My family's long lucky streak ran out last week and we all got covid. Thank goodness for vaccines and boosters -- symptoms weren't too bad, mostly just a few days of needing to get extra sleep, and only one day of true fatigue. Coughing for the kids, with the youngest never actually testing positive.
I suppose it's not so surprising to finally get it at this time -- between the current variants being so infectious, and the loosening of behavior around masking etc, there's more exposure now. I suspect we got it via kids activities, though can't know for certain.
I thought maybe I was going to be one of those lucky ones that never got it. Luckily a mild case. My brain feels like it hasn’t shrunk at all which is good.
I made it through until August, when I was exposed at a corporate meeting. But even though I tested positive for 10 days, I had only the slightest of symptoms. So slight that I may not have even tested myself if I hadn't known I'd been exposed. Glad for the invention of vaccines, because I can't believe I would have got off that easy with symptoms if I hadn't been vaccinated and twice-boosted.
I made it through from the start of the pandemic until yesterday - and the only reason I picked it was an attempt at haute cuisine which didn't taste nice and was not improved by a liberal glug of tomato sauce (aka ketchup). (Tomato sauce/ketchup improves everything, doesn't it?) Added to that, the banana and coffee for dessert just tasted awful.
I've had all the required vaccinations, including the two boosters, and have just been given some more medication to protect against Long Covid - and now I'll wait and see what the next few days bring.
I made it through from the start of the pandemic until yesterday - and the only reason I picked it was an attempt at haute cuisine which didn't taste nice and was not improved by a liberal glug of tomato sauce (aka ketchup). (Tomato sauce/ketchup improves everything, doesn't it?) Added to that, the banana and coffee for dessert just tasted awful.
I've had all the required vaccinations, including the two boosters, and have just been given some more medication to protect against Long Covid - and now I'll wait and see what the next few days bring.
To answer the long Covid question, it partly depends on the antivirals you get, and how early (so we’re told here). My David (shemadedothis, who hasn’t posted in a while) tested positive 30 hours ago. ETA: we no longer have any formal restrictions here in Queensland, and his idiot team leader is pressuring him to return to work despite his doctor specifically warning him to stay home, and issuing a medical leave certificate. Grrr.
I made it through from the start of the pandemic until yesterday - and the only reason I picked it was an attempt at haute cuisine which didn't taste nice and was not improved by a liberal glug of tomato sauce (aka ketchup). (Tomato sauce/ketchup improves everything, doesn't it?) Added to that, the banana and coffee for dessert just tasted awful.
I've had all the required vaccinations, including the two boosters, and have just been given some more medication to protect against Long Covid - and now I'll wait and see what the next few days bring.
@PeterWick, I’m sorry to sound like I’m whinging. I’m on molnupiravir, have very little energy, and am coughing. This virus has aggravated a long-standing lower back injury, so I’m in almost constant excruciating pain. Allergic to most painkillers, so am at my wits end with discomfort. Have taken zomig for migraine. 1) how does Covid know how how wind up the pain pathways other than headaches?
2) any suggestions on what I can do, please? I figure this is an omicron version. I’ve used heat patches (cold makes it worse), TENS, tried stretching. Nothing really works.
im sure there’s an answer in the thread but I can’t trawl thru now. Ta
@PeterWick, I’m sorry to sound like I’m whinging. I’m on molnupiravir, have very little energy, and am coughing. This virus has aggravated a long-standing lower back injury, so I’m in almost constant excruciating pain. Allergic to most painkillers, so am at my wits end with discomfort. Have taken zomig for migraine. 1) how does Covid know how how wind up the pain pathways other than headaches?
2) any suggestions on what I can do, please? I figure this is an omicron version. I’ve used heat patches (cold makes it worse), TENS, tried stretching. Nothing really works.
im sure there’s an answer in the thread but I can’t trawl thru now. Ta
How are you doing? I very much hope you are feeling better.
I had a bad bout of covid (my first) that started around the beginning of November. I foolishly flew (masked) on a plane in the US and, surrounded by visibly ill passengers with no masks whatsoever, got infected.
I don't have any complicating factors but damn, that was the worst illness I have encountered as an adult. I spent 14 days bedridden and very sick. Even now, after a month, I suffer from a wracking cough that will not go away.
My 78 year old mother also now has covid for the first time. Based just on what I am hearing both IRL and here, it seems like there are a lot of people getting covid for the first time right now. Are the current variants dramatically more contagious than previous versions of Omicron?
Noticed that after weeks at .88, the transmission rate in NJ jumped to 1.61 on Monday. The state has not posted any more daily rates this week. This is an alarming jump and an equally alarming lack of data. This figure is key to having a sense of how prevalent the virus is around us...
joanne and GoSlugs, all best for quickened recovery!! This stuff is ****.
Question: Will people who have been following health recommendations better than i have pls weigh in on the "best" timing for booster (4th) shots?
Our household all had relatively mild cases of covid in September, and we're pretty well recovered. My husband (who has chronic lung issues and is generally up on this stuff) has been thinking to delay the boosters till now, or even into Jan, in the interest of extending their effectiveness into late winter/spring. I'm wondering if we should just go ahead, esp. since our in-house son has recently taken a job that exposes him to more people, including young children, for full work days. Spouse and i are 70+ and retired. Son is 30-something.
