Covid again !!

[CalG]

Speedy recovery for those have nasty illness.

Any and All!

 

[chris the wrench]

I just got over covid #2. It was rough, not as bad as first which knocked me down for 8-10 days. My wife got her first covid recently and she got the meds to fight it. 3-4 days and she was fine and tested negative, but about 4 days later it flared up and she tested positive again.

Tricky stuff, rest more than you think

 

[Racenut]

My wife and I both managed to dodge it up till the 4th of July. My daughter came to visit with my twin grandsons almost 1 year old. And brought it with them.. we all got it, none of us had any big trouble other than disrupting work for a week but I'm able to work from home pretty effectively. It seems to be the kinder, gentler COVID these days, but it sure seems to be going around.

 

[Dftodd]

I still have not gotton COVID. I never worked from home and went into the office every day. I have done countless business trips and conferences.

Nothing.

As Charlie Sheen would say...Tiger Blood.

It really effects people differently. You could have very well had it, but not known it unless you tested positive.

You just happen to be one of those folks it doesn't bother.

I caught it in the beginning before they really started testing for it.

I was knocked down for 3 days with flu like symptoms. Lost my voice one of those days.

Wife had it at the same time with a similar experience.

After that we were around people regularly with covid without issue. Wife worked the covid ward multiple times over the next two years.

We got it the next time 3 years later coming back from Hawaii.

That go round, we wouldn't have realized we had it if my wife hadn't had regular testing at her work.

We just thought we were jet lagged and adjusting back to our normal time.

 

[garry1p]

The only Covid vaccine I could take was the Johnson & Johnson all others had PEG (polyethylene glycol) as an inactive ingredient and I am seriously allergic to PEG. J & J has been taken of the market so no boosters.

So far I have managed to dodge Covid.
I did get sick last year sore throat, cough and home tested positive, tested again positive, so I go to the clinic and their lab test is negative. The DR says nope no Covid and gives me a prescription.
I don't remember what it was but go to the pharmacy and whatever he prescribed had PEG as an inactive ingredient .
If I do get Covid the majority of medications along with most OTC stuff has PEG so I am very limited in what I can take. Just have to keep trying to dodging the bullet and hope for the best should I do get Covid.

I wonder if others have false positives with the home test? I lost my faith in the home test.

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

Hell, Team USA just won bronze in the men's 200M while positive with Covid

 

[ruffdog]

Hell, Team USA just won bronze in the men's 200M while positive with Covid

I wonder how many are spreading covid at the games. There should be a chance of higher viral load with all the people cheering and yelling.

 

[ponytug]

The only Covid vaccine I could take was the Johnson & Johnson all others had PEG (polyethylene glycol) as an inactive ingredient and I am seriously allergic to PEG. J & J has been taken of the market so no boosters.

So far I have managed to dodge Covid.
I did get sick last year sore throat, cough and home tested positive, tested again positive, so I go to the clinic and their lab test is negative. The DR says nope no Covid and gives me a prescription.
I don't remember what it was but go to the pharmacy and whatever he prescribