It might be out of the headlines, but coronavirus has not gone away. A new version of the virus is lurking in the background, as Brandon Hartley found out. 

My nose had been stuffy for a few days before I finally broke out a test kit.

“Surely, it’s just allergies,” I thought as I reviewed the instructions and diligently shoved a q-tip up my nose. “It’s been really windy. Must be all the grass pollen flying around.”

About five minutes later, a second line appeared on the test strip. It was positive.

But who comes down with Covid-19 in June of 2025?!! I mean, besides myself? And whoever had I caught it from?

Covid is still a thing?!!

I managed to get through several lockdowns and all the way to October of 2022 before Covid finally caught up with me the first time. That case was, thankfully, a mild one and I’m glad I’d kept up with my trips to our local vaccination centre.

I know folks who have caught it three or more times. The disease has essentially become a new flu. It’s here to stay and can still make people seriously ill, especially if they have a medical condition.

But, as with pretty much everyone else on the planet, Covid and all the mayhem it created in the early 2020s seems like an increasingly distant memory. The RIVM recently announced they’ll be reducing the number of people allowed to get the latest vaccines this autumn. I can’t recall the last time I encountered someone wearing a face mask or one of those ‘social distancing’ markers on the floor of a shop.

So where did I catch it? Probably a crowded Flaming Lips concert in Utrecht, but it could have just as easily been on the train ride home afterward or at our local Albert Heijn a few days later.

Tonight we’re gonna party like it’s 2021

After the test came up positive early Saturday, I spent the rest of the morning looking up recovery tips online and information about the latest strains. I felt like I’d been transported back in time to the winter lockdown of 2021.

Apparently, the NB.1.8.1 variant, nicknamed Nimbus, has been popping up across America and Europe in recent days. The RIVM is still publishing its weekly Covid reports and you can have a look at the latest one, translated into English, over here.

My partner and I cancelled our plans for the Pinksteren weekend. It was time to isolate. Even if my case was a mild one, she didn’t want it and neither of us wanted to pass the disease on to someone who could wind up in a hospital if they got infected.

We did what we could to keep a safe distance from one another in our tiny house and even went so far as to separate our toothbrushes.

The road to recovery

While the public risk level remains low according to the WHO, Covid is perfectly capable of ruining your plans this summer.

Our Pinksteren weekend sucked. I felt lethargic and grumpier than an elderly Dutchman who has walked into a Hema cafe and found out they just sold their last rookworst.

I spent much of those three days sleeping. While our household had been booted back to 2021, I went further back in time and devoted my waking hours to a decades-spanning tour of American pop culture. I broke out a PC game I loved from my teen years and found myself casting aside my ongoing efforts to finally watch Succession for lighter stuff like Dazed and Confused.

If you can track it down, I highly recommend the HBO documentary about ‘yacht rock.’ A Covid daze is the perfect mindset to learn about Michael McDonald’s contributions to the smoothest sounds of the 1970s.

Not the only one

I also traded messages with family and colleagues both here in the Netherlands and across Europe and America. They mentioned all the people around them who had been coming down with ‘just a cold’ in recent days.

A friend told me on Tuesday morning he had tested positive for Covid after spending several days convinced he’d caught a mild flu bug.

We commiserated over our mutual confusion about how best to track our sick days. Was Saturday Day 1 of Covid for me? Or was it Wednesday evening when I first started feeling weird? And did an evening technically count as Day 1?

So if you find yourself feeling a bit off in the weeks to come, it might be worth your while to get a Covid-19 test kit. They’re still available at Etos and other pharmacies across the country. You may have expired tests gathering dust in a closet but watch out. They could yield a false positive or a false negative.

For many, it only takes a few days to recover from the latest strains, but it could take longer before you’re actually back to normal. My latest test on Wednesday morning had a faint positive line, which means I’ll be housebound for at least another few days.