Battling germs and fear in the days of COVID-19

Wednesday, 13 March, 2020

I live with someone who has OCD – well, it’s OCPD but that’s another story. Germ-phobia is something I also battle. Not everything bothers me and I wouldn’t say that I worry too much but definitely more than some. I don’t have OCD but I do wash my hands quite often and am grossed out by things like ‘double-dipping,’ picking up food that’s dropped on the table (let alone the floor), people using their own forks or spoons to dip into a serving dish, humans cleaning up after their pets – inside or outside…

It goes further with Krish, who won’t suffer shoes in the house or even stored in a room other than a hallway, changes completely out of outdoor clothes when arriving home, and washes everything that arrives from the shop before storing it away, even when it isn’t food. I could go on…

However, the threat of novel coronavirus has revved things up a notch or five. I’ve always been amused at the things Krish calls ‘disgusting,’ since I now am feeling quite the same way.

With the usual sensationalist and alarmist media verve hard to dodge, I’ve considered this – what if (terrible words!) I’m sitting comfortably today, amused at the hysteria and scaremongering, and next week I’m witnessing the zombie apocalyse. In fact, had I been keeping closer written track of things daily, I’d say this isn’t so very far-fetched. Each day I wake up to new situations, hearing increasingly difficult stats and facts, needing to face my personal decisions, just in case. As a somewhat recovered agoraphobic, those italicised words are ones that I’ve spent a lot of time eliminating from my thoughts but now they are creeping back in…necessarily?

Esmeralda lives in Bologna. She’s sent me videos of empty streets, the usual rush hour with hardly any people and no more than a few cars. Italy is in lock-down and there’s nothing anyone can do except wait it out and hope. We’ve talked about it and she feels that Italy has over-reacted. The more I read, the more I think it was the right reaction but maybe not enacted quickly enough.

I follow a Turin blogger, Sonia, who has been posting photos. Last night she posted a good story on how things have progressed.  You can see this here . I messaged her to tell her how informative her story was and she asked how I was. I told her about London and how I felt and she let me know she had had to post her story very late that night since she didn’t want her children to hear what she had to say.

In London, things are going on as normal. We haven’t had it as bad as Italy. There aren’t as many cases here. I doubt that will last very long. This is a densely populated city with millions travelling around, crowded together, and these Londoners love to gather in packed pubs as often as they can. Handwashing has become an art, hand sanitiser essential and I’m looking sideways at everyone who sneezes or coughs on the bus.

Last week I went out and was a bit worried about all the bus travel. I sweetened the deal by visiting a new restaurant for lunch. I went to Three Uncles, which serves Cantonese barbecue. It’s been ages since I’ve eaten like that. I chose the  noodles with wonton and char siu pork and enjoyed it.  I was wondering if the place  might be quiet, based on the Sinophobia I’ve been hearing about but trade was brisk.

On the way home, I started noticing that no one was coughing…anywhere. I put this down to people staying home if they were unwell, or perhaps being afraid to cough for fear or reprisal.

This hasn’t lasted long, though. I’ve been in the bus with people with awful coughs, rarely covering their mouths and touching everything in sight. On the weekend I went to Tesco. The toilet paper was completely gone from the shelves, there were a few paper towels left, and just a few, more expensive, soaps – liquid and otherwise. Hand sanitisers are nowhere to be seen. Almost every person in the queue had a shopping cart filled to the brim and I waited almost half an hour to pay for my small basket of things. Panic buying had set in.

At the bus stop, a small boy was playing around the seats and eagerly sucking his thumb, a man in the bus was rubbing his eyes vigorously. I clutched my bag close to me and tried not to look.

Krish and I went out. A woman who looked visibly ill, coughed long loose coughs, in the seat across from us, her nose was red and she looked anxious. I tried not to worry too much. Unless we don’t go out at all, there’s no way to avoid all of this.

Yesterday I went to a class on fermentation. I considered not going but thought I was being silly so off I went. My germ phobia had to be put in the back seat or I couldn’t face it. I went back to the Dusty Knuckle Bakery school classroom and this time there were nine of us. I was at a table with three men and everything was shared. We chopped together, threw our vegetables into a communal basin, used our bare hands to chop and to mix.

Apart from an initial mandatory twenty-second hand washing, things got pretty loose. I had decided not to use my phone to take any photos, despite wanting to. The guy next to me took his out frequently. Each time he did so, I cringed. When people came back from being outside the room, only I and another woman washed our hands again. And the guy next to me was the one who wanted to mix the basin of cabbage for sauerkraut with his hands. I tried again to look away.

Later, though, when we were all encouraged to taste the kimchi before it was jarred, his habit of taking a piece and licking his fingers before digging in again broke the dam. I started to feel threatened and upset. When he left the table I begged  the other two men to continue with the mixing and not to let him put his hands back in. They smiled at me indulgently. I tried not to panic.

Funny that I remember more of this stuff than what we did and learned. However, I do know that fermentation is what happens when you pack fruit or vegetables, salt, and other ingredients together and allow the main ingredients to be broken down naturally. We made three ferments: A red and white cabbage sauerkraut with caraway, a spicy kimchi, and a beet and carrot dill pickle. My hands were stained with red cabbage and beets – lurid.

I was freaked out but the men were drinking beer – four or five each that night – and not caring much about anything. How do they do that?

We sat and ate together. For the second time I put up with the dreaded puy lentil soup except this time I asked to serve myself and took only a little. There was one big loaf of sour dough bread to go with it and we got to taste some of the ferments the teacher, Adam, had on hand. There was one that had a blue film on top and a truly nasty smell. Adam showed it to us so we knew how funky a ferment could get and yet still be safe. I was the only person who didn’t want to taste it after he scraped away the mould. So unlike me to not be adventurous with food but my phobias were settling in!

We packed a large jar of each mixture to bring home. They weighed a ton! More coughing and spluttering around me on the bus but I made it home and put my jars down.

Today, one of them had overflowed despite being tightly closed so tonight I loosened the lids to let some gas out and tightened them up again. We had to clean the table the jar had originally been on and put the three jars into a plastic bowl under the sink so there wouldn’t be any more messy accidents.

Tonight the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. It’s hard to think of much else. My germ phobia has come to the fore. Not happy about that. I’m reluctant to go out but sure I will. Chances are things will become easier, that we’ll get on top of this and beat it, until the next time.

(Have I told  you about my hypochondria?)