I noticed that big jump in transmission rate. The latest RT number on NJ data hub is 1.44, still a lot higher than it had been for a while. The combined confirmed and probable cases has been hovering around 3000, also a rise.
Sorry to have ghosted this forum recently. I just haven't felt harping on COVID & related sequelae was welcomed here.
I hope people have made good recoveries.
COVID goes anywhere the bloodstream takes it and then moves in where it has ACE2 sites to bind. There are so many reports of problems going around, and they all seem to indicate damage proportional to the amount of viral load in a given organ or system.
Anyway, maybe this should be put in another thread, but here is another study indicating that avoiding COVID by any means possible is worth it.
The 1.61 for Monday was revised down today. But no other daily data posted
Then there is this:
New Jersey health officials reported another 2,204 COVID-19 cases and 22 confirmed deaths on Friday. It’s the highest number of single-day fatalities from COVID-19 in New Jersey since Feb. 18, when the state reported 24 deaths.
Just want to thank you all for kind well-wishes. Hubby is back at work (half his office were out the same time he was, no wonder the boss was desperate!), I’m just asthmatic-coughing. I’ll be back to normal with a mask tomorrow (Sunday). No-one here really bothers reporting, or even isolating; we rarely hear true figures. Most of the best supports have been stopped. We’re fortunate that our basic healthcare system can support fairly decent in-home community nursing, mental health etc. Just as well it’s summer, and supposedly transmission slows a bit in the high heat…
I’m meeting (on the phone) a lot of coeliacs, others with preservative allergies etc who don’t realise how careful they need to be re vaccine choice, and that they might be eligible for anti-virals. Sigh.
(handled the back pain with 3 sequential endone, and a little TENS machine D bought me. Doing chair Zumba now )
Thanks for posting -- a good read. I suppose my priors are in my reaction to this sentence toward the end --"what’s tilting the scales, it seems to me, is cynicism and narrative appeal" I enjoy reading books and watching movies, where narrative appeal means a lot, and cynicism sometimes too (Hello Joseph Heller). But in actual life, I'm quite suspicious of these. Life's not a novel.
But diving into that is probably more suited to the politics section. A passage that caught my eye and better suited to this section was toward the beginning:
Some contrarians say that it doesn’t matter, the source of the virus. What matters, they say, is how we cope with the catastrophe it has brought, the illness and death it continues to cause. Those contrarians are wrong. It does matter. Research priorities, pandemic preparedness around the world, health policies and public opinion toward science itself will be lastingly affected by the answer to the origin question — if we ever get a definitive answer.
I don't really think of myself as a contrarian, but count me among those who think that no, it doesn't really matter. Let's say it was a research-related incident, what are the takeaways? That we should have stricter regulation and enforcement around safety standards, and take a good hard look at the cost vs benefits of potentially dangerous research? Yes -- but we should do that anyway! Let's say it was natural spillover, what's the takeaway -- that habitat destruction, lax oversight of wildlife trafficking, and political interference in health and science put us at great risk? True -- but still true even if was not natural spillover.
There have been pandemics in the past. There will be more in the future. They have started, and will start, in different ways. There are lessons from this pandemic, and past pandemics, on how to make them less deadly, and those lessons hold regardless of what we learn about the origins of SARS_COV_2, or even if we never find a definitive answer. More energy on making sure we heed those lesson please, and less on seeking satisfying narrative closure (ah see, couldn't help myself and ended up returning to my skepticism of real-world narratives after all).
Knowing the origin could help reduce the likelihood of a future pandemic occurring due to a repeat of the same or similar set of circumstances. That said, I agree that emphasis should be placed on lessons learned.
More energy on making sure we heed those lesson please, and less on seeking satisfying narrative closure (ah see, couldn't help myself and ended up returning to my skepticism of real-world narratives after all).
I think Quammen is saying that determining the origin would help provide more energy. As he writes later, “Once the outbreak (or epidemic, or pandemic) is controlled, the sense of urgency and the available research money tend to disappear.” An “A-ha!” finding of a definitive origin could give things we should do anyway a new push.
I also wonder if nailing down a source allows researchers to then work backward to fill in gaps and see other things they missed. (Not only to advance the research but also to inform policies and preparedness.)
I have to be honest, I feel that if it turns out to have started from a research-related incident, the odds of useful, actionable energy drop to about zero. In that scenario, I doubt we even get real improvements around lab safety and protocols -- the political fire will burn so hot it'll consume everything.
Note that this not, in any way, an argument against continuing investigations into origins. Rather, it's more a warning that we really ought to be using this time when it's still uncertain to push for implementing lessons learned now, because the at least immediate result of determining an origin is probably going to make that harder, not easier. Worse if it turns out to be research-related, but still true if natural spillover is definitively proved, as that would ease pressure on taking a hard look at lab safety.
My family's long lucky streak ran out last week and we all got covid. Thank goodness for vaccines and boosters -- symptoms weren't too bad, mostly just a few days of needing to get extra sleep, and only one day of true fatigue. Coughing for the kids, with the youngest never actually testing positive.
I suppose it's not so surprising to finally get it at this time -- between the current variants being so infectious, and the loosening of behavior around masking etc, there's more exposure now. I suspect we got it via kids activities, though can't know for certain.