I’m in the second week of the new job, and the onboarding process is still slow going. No complaints, though — it’s nice to have a gentle re-entry. So far the work-from-home setup is working well. After work, I escaped the apartment for a stroll to St. Stephens Green.
Yesterday I received this text from the Irish Health Services Executive (HSE) alerting me that I had been in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19:
Having not been around many people lately, I decided to text N. whom I had seen on Saturday to let him know of the alert in case he had also been exposed. Coincidentally, N. actually works for the HSE contact tracing office (that’s Ireland for you) and texted back offering to help by looking up my case in the system, so I said sure. As it turns out, the close contact was another passenger (or passengers) on my flight back from Spain on July 29. And apparently because I’ve been fully vaxxed and haven’t had any symptoms, the HSE won’t be scheduling a test, despite what the text message said. Their official guidance is that I can go about my business as usual, no need to quarantine, etc. I found it somewhat surprising that they aren’t worried about breakthrough cases from the Delta variant… even without symptoms, I still could have contracted the virus and be spreading it to others, right?!
In local news, the Irish Olympic women’s boxing gold medalist Kellie Harrington arrived back to Dublin today, riding atop an open air bus through her neighborhood on Portland Row, a street near the Five Lamps inner city northside neighborhood. This event was one of the big news headlines of the day in Ireland. Residents crowded the street in an outpouring of community pride. The Irish postal service, An Post, has even painted a local mailbox gold in her honor.
Until next time….
