What it’s like getting BA5 — Live From a JET’s Apartment

JETs, as you are all likely well aware by now, old mate covid is back on the prowl in Japan. Japan is in its eighth wave of cases stemming from the virus, majority of these being the highly transmissible BA.5 variant of the Omicron strain. A few restrictions that may have previously been relaxed for summer have cropped up again in my city, and with winter on our doorstep it’s probably only going to get worse. If that sounds ominous, yeah, it totally is. So for those of you that have managed to avoid the virus so far, my congratulations, and please let me tell you what it’s like to contract BA.5 and stay home for 10 days.

Day 1:

I wake up with a sore throat. I assume it’s because I was out at a bar last night and it felt like every person inside was trying to see who could replicate a life-sized cloud made out of cigarette smoke the fastest. I’m not a smoker myself, and haven’t been around enough to develop a tolerance for it, so I chalk the whole thing up to me having a weak constitution akin to a Victorian peasant child. Throughout the day, I develop a runny nose that won’t let up, and witness my voice pack its bags and leave me without so much as a kiss goodbye. I continue to watch TV and generally do normal Saturday things around the house until I realise I’m about to fall asleep on the couch from sheer exhaustion, and promptly go to bed at 8pm.

Day 2:

I feel like I have been run over by a large bus in my sleep. Maybe several buses? …Probably just the one, but I think it reversed back over me for good measure. I attempt to get out of bed, and everything hurts. I suspect someone has transplanted my brain into the body of someone sixty years older than me, who lived a significantly more strenuous life than I have so far, because all of my joints protest all at once with practiced despair. Being vertical is too much of a challenge, so I spend the whole day in various states of horizontal. I alternate between blowing my nose, clearing my throat, and coughing. At some point I realise I probably have a fever as it’s peak summer, I am under my duvet in full pyjamas with the aircon off, and I am still a little chilly. However, I don’t have a thermometer, and even if I did, I wouldn’t get out of bed to check because I already know I’m right. I attempt to listen to an ebook because it’s the least offensive form of entertainment I can handle while I’m awake, and promptly fall asleep. It’s 11 am. The ebook has long since stopped playing when I wake up next. Repeat this cycle several times until my parents call me in the evening. My mother tells me that on account of my symptoms coming on so quickly, it’s probably just a summer cold and that I’ll be over it tomorrow.

Day 3:

I wake up and still have a sore throat, runny nose, and my cough is turning more fierce and wracking. I sleep until 9am, when I am lucid enough to ring my supervisor and say I won’t be attending school, which she’s already realised. I don’t even need to say it, because upon hearing my hoarse voice my supervisor tells me to stay home before I can say I’m already doing that. I gather enough strength to make it to the walk-in doctor’s clinic, only to be told they’re too busy and that I need to come back in four hours. I slither home. Four hours later, I shuffle back to the tent crouching in their carpark, because I’m not allowed through the front door or into the actual clinic building itself. I do battle with the nurse attempting to take my information, because I have lost my ability to understand spoken Japanese on account of the brain fog. She eventually, reluctantly, hands me the form to fill in my name after much gesturing and pointing, and is gobsmacked when I proceed to read, and subsequently fill in the entire form without issue after struggling to tell her in very halting Japanese that I would like a PCR test. I am equally shocked, as I had expected reading to be my final downfall but I guess it’s true that the brain doesn’t operate on equal terms. An indeterminate amount of time later, the nurse returns, armed with a nasal swab. She apologises profusely to me as she stirs the space behind my eyeball, and only balks a little when she sees I have a nose ring in the nostril she clearly favours on her usual test subjects. Several years later (I presume) she returns and tells me the test is positive. She seems genuinely confused that I am shocked by this. I have to wait for the doctor, who thankfully speaks English, and tells me he’s prescribing me six different medicines to take, and that I need to quarantine for ten days. The nurse accepts my cash payment in a ziplock bag attached to the end of a pole. When I next wake up, I’m in my own bed and have no memory of walking home.

