After spending a week listening to lectures, picking my jaw up off the floor at the realisation of the selfishness of some, answering questions, then nearly two hours of study on Sunday and a 40-minute exam on Monday morning, I have a new skill. I am a Johns Hopkins certified Covid-19 Contact Tracer.
Over the course of my learning, I have gained an immense amount of new and insightful knowledge; I have a better understanding of the Sars-CoV-2 and Covid-19, and the work of epidemiologists.
My respect has grown infinitesimally for people working around the world as they strive to contact, trace, explain, and support those who have contracted this virus, as well as help those who have to quarantine. There is a limited window that contact tracers have for maximum impact. You are infectious 2 days before the symptoms show, highly infectious on the day of the symptoms and up to 10 days after. Those two days are crucial in order to identify, isolate and quarantine cases and contacts in order to keep the RO at 1 or below. There is a very short window to gain maximum impact.
Our ignorance, as well as our instance on our freedoms, makes it all the more difficult for them to operate effectively and efficiently. The course is an eye-opener in so many ways. It has also exacerbated my "OCD-like" tendencies. It has made me even antsier about people who are contemptuous about this virus, those who show disdain for others by not heeding quarantine/isolation orders and just how challenging the process of contract tracing is.
We owe it these individuals, as much as to the others on the front line, to be respectful, and above all think of others, not ourselves.
Before anyone thinks I am embarking on a career shift and becoming a contact tracer, this was not my intention. Although, the learning and acquisition of a new skill most definitely, was. The course is offered through Coursera by Johns Hopkins University in the US. It is accredited. As the world needs and will need more people with these skills, it was an opportunity to learn and be ready should ever the need arise.
I continue to have to curb my desire to pull everything out of the cupboards if one thing is out of place. I look in the fridge and I become agitated if the shelves are untidy. The items in boxes should be stacked nearly and the bottles in the door in rows. Even the tin cupboard has to have a weekly check on the tin expiry dates - most of which are in 2023, so if I ration myself, I have food for the next 3 years.
And, although the circuit breaker will be relaxed - to a degree - in a week, I still find myself growling at people as I run past them. So far I have been restrained enough not to point out that their mask is not a hair accessory, nor is it a handbag for mice, and it most certainly is not an elbow protector either (and why do grandmas want to skateboard anyway?). Sadly, ladies who like to wrap the mast around the chin region, t won't disguise that you are growing a beard, because eventually, your chin will get hairy.
And, so I go back to Instagram, lesson prep, sketching honey bees for lessons on how bees make honey, studying, and who knows, maybe I'll stop procrastinating and finish my pangolin book ...