I Had a Covid Scare in London. Here’s Why I Love the National Health Service

At first, I chalked up my symptoms — headache, soreness, dry mouth — to veisalgia, the medical term for a hangover. The multiple martinis imbibed the night before did point in that direction. But then came the scratchy throat and the chills. A head cold? Sinus infection? Or could it be Covid-19 — specifically, the dreaded Omicron variant?It wasn’t so far-fetched. I was visiting London, which has quickly become the global epicenter of the Omicron wave — a “tidal wave” of infections, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned.

Two days later, when my symptoms worsened, I knew I needed to get tested. But how? Back home, in Silver Spring, MD, that would entail a series of difficult, and expensive, maneuvers involving websites and Walgreens and the inexorable laws of supply and demand. Here I simply asked my friend Mark, an American living in London, for a test kit. He pulled a slim rectangular box out of his closet and handed it to me. Inside were seven rapid antigen (or lateral flow) tests. That would cost $140 back home. In the U.K, it is free, delivered to your doorstep, or available for pickup at your local pharmacy.

I followed the instructions, written not in bureaucratic gobbledygook but plain English, and within 30 minutes a bright pink line materialized, indicating that I was, thankfully, negative for Covid-19. Alongside the pink line was…