Michael Nicholson: If you’re unlucky enough to get Covid, please, I beg you, don’t consult with Dr Google

So you’ve joined the Covid club? Take it from someone who’s been there, done that. Do. Not. Google. It, writes Michael Nicholson.

If you’re one of those unlucky enough to catch Covid in our state’s latest Omicron wave, don’t – and I cannot stress this enough – Google anything.

From the moment you receive your SA Health SMS confirming your positive status, you’ll want to get on WebMD, but I can wholeheartedly assure you, this is not a thing you want to do.

If you’re like me, unfortunately it’s the first step you’ll take and all it will result in is seeing scary terms like “long Covid”, “diabetes”, “heart failure”, “chronic fatigue”, “blood clots” and honestly, who needs that kind of negativity when you’re about to have seven days off work? Not me.

While there may be those among us that have restraint and or the capacity to be blissfully ignorant, my warning to you – even if you avoid googling every symptom and long term effect that may befall you, good luck avoiding every news channel’s promo story on “the devastating long term effects of Covid”. I swear there is a new one every night.

You can’t even settle in for the latest MAFS drama without anxiety levels increasing … and that’s before a wine glass has even been smashed.

I’d also suggest giving up on the idea of tracing where your Covid infection has come from. It will be the question on everyone’s lips (and your own mind) in the early days of your diagnosis, but at this stage it feels like everyone in South Australia either has the ‘rona, knows someone with it or is adjacent to the spicy cough.

You’ll question every decision and move you made up until the point of joining the Covid club, but at the end of the day, we’re moving into the living with it phase and unless someone willingly licked the doorknobs at the Tom’s Court medi-hotel then there’s no real blame game to be played. We’re all in this together, right?

What I can recommend?

• Make sure you’ve got supplies such as paracetamol and ready-made meals on standby (without panic buying every packet of dried pasta and toilet paper in the southern hemisphere);

• Take family and friends up on the offer to help as it breaks up the day and can replenish your stocks;

• Give in to urge to take naps – your recovery will thank you;

• Take it easy post-isolation.

And if you can’t help yourself and you just have to Google, search “where to get a Covid booster”.

Michael Nicholson is The Advertiser’s Audience Development Editor.