Opinion: Coronavirus naysayers better like ketchup

Ketchup. Honey. Salt.

That’s what I’m tasting right now. Not that I wouldn’t like to taste other stuff, like the deep richness of chocolate cake or roasted chicken and gravy.

Oh sure, I’d love to taste those things.

I’d also love to smell bread baking or fresh pine needles, just to name a couple.

But I can’t. All I can taste is ketchup (if I eat some), honey and salt.

The weird thing is honey tastes too sweet and even the hint of salt seems too much and the ketchup is overly ketchup-y.

You guessed it, I have novel coronavirus. I suspect I caught it from a scallop after a family member left it on a plate. In case you were wondering, the family member had been tested for coronanvirus not one, not twice, but three times.

All negative, until the fourth test, which came waaaaaay too late.

The nurse, when she called to tell me I had coronavirus said that wasn’t that unusual.

It was a very good scallop, perfectly pan seared with asparagus tips and cream sauce.

At any rate, it’s been about a week and I should be feeling better.

But there are long moments where quite honestly, I feel much worse.

It is a weird affliction, to be sure. Aside from the loss of taste and smell, there’s a nasty little cough, and pain that will come and go as it pleases.

Right now the knife that was slowly being twisted in my upper chest is gone, but it could return in a couple of minutes.

It started out with overall sore ribs, like someone had lifted my arms up over my head and then bashed my torso repeatedly with a stick. Then every once in awhile a sharp pain in a thigh, or a stab in the knee.

But having ate that scallop, I immediately introduced it to my guts. So now I can stand there and remarkably, at the same time, be intensely hungry on one end and roiled on the other.

The sense of taste and smell didn’t leave immediately, either. I was roasting a chicken a few days into the sickness. About an hour in was wondering why I smelled nothing.

Opened the oven and the chicken looked back at me, perfectly cooked.

I couldn’t smell a thing.

But there have been some home remedies I’d like to share. For one, if you’re not too tired, I recommend a walk outside. My lungs always feel better after sucking in Montana’s December air for a couple of hours. Of course, you want to socially distance from the squirrels and the chickadees.

And if the cough is racking your lungs just before bed, a shot of hot whisky and honey helps to calm it down. Microwave the two together and throw it down the hatch.

But there are things that are irritating me. I’ve heard our esteemed president say the best cure is to get treatment quickly. That’s kind of tough to do when it takes three days to get a test back. And many treatments simply aren’t available unless you’re in the high risk category, which I am not.

But for all of you anti-maskers out there (which I was not. I wore a mask in public settings) I can only say this: At the very least, get used to saying pass the ketchup.

Because it’s all you’ll taste for awhile while you’re hacking a lung out at the dinner table.