The dreaded coronavirus, COVID-19, has struck your humble host. I’m Joel Fieri, host of What You’ve Been Searching For and president of Christian Podcast Central. Stay tuned for my COVID-19 story.
The name of our show is What You’ve Been Searching For and the goal is to find out the topics and questions that you, the Christian podcast listener, have in searching for. Well, it turns out in 2020, to no one’s surprise, the biggest topic on the internet for searching for Christian podcasts, listeners, Christians, non-Christians, anybody and everybody is, you guessed it, the coronavirus. Well, I have a coronavirus story as you might’ve guessed.
Early last month, I took a trip on a plane and when I came back a couple of days later, I started having some symptoms. And at the urging of my wife, I went and got a COVID test and tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, which is the official name of COVID-19.
Now, if you’re expecting a dramatic report of survival, of a devastating case of COVID-19, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. I really wasn’t that sick. It was a mild cold that turned into a mild flu. I had a low-grade fever for a couple of weeks, had my sore throat, a few other symptoms. That was it. So what I’d like to do is tell you a little bit more about my experience and then I have some observations I’d like to tell you about on the whole COVID phenomenon that we’ve gone through in the past nine months or so.
First a little bit more about my experience. As I said, I wasn’t that sick. I have a proclivity to respiratory viruses. Twice in my life, in my younger years, I had pneumonia. I was in the hospital, very serious. And 10 years ago, I had a bad case of the swine flu, swine flu was much worse than COVID. So I know my way around respiratory diseases. This wasn’t that bad.
And I want to tell you my mindset going in. When I first got sick and I suspected I had COVID, my mindset was, “Good. Let’s get this over with. Let’s see who wins. COVID will either kill me or let me live my life.” So for two weeks, we did battle and I won. I’m fine. I’m healthy. No symptoms, no damage. I realize that’s not the case for everybody. But again, like I said, I’m telling my story here.
Also, another key part of my experiences, none of my family got infected. I was with my family for two weeks. We all quarantined like we’re supposed to, our kids who are working, they didn’t work for 10 days to two weeks. My wife was quarantined along with me. Our son got tested twice, both times he was negative. So it wasn’t nearly as virulent as supposedly everyone is saying it is.
Now, you might say, “Well, you got it, didn’t you?” Yes, I did. I probably either got it on the plane or somewhere where I was traveling. But honestly, if social distancing and mask-wearing are as effective as they say they are, I shouldn’t have got it. Everywhere I went people were wearing masks. The plane, everyone had masks on. The plane was sanitized, the hotel I stayed at. Everywhere I went people were wearing masks and social distancing. So by all rights, I should not have got it. But I did.
And the third observation is, quite frankly, I’m suspecting that I might’ve even had a false positive. I never lost my sense of taste or smell like everybody says you’re supposed to, the only thing I lost was about seven pounds because I lost my appetite. So pray that I keep it off. But I’m suspecting that I might’ve had a false positive.
Earlier this week I went into the blood bank to donate some blood and get an antibody test. If it comes back that I did not have COVID, I don’t have the antibodies, I had a false positive, and my question will be, “Do they now go back and take my positive test off of the statistical numbers that say we have X number of COVID cases?” I think I know the answer to that question, but I may come back and give you an update on that. I should know in about a week.
So observation number one: COVID is not a death sentence. And I realize people have died, but most people have the same experience as I did. They’re either slightly sick, I’ve talked to some people who were very sick, but most of the people I know have recovered. So it’s not an automatic death sentence.
My second observation: fear should not be driving our response to this virus. The virus really hasn’t done anything other than what a virus does. Now, it is a bit of a strange virus, and that’s another topic, but whenever I talk about the pandemic or COVID, I don’t use those terms. I try not to. What I usually talk about is I talk about the shutdown, the lockdown, our response to the virus. That is what has caused all the fear and panic and the misery, frankly, of the last nine months or so. So please don’t think that COVID is a death sentence for you. It’s not. If you have comorbidities, if you’re not a healthy person, then yes, be concerned, be cautious, but don’t let fear run your life.
And lastly, as Christians, we are the last people that should be giving in to fear and panic, and especially letting people who will manipulate us using that fear and panic into being disobedient to what we know the Lord would have us do and how he would have us be. Please let me encourage you, do not forsake beading together as believers and do not give in to the fear, especially fear of your fellow Christians, or even fear of people in society. Let’s be salt and light in the midst of this trying time. Let’s show the world that being a Christian, knowing the king, being on the winning team, means that we don’t live in fear. That’s my encouragement to you, that’s how I would like to wrap up my COVID-19 story.
So I hope that’s helpful. It’s part of the conversation we want to be having here. If you think I’m wrong, if you have another perspective, please join the conversation in the comments below, let us know what you think.
Now, next week, I want to explore this whole COVID phenomenon and how Christians react to it a little bit more. So stay tuned for that. Meanwhile, check us out christianpodcastcentral.com. There’s more good content like this. Also, look us up on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast content from, and check us out on YouTube and all the other platforms that we may or may not be on, depending on how it goes from here on out. So, thanks for listening. I’m Joel Fieri. See you next week.