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Sean Locke / Stocksy United
Do you remember what it was like to get Corona in 2020?
Your neighbor left a week's shopping (with cut flowers!) in front of your door - and your friends stood in front of the window to sing you a speedy recovery.
After a short phone call, your doctor sent you a sick note for the next three weeks ("Take a good rest!"), and the colleagues wished you a speedy recovery via video message.
Two years later there are no more flowers.
An exhausted driver slams the ordered groceries in front of their door, the neighborly empathy is now outsourced to delivery services.
"Let me know if you're negative again!" write the friends.
You now have to fight for sick leave – even if you are sweating all over your bedclothes and feverishly thinking about who could take care of your child.
And the boss asks: »Can you at least work from your home office?«.
Welcome to everyday life in a pandemic.
In the past few days I have collected reports from my friends, colleagues and people on Twitter for whom their corona infection has become an organizational odyssey.
For many, it starts with convincing others that they are sick: two dashes, a cough and a fever are far from making a Covid today.
It should be deep red, the line next to "T" (and probably glow in the dark), otherwise the shift manager will dismiss it: "It's still negative, you can work" - that's what a friend from Berlin told me.
With a friend, the second line was not recognized by the reader of the test station: "It's still too thin." Shrug of the shoulders.
The real challenge begins, however, when you have finally convinced the others that you have been infected - because anyone who needs a sick note now has to officially prove their infection.
In the event of symptoms, the Ministry of Health still advises: "Stay at home and ideally contact your family doctor by telephone." Anyone who can reach anyone there at all during the summer and staff shortages often hears something similar to what my friend said: " Do a PCR test and bring the result over to you” – because since June 1st you can no longer get sick leave over the phone.
So on to the test center;
for a PCR you first need an official rapid container test.
It's only stupid if the test person didn't pay attention during their 120-minute training and the secretion on the nose tickler isn't enough to detect the virus.
“Then you probably just have a cold.
There's still one!" A Twitter user heard after her official test was negative after three positive self-tests, she writes.
The fact that you really shouldn't stick your runny nose through the test hatch is another matter.
A colleague of mine had to fib that she had no symptoms in order to get a test – the alternative would have been to take her viruses to the other end of Hamburg, where you can also get the swab with symptoms.
In Cologne, too, a friend phoned a number of test centers in vain, which rejected him with symptoms.
In the end he too had to lie coldly – with beads of sweat on his forehead.
Arriving in the test line, the sick have been expecting a slightly different edition of "Bares for Rares" since the beginning of July: the coveted tests now cost money.
How much depends on their power of persuasion.
If you only want to pay three euros instead of ten, you can use your great-aunt's birthday coffee or parents' evening as a reason.
Free tests are only given to those who can present their need for protection with an "ID or passport, a certificate or a certificate".
Quoting Lauterbach: “That doesn't apply to children or pregnant women – so it also applies to children or pregnant women.” All right?
Incidentally, my colleague then had to pay the three euros via Paypal – »The card device has not yet been set up«.
Another colleague gave the desperate employee coins as inconspicuously as possible (risk of infection!) – after the man in front of her had tried unsuccessfully to pay with his mobile phone for 20 minutes and started insulting her.
After a positive citizen test, zero to 65 euros are now due for a PCR test – according to reports, this seems to depend on the mood of the employees.
The result is then presented in practice without entering it (risk of infection!).
Cue Schrödinger's cat.
My girlfriend solved this physical challenge by sending her partner over - who was finally allowed to take her sick note with her with her health card, her ID card and a PCR test.
Stressed and weakened by this odyssey, the sick can now rest - but please not for too long.
An FDP politician recently suggested a free test after three days.
Meanwhile, the Corona-WarnApp is a long time coming: It simply couldn't read the negative test from my friend in Cologne.
So he is still not officially recovered and his app continues to warn others – who can now at least get a corona test for only three euros with the red tile.
It is no longer surprising that a considerable number of the people I interviewed for this text did not even go on a test odyssey because of this chaos, but instead quietly and secretly endured their infection without ever being registered anywhere.
But it is risky: Because if you are never officially ill, you will not be reimbursed for the treatment in the case of Long Covid.
But don't worry now, most of my acquaintances had a mild course, their symptoms subside: the fever and cough are almost gone.
But their belief in “solidarity in times of crisis” has also decreased significantly.
