During the pandemic I developed a peculiar compulsion of carrying a pulse oximeter in my pocket. This started when I learned that COVID in its more serious presentation could harm your oxygen intake. I first started checking my fingers and lips for cyanosis, but found this too subjective to be useful and bought a cheap oximeter from Amazon. Nominally you would use it when sick, as a tell of whether you should go to the hospital when symptoms get noticeably worse.
I ended up using it all the time. I wasn’t sick. I had no symptoms. I had no reason to believe that I had any illness. Yet every day, upon waking up, I measured. If I went outside, I brought it with me and measured along the way, generally after leaving buildings or other indoor places. Going out with friends, I measured. Coming back from an outing with friends, I measured. I probably measured at least twice an hour, up to 48 times a day.
The results were, of course, always pristine. However, they never calmed my ongoing worry that perhaps I had developed COVID, and perhaps my oxygen levels were dropping, and perhaps I needed hospitalization. The practice felt reasonable and comforting at the time but, as is often the case with OCD, was in retrospect maladaptive and harmful. It got to the point that I felt a deep anxiety if I ever went outside without my pulse oximeter.
The loneliness of COVID and all the surrounding anxiety were an incubator of compulsions for people with OCD. I believe compulsive masking also followed. I think it’s generally a good idea that we’ve learned to mask up when sick, as is and was practiced in Asia, but to mask endlessly because the virus “is out there!” is a sign of harmful thinking that requires intervention.
By the way, I’ve had COVID four times in my life, first in 2022 and most recently earlier this year, all confirmed by swab tests. All of the cases were mild (cough, sneezing, low-grade fever), save for the second infection, which had a more flu-like presentation with strong fatigue. I haven’t noticed any degradation in my cognitive functioning or any new persistent symptoms. I was also vaccinated thrice. I don’t really fear COVID more than I fear the flu, in that yes, it can be a very severe disease and the measures we took at the peak of the pandemic were useful, but I do not believe it requires active intervention in my life to shield me from the illness completely. I don’t have to mask every single day when I go outside.