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So because I am facing a very clearly interminable wait, I am going to do The Reporterly Thing to pass the time.
I have a stuffy nose and barking cough today. It feels like every other cold I’ve ever had but my kids cannot fo to school or daycare until I get a negative test.
I have a stuffy nose and barking cough today. It feels like every other cold I’ve ever had but my kids cannot fo to school or daycare until I get a negative test.
I agonized because there wait times in Ottawa have become legendary over the last week or two. I decided to try the Moodie care centre because a friend who reported on the situation said if you weren’t in line at Brewer by 7:30 am, you weren’t getting in before they closed.
I could book with the drive-in testing centre but they don’t have appointments until Friday, then you start the clock ticking waiting for results. Almonte takes appointments but their voicemail is full so you can’t even request one right now.
I got to Moodie as early as I could, by 8 am, but had to park 500m away from the testing site. Then you know that thing where you walk by a massive line and think “oh god,” but then you go around a corner and realize the line you saw was only the final 20 percent? That.
And a friend pointed out the inevitable, insane cascade that will happen in a household: today I am sick. I will presumably get a neg, but until I do, all my kids have to stay home. Two days from now, one of them will get sick: another endless line, more lockdown, repeat.
Without rapid and easily available testing, to my mind, one of two things will happen - possibly both at the same time. 1. No one is going to school or daycare or getting work done for the next six months. 2. People get frustrated or desperate and ignore guidelines.
My husband is supposed to be working today, but he’s at home with Six, Three and Seven Months, so good luck with that. I was hoping if I came here early, I might be home by noon to relieve him. This now seems tragically naive.
Clearly I am not a medical expert, but I would think logic dictates that if I have a runny nose/cough and test negative, in two days when one of my kids has the same, you could safely deduce it’s the same cold and send the healthy people out into the world.
I get that is far from airtight. So a negative test is the golden ticket that gets you back to normalish life. But getting a test is a workday-long affair in uncomfortable circumstances (if there are bathrooms, I haven’t seen them) and then you wait a couple of days for results.
Either everything is going to grind to a halt until spring or people are going to get cavalier with an unsustainable standard of who can go where. Both are disasters, and this huge demand for testing when that’s the requirement for attending school was utterly predictable.
