As you may remember, my Top Comments diary last week was all about my trip to Toronto to make music with friends. I am so glad I went, and I’ll reiterate I had the BEST time at Jam. I brought home so many new memories with old and new friends!!! Alas, I also brought home more than the two bottles of maple syrup. I woke up middle of the night with sniffles, and a thick throat, and…
Yeah, you know how this goes. I tested immediately on Tuesday morning and got a very faint yet unmistakable line in the dreaded Test area. I hadn’t been planning on a third round of covid, but at least I know the drill by now. As paxlovid is now out of financial reach for ordinary Americans, this was my first time not taking meds. Thankfully my symptoms have been minor… sniffles, a thick-feeling throat, some coughing the first few days, and fatigue. I am also truly grateful that I did not get that awful covid symptom, “razor blade throat”.
The first thing I did after seeing my test result was to text my family the news, since it affected everyone in different ways. The second thing I did was to go to the Discord group that Toronto Jammers created and let everyone know I’d tested positive. And this is where it got interesting. Two folks had been sick *during* Jam but hadn’t thought to test for covid until Sunday, after I’d left… and as far as I know, didn’t share those results with anyone else. Several others I’d seen mentioning “sniffles” or “a cold” but also hadn’t tested. Once I shared my result, there was a flurry of testing.
Over the next 24 hours, FOURTEEN of the sixty or so people who’d attended that weekend tested positive, and another two had symptoms but repeatedly over the next week tested negative (yes, they treated themselves as positive). That’s fully 25% of the attendees, which absolutely qualifies as a superspreader event. I can’t even imagine who else may have been exposed as we all traveled home. There was no rhyme or reason as to who came down with covid and who remained both asymptomatic and test-negative. We all shared microphones and tables. We hugged with wild abandon early and often. We were ALL vaxxed and boosted to one degree or another.
I share all this not for sympathy, but to make the point that as much as RFK Jr likes to discount both the severity of covid and the efficacy of vaccines in preventing death and serious illness, he’s wrong. Numbers are hard to verify but at a bare minimum hundreds of people in the United States are dying every week. My 89 year old father-in-law was one of those cases… he was exposed to covid by a household member who neither masked nor tested when he became symptomatic, developed pneumonia, and died horribly this past March. PLEASE take precautions, and even if you won’t mask in indoor spaces… and lets be clear, NONE of us in Toronto did, but were acutely aware of the risk we were taking and clearly lost… please take symptoms seriously and don’t assume those sniffles are “a cold” or “allergies”. They’re not.
How am I doing today, Day 7? Almost all symptoms are resolved and I feel 100% back to normal. However, that freekin’ Test line is darker than the Control and visible from space. In the past week I missed going with Mr. Brillig to see one of our favorite movies, Dogma, in an actual theater. He took a friend and I watched on DVD at home so we could talk about it after. I missed a planned outing with K1 to do some professional clothing/birthday shopping, and though she was amazing and texted me pictures of everything, it wasn’t the same. I missed being in-person for the last sermon my wonderful minister preached, and hopefully will be able to hug her goodbye next Sunday before she has to cut contact with us as the denomination guidelines require. I hate masking up every time I leave our guest room, but I refuse to endanger Mr. Brillig or K2. I’ll test again on Wednesday.
I do know that CDC guidelines say I can go out masked and if it were an emergency, I certainly would.. but I have the privilege of not needing to do so and I ethically feel it’s my job to stay home.
Would monitoring for local ICE raids and going to cough on them be considered an emergency? I KNOW those identity-concealing balaklavas they wear aren’t N95s :).
Let’s go take a look at the Tops. I know we’ve got three days of Top Mojo to bring!
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TOP COMMENTS
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There were no nominations. There weren’t even any highlights when I searched!! Please don’t make me grovel. It’s not pretty. Send them in if you find them!!!
TOP MOJO
First comments and tip jars are excluded. Thank you mik for the mojo magic! For those of you interested in How Top Mojo Works, please see his diary on FAQing Top Mojo.
Sunday, June 8th 2025
