The hunt for patient zero has been a tedious exercise in isolating the very first Covid-19 case in Wuhan. Did it come from the local lab or from the animal market? Patient zero will help us identify the root causes of how and why the virus jumped from an animal host to a human. Truth is we may never know.
Closer to home we have our very own patient zero. She's a two-foot bundle of unadulterated joy otherwise known as Mina Sophia Sen. She goes to daycare and sources every virus that floats through town.
Every. Single. One.
In between a few good days, she's down with a runny nose or diarrhea. Her system is getting used to the entire spectrum of what lurks in a daycare on the tiniest of feet and hands happily sharing snot-covered toys.
So before we visited her recently, we fortified ourselves with the Covid booster and flu shot, like we were preparing for an epic battle.
In the latest episode of this never-ending saga, she stopped eating, slept constantly and was very cranky. Two days later, I had a sore throat from hell and then Tarun was felled with fever and chills to boot.
She recovered quickly while the germ lingered in the adult ecosystem, which simply isn't used to the potency of daycare bugs. Last night when Neil asked how I was feeling, I said that my sore throat was making me feel murderous.
If Mina Microbe was feeling remotely as bad, my heart breaks for her.
Daycares are germ depots, no doubt. But if babies don't get sick in their pre-school days, it hits them when they start school. So, each infection is bringing us closer to a child with an immune system like Fort Knox.
The question is - how will we survive this sleeping heap's journey to incredible defense?! Bring on the Vitamin C because we have to shepherd the tyke to victory.
