom behind a closed door for much of the day. The problem is that there is no bathroom attached to that bedroom. There is only a common bathroom in the hallway. We have worked around that issue by placing a portable HEPA filter in the hall outside the bathroom.
The first several nights I slept in the bedroom that faces out on the back patio. The air conditioning was on in the house and the air intake for the AC is in the hallway, which, as I noted has to be used to get to the bathroom. My thought therefor was that the AC may circulate virus throughout the house. I thought by opening the bedroom windows, the virus might get blown outside before it gets blown into my lungs. I had the odd habit of putting on a cloth mask when I heard the air conditioner turn on and then I would take the mask off when it turned off. The problem with this of course is that eventually I fell asleep and the mask stayed off.
Having to stay isolated in a bedroom for days on end can make anyone stir crazy. Last night the COVID positive patient left the quarantine room and sat outside in the hammock. The quarantine room windows were opened during this hammock time and surfaces wiped down. When I went to bed last night I wondered if I should open the windows since the back patio was now part of the quarantine zone. The virus was again inside the home. The AC must be circulating the virus again. I finally decided the benefits of opening the window outweighed the risk of the virus lingering in the air outside. Also with the AC on, air would rush out of the window rather than coming back into the bedroom.
Today I chose to change my safe zone from the back patio to the front porch. I set up a card table and lawn chair on the front port and that is where I went for breakfast and lunch today. Breakfast went fine as I ate my eggs and read the days news on by phone with my mask off. However at lunch time, a persistent fly found out I had food, so I moved into my car to relax and eat. I wasn’t going to spend my entire lunch battling a fly.
There are just two more full days of quarantine left and the COVID case seems to be a minor one. BA 5 thankfully has not in this case caused shortness of breath. Fever was countered by a cold shower and the only other major symptom seems to have been a runny nose. According to CDC guidelines, after the quarantine period the infected individual can go about life as usual as long as they stay masked. Everyone in the family can then finally sit down to dinner together after another 5 days.