Journal Of A Plague Year
- Michael Jay Tucker's explosive-cargo
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Okay, so far, this story of our attempt to build a small office in our backyard -- the Casita -- has been relatively light-hearted. That’s going to have to change for a bit. You see, I have to write about Covid.
It isn’t easy to be funny about a disease that directly or indirectly caused the deaths of over a million Americans, and heaven only knows how many more world-wide.(1) So, I won’t try. Suffice to say that just after we’d gotten rid of our rat problem, and we thought we would be able to move forward...it hit.
I think we both had it way back in the early months of 2019. But I’m not certain. All I know is that we got incredibly sick. I mean, we were as sick as we’d ever been. We were so sick, I considered taking us to the hospital. But we somehow convinced ourselves that we’d get through it without such measures. Though, we did call our doctors...who told us it was probably just one of the minor respiratory ailments currently making the rounds. Nothing dramatic. Nothing to worry about.
Maybe they should have guessed it was Covid, but, let’s get real. There wasn’t much known about the disease right then.(2) At the time, “Covid” didn’t even have a proper name. It was still just a “Novel Coronavirus.” It had been detected in California, but not in Texas. People were hoping it would magically somehow stop at the edge of the Rocky Mountains. It didn’t.
Which brings up the question: where did Martha and I get it? Well, we travel a lot. So we’d been in a number of airports. And we’d been to a couple of large gatherings...concerts and such...at which there may have been visitors from abroad. Austin is increasingly a crossroads city. Any high-tech center is. So, somewhere along the way, maybe we encountered someone who’d been to Wuhan...or who’d been in contact with someone who had. Six degrees of separation and all that.
Honestly, I can’t say for certain that we had Covid. There are some indications that we didn’t. After we’d recovered, and we learned more about the disease, I wanted to donate plasma. People were pushing that at the time, before there were vaccines available. The idea was that people who’d already had the disease would donate blood and their antibodies could be isolated and given to people who were currently ill. (3)
However, when I finally convinced my GP to give me a blood test to see if I had those antibodies, the results came back negative. According to that test, I’d never had Covid.(4)
On the other hand, Martha and I had all the symptoms. Every last one of them. And we were sick for a month. And, most significant of all, once we were “recovered,” we never caught Covid again...even though I know for a fact that we were repeatedly exposed to it. And even though this was long before there were vaccines available.
Anyway, we got better, but then we watched with amazement and horror as the whole world seemed to get worse. Which, of course, is what happened to us all in that tragic time. We all share that strange memory. For some, indeed, it was terrible. A friend who is a medical professional in New England wrote to me about watching while bodies went into freezer trucks, for lack of space in the morgue...
Time passed. Finally there were vaccines to be had. (God bless Operation Warp Speed.) And the world seemed to get back to something like normal. But...even so...
We were a little stunned. And the world was a little stunned. And it took us a bit to recover. We weren’t moving forward on the Casita because...well, obviously...it seemed rather a small thing to worry about at the time. It was almost disrespectful to the dead to worry about a little thing like our office space, or lack there-of.
But, finally, it was 2021. Covid was far from done, but at least we saw the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, and it wasn’t even a train. It would still be a long while before the world was back to normal, and longer still before we could actually find a contractor or hire builders. But, at least, we could *think* about the issue again. Even if we couldn’t move forward just yet.
So, we figured...progress! Only a matter of time now, we said to ourselves. You betcha.
And then...
And then...
It was February of 2021.
And suddenly...inexplicable...fiercely...
It got cold.
More to come.
Footnotes:
1. See “COVID-19 pandemic in the United States,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States
2. See Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 Timeline, CDC Museum, accessed January 5, 2025, https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html.
3. This is known as “convalescent plasma therapy.” See this page on the Mayo Clinic site for more: https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/convalescent-plasma-therapy/about/pac-20486440
4. On the other hand, it was a very early test, and I’m not sure it was entirely to be trusted. At that time, doctors were having trouble deciding if a person actually had the disease, much less whether they’d had it at some point in the past.
About the images: I don’t have and don’t wish to have photographs dealing with Covid. Instead, I’ll post here some of the images I generated at the time to encourage people to take precautions and to get vaccinations after the vaccines were finally available. I am distressed that, even now, even after all that’s happened, anti-vax activism still exists, and is still claiming lives and ruining childhoods. (See https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/measles-encephalitis-south-carolina-anti-vaccine-b2918500.html.)
Copyright©2026 Michael Jay Tucker
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That is definitely a great story and we two are amazed that there are so many anti-VAX’s out there especially the ones that are in the government in high spots not very smart. Are they?