Agerton tested positive for the coronavirus in late November after returning from the Red Sea. Because the expedition team followed strict precautions, he assumes that he became infected while flying home. With a low fever, mild breathing symptoms and a loss of smell, he isolated himself for ten days in a bedroom on Bainbridge Island near Seattle, protecting Agerton, 46, and their children aged 5, 11 and 16.
On December 17, an ordinary spam on his cell phone caused a cascade of paranoia related to technology, surveillance and government agents.
“I started getting these auditory hallucinations,” he said. He jumped out the window at night and imagined voices outside. Fearing that spies looking at their Christmas lights in their area are spying, he grabbed the family’s Australian shepherd, Duke, and stepped outside ‘to get the people in the car blindfolded’, he said. Then he would become convinced that police scanners were walking his dog and broadcasting every other move he made.
“I could not control myself,” he said, adding. ‘I just thought’ I lose my head. ‘
After two mostly sleepless days to keep it to himself, he trusts his wife, who is dumbfounded. “Having your person who is wonderful in a crisis that is experiencing a crisis was just total helplessness and fear for me,” she said.
He asked her to put the family’s phones in a plane mode and was worried that their house had faults. Agerton, who was driving around looking for him, became ‘anxious’ about an ambulance siren. “Probably every 30 minutes he had to do the rounds outside and see what’s there.”
She took him shopping and thought ‘something as pointless as Costco would help that it would just be a normal day’, but said he feared shopping was agency. “It was really torture for him.”
That evening she calls a friend, a nurse with mental health experience.
“You must get to the emergency room immediately,” the friend urged, adding, “lock up guns,” she said. Agerton said.