The natural squirmy reaction to PCR Covid-19 tests | Jack Marshall's column

Needles are designed to pierce the skin with ease and take our sweet, sweet blood, and hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have told us that losing blood means something is wrong.

Innumerable generations of your ancestors, therefore, knew that sabre-tooth tigers had pointy teeth, that arrows hurt a bit, and that aggressive hedgehogs are to be given a wide berth.

As a result, you’re here today. Well done; good instincts.

A similar paradigm of self-preservation dictates most people’s squirmy reaction to a PCR Covid-19 test.

The test usually involves an overworked and underpaid healthcare professional casually mopping the thin membrane between your nasal cavity and what feels like your actual brain with a suspiciously long cotton bud that travels unnervingly far into your head.

This is anathema to us because it involves a part of the human anatomy not designed to be brushed by anything apart from mucus and maybe sick during a particularly explosive chunder.

(Even then, we blow our noses when they get blocked and the whole nose-chunder thing is grim, especially when all you can smell after is a combo of the dodgy spaghetti bolognese you rustled up in a biohazard-filthy uni kitchen and the bleachy tang of stomach lining and bile.)

And so, the test just *feels* wrong to the core. While it’s quick, any amount of time spent having something dragged against the back of your eye-balls and poking jauntily at your hypothalamus is, frankly, ‘too much’ time.

The tests can also vary wildly from the scary lady at the airport not only spelunking down just one of my nostrils with her cotton spear but gleefully diving down the second for another medical rummage, to a drive-by operation in which the man leaned through the open car window, deftly swiped away like a middle-aged divorcee on Tinder, and withdrew with barely a snotty scuffle. (What a pro).

But it’s got to be done.

The test may be uncomfortable, but it’s crucial in combatting the spread of a virus which has viciously gripped the planet for over a year now, killing millions, ruining countless lives, destroying businesses, and causing untold mental, economic, and cultural harm.

So pucker up, sunshine: prepare your brain for a quick cotton bud joust.