Tfw you got covid from a tractor

No I don't currently have covid. That I know of. But isn't there a little bit of covid in us all?

This sign was up until a few weeks ago in an establishment in my cutting-edge Toronto neighborhood.

It must have been that person on the bus who coughed. Or perhaps it was a servant or service worker of some kind, come in from their covid-ridden hovel, too overworked to be boosted, and now look what they did to you, life’s protagonist.

It is 2023. We know that covid is airborne. We know that even in a mask, even vaxxed to the gills (which I would be, but for having caught covid at a time that makes me still ineligible for bivalent), it’s being passed around like a joint by a bunch of 15-year-old boys on the Upper West Side in 1997 convinced they’re gangsters. We know. We know!

And yet one is still hearing about The Person Who Gave/Might Give Me Covid. I don’t mean in the sense of idle speculation, but a pointed, latex-gloved, hand-sanitized finger in the direction of the anthropomorphized germ who is basically out to murder you.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy 🐩 @BovyMaltz

Beware the Some Rando variant.

The thing is, with covid, you don’t know. It’s not a sexually transmitted infection, where, unless you’re a particularly energetic individual, you can probably roughly narrow it down. It could have been someone sitting near you in the restaurant. It could have been the air in the restaurant. You don’t know. You don’t know!