Day 4:

I wake up sometime around 11am. I have missed several messages from several different people in my community asking me if I need anything, and now also due to the hour, if I am alive. I respond to these with varying degrees of ‘yes I’m doing okay’ and ‘please bring me Aquarius’. I undertake a great migration, which takes place between my bed and the couch in my lounge, approximately five metres away from each other. There is no ceremony when I arrive. Thankfully I am no longer drowning in a pool of my own nasal fluids, and can almost go a full three minutes without coughing. Later, every time I attempt to leave the couch, several of my body parts begin singing Britten’s Dies Irae to demonstrate the futility of whatever task it is I think I’m going to attempt. I accept several deposits of groceries from neighbours or friends, including half a celery, which now that it’s at my house, I regret requesting. I don’t actually like celery. Why did I do this? The next time I remember looking at a clock it’s sometime shortly before midnight, which my body takes as an imperative command and promptly collapses into bed.

Day 5:

I wake up closer to 10am to find my voice has returned from its cushy holiday. Today, I am the master of my own bones. I remember what I wanted the celery for, and make chicken noodle soup from scratch. The soup is delightful, full of vegetables and salt, and I brag about it on Instagram. It is the only task I am able to accomplish for the entire day. It’s absolutely worth it. I have three bowls while heartily criticising the women in Selling Sunset, and even have some left over for tomorrow and some to go in the freezer. I can’t say too much or laugh too hard otherwise my body tries to expel a lung, and I’d quite prefer to keep those. I sleep peacefully, secure in the knowledge I am the dominant soup maker in my neighbourhood.

Day 6:

My boxes of government-sanctioned life-sustaining goods arrive. It is the most exciting thing I can remember happening to me, maybe ever, but time is like a thick jelly to my senses and I can’t be trusted. The boxes contain assorted soups, noodles, canned meat, and tins of white peaches (specifically noted due to there being several tins of these and a distinct absence of anything else resembling fresh food). They also hold cleaning supplies, soap, masks(!) and most confusingly, a pack of donuts.I document the entire unboxing process on Instagram since it’s my only outlet for communication, and then I eat the donuts first. I make a Kitsune udon from 7/11 for dinner, and it’s delightful despite my misgivings. I start to look forward to dinners in various states of freeze-dried, and go to bed with kind thoughts.

Day 7:

Upon waking with last night’s thoughts still fresh in my brain I realise I am a fool. The food arrived yesterday and I am already repulsed by the thought of packets of freeze-dried egg soup which I don’t really want to eat. I decide instead to make harumaki with the fresh veg I had dropped off earlier in the week. It is exactly what I wanted, and I have another lengthy brag about it. I realise this is turning into a pattern and will likely affect my reemergence into society. I decide I’ve actually always been that obnoxious and play copious amounts of Skyrim to avoid thinking about my actions before going to bed early at 1am.

Day 8:

It is once again the weekend. I am beyond thrilled about this because it means I am allowed to sleep in — like I have been doing all week — except now I don’t have to feel bad about it! I eat something, definitely, but have no recollection of what it was. I expect it was something from the several cardboard boxes that have taken up residence on my kitchen floor. I am determined to conquer Pokemon Shining Pearl before my leisure time expires with the end of quarantine. I go to bed angry, having just lost my first ever battle, and it’s to my dumbass rival after a cutscene when I couldn’t heal my team. This feels like a vague metaphor for my quarantine experience, so I vow to try going to bed earlier so as not to be waking up around mid morning any more.

Day 9:

My cunning plan worked. I have the braincells once again, and I am awake before 10am! I have also had enough. I am finally at the Pokemon League, except the Champion keeps beating me to a pulp with her Garchomp and I’m tired of it. This feels like a metaphor for my life somehow, but evidently I don’t have the processing power to use the braincells enough to figure out how. Either way, let me out.

Day 10:

The final day. By now I feel fit as a fiddle, except that I am also sleeping for roughly ten hours per night and still sometimes taking a nap on top of that. I dread the return to my normal routine of waking up early and going to bed late. However, I feel rather like a mountain climber who has for days now been in sight of the peak, only to find very suddenly that they’re there. I did it. I beat the ‘vid. I am supreme among men.