Put to the Test

If you got Covid from anywhere, it was the church man going on about 1551,” said my friend. That was possible. We had walked into the old church to have a look around, and a fellow I assumed was a tour guide asked whether we wanted to know some lore. Well, of course! I’d like to think I’m just the sort of person who’s keen to know that the slab on the floor covers the sundered bones of William Halfshanks, killed at the Battle of Blistershire in 1216.

I should note I was in England. I had meant to make the trip last year and had made elaborate preparations for meeting the requirements, but 24 hours before leaving, I tested positive for “optimism,” even though I’d been inoculated against that by the media. And “also Covid.” And that scotched the whole trip. Never felt a single symptom, unless apoplexy is one of them.

Decided to try again in March, because England had relaxed its requirements. Previously: Test before you come, test on the plane, get a test after you arrive, breathe only through a thick woolen scarf saturated with Vicks VapoRub, wear a sign that says foreigner, and carry a three-foot-long stick with a bell at the end, which you would ring when you approach groups of two or more, then test six times the day before you leave. Arranging a test in those days meant spending an hour online until you could find a test between 3:07 and 3:09 at the chemist’s tucked into 10 Bootlebury Lane in North Southtown, or 10 Btlebry Nor’so’ten, as it was probably pronounced.

Now: Eh, come on in.

Well, almost. You had to prove you had been fully and utterly vaccinated or — barring that — that you weren’t brimming with the virus. You also had to fill out a form that told them where you would be, something requiring you to find your hosts’ postal code. Uh — IHJQ83.14Zed, I think. When you filled out the form, it generated a QR code. The bloke at the airline counter beeped it, and you were free to waltz in.

I was still nervous before checking in, since I have Sudden Form Stupidity Syndrome and make mistakes filling things out. Did I list my year of birth correctly? The drop-down menu went to 1904, as they’re expecting a torrent of Guinness Longevity Record Holders to convene any moment now. Did I get that right? Well, we’ll see.

All was fine. Hours later I was in England, facing the automated entry kiosks. Before, you had to speak to a man who was standing up very straight, wearing an official cap, and he’d ask where you were going, and why. The last time I had to convince a human, I said Suffolk, to see friends. Long pause.

“Interested in birding?” he asked. What? I said I had not birded but of course was open to it, unless it was something naughty or illegal and not avian-related, and other babbling remarks I was certain would get me turned away. But no. He said he personally enjoyed looking at birds and had done so the last time he was in Suffolk. He stamped my passport, and we were free to explore the scepter’d isle.

Now the human element is gone. Now a machine looks at your passport while a camera goes up and down on a stick; the image is cross-referenced with the Interpol List of Nogoodniks. It beeps green, and that’s the equivalent of a visa stamp. Your passport pages are empty, no romantic evidence of foreign ports, but I suppose you can always remember green lights of years past.

A week later, I was in the church, listening to the man talk about the 16th-century carvings on the desks where the upper-class schoolboys sat on Sunday. We might think they’re random or meaningless, but no! He spun a story that made Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code plot look like a Dick and Jane book, and when he described the Phoenicians sailing up the eastern coast to present the Union Jack to Queen Boudica, I thought: He’s either having us on, or he’s mad. In either case he’s breathing on us. What if . . . he has the ’Rona?

You need a test to return to the U.S., you know. Otherwise, you might introduce Covid into the States, and we’d hate to have that happen. We took the test the day before departure. This time the swab went so far up my nose, it poked my brain, whereupon I relived a full day in 1965 in half a second and smelled the color purple. The results would be sent via email within the hour. When I finally checked, heart pumping — well, it’s always pumping, technically speaking — it was negative. Hurrah!

But. Would it be enough? I’d asked the technicians whether the test would be suitable for U.S. entry. They said yes, it was a rapid antigen. The government page said that was fine, but what if the cdc.gov website meant rapid antigen lateral-flow qanonbase+R test, and I’d gotten the rapid antigen vertical-flow polychain+T test? We’d find out.

At the airport, I showed our emails, with the QR code enlarged for easy beeping; the official just looked at the email, saw the words “NOT DETECTED,” and waved us through.

Well, I could’ve forged that. Not that I would have, but still. After an hour we were on the plane. Everyone present had been vaxxed and tested, and everyone was negative. The safest place you could find, Covid-wise.

Of course, masks were required. That’s when you think: And they always will be.