OPINION (AN COLUN): Infected by a conspiracy theorist in a sauna

I've been self-isolating for the last week, having contracted Covid. It's been a pretty unpleasant experience.
I think I got the thing in a sauna in a public swimming pool in Clare. The chap sitting beside me certainly had something. His voice was very hoarse and despite no one else being in the room he sat right beside me. He chatted away non-stop for thirty minutes. As the sweat poured out of us this possibly toxic gentleman rattled away about various conspiracy theories, of which he was a believer. He talked about the Russo-Ukrainian War, arguing that in terms of morality there wasn't much difference between the Russians and the Ukrainians.
I was stuck in a sauna with a conspiracy theorist who had a faulty moral compass and was spouting one objectionable theory after another.
Usually when I am in this kind of situation I respond by agreeing with the other person. These type of individuals are usually pretty strong characters and they get other people to agree with them through the forcefulness of their personality rather than whether they are actually right or not. The world is full of people like this. Some of them go on to rule countries.
I like a peaceful life, therefore I usually just agree or else try to switch the conversation to safer territory, such as the weather or sport. But sometimes I push back.
On this particular morning I pushed back. I took a deep breath (I knew this was going to be very difficult - he had obviously read an awful lot on a number of classic conspiracy theory subjects) and I dived in. I systematically dismantled several of his arguments. I disagreed with most of what he had to say. I strongly pointed out that when it came to the war in Ukraine it was patently absurd to say that there was any moral equivalence between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine is certainly not perfect but Russia is most definitely the guilty party here. My last words as I left the sauna were, 'You and I will never agree on this point.' His retort was, 'We'll pick this up again.'
Over the next couple of days I felt something sinister building up within me and after 48 hours I was ticking all the Covid symptoms boxes. I took an Antigen test. The two lines appeared. Time to self-isolate for seven days.
Day 5 into the isolation and I'm feeling better, but symptoms still linger. For the first couple of days there was a feverish feeling, headaches, a dry cough. On day three phlegm began to develop in the cough, along with a runny nose. But the predominant thing throughout it all has been a sore throat. The virus seemed to clamp, like a demon, onto my throat and savage it as much as it possibly could. At times it felt like I was drinking glass. Swallowing was painful. The pain in the throat, on day 5, has greatly waned but the voice is still very hoarse. The squeaks, eeks, whispers and chesty growls emanating from my voicebox are sometimes humorous to listen to. As usual, the fact I can't sing deeply frustrates me, as normally I sing every day, sometimes for two or three hours. It's one of the things in life which gives me massive pleasure. When it's taken away it's upsetting.
I've been vaccinated against Covid three times. This variant, probably BA.5, however, has taken the experts by surprise. They didn't expect such a strong surge by the virus during the summer months. But it's happened, the virus once again wrongfooting us, developing three new mutations in its spike protein which weren't expected.
A lot of people in the West, including Ireland and the UK, have been infected with BA.5. It's rampant at the moment. Thankfully, it's relatively mild and the ICU numbers are not shooting up. Nonetheless, it's still deeply unpleasant, like a bad winter flu.
I had been trying to think as little as possible about Covid over the last few months; focus on other things; naturally that aspiration has been depth-charged during the last week, with the result that I've been reading a lot of Covid literature.
I find it irritating that we are still not sure where exactly Covid originated. I'm irritated because the Chinese government hasn't properly played ball with the international community in this matter.
Imperfect and all as the Irish government is we can thank our lucky stars that we weren't born in China. The combination of Covid and the Chinese Communist Party is a match created in hell. What we have seen unfolding in cities like Shanghai in recent months is the stuff of Orwellian nightmares.
Did the virus originate from a lab leak in the Wuhan Institute of Virology or did it come from a natural, zoonotic spillover infection? A World Health Organisation report published a month ago on this subject was inconclusive. Basically the report said the WHO is considering the lab leak hypothesis and more work is needed, but they are also saying that a natural, zoonotic, spillover event is currently the most likely explanation. Scientists from China, Russia and Brazil are adamant that the lab leak hypothesis is incorrect and the virus was of zoonotic origin. The WHO group said the closest genetically related viruses to Covid, beta coronaviruses, are identified in Rhinolophus (horseshoe) bats. “At the present time,” they write, “available epidemiological and sequencing data suggest ancestral strains to SARS-CoV-2 have a zoonotic origin.” They say the genetic similarity between Covid and the Chinese bats is 96.1%. However this percentage is too low to suggest a possible tie. Therefore the WHO report is completely inclusive. For example the genetic similarity between humans and chimps is 98.9%.