I’m waiting for a candidate to arrive in our conference room for a job interview. I’ve been out of the office for two weeks (a week of vacation and then a week recovering from Covid), and I’m surprised by a new front desk hire whose face I did not recognize. I introduce myself and engage in a welcome and small talk. I explain that she started while I was recovering “from the virus.”
We talk for 2 or 3 minutes, and she says that her friend had a horrible and painful skin rash from the virus. She asks: “How did you handle the pain and recovery.” I suddenly realized we were talking about two different viruses, and I said: “You know I’m talking about Covid, right?” To which she said: “Oh, I thought we were talking about the Monkey Pox virus.”
I fully embraced my positive Covid test at that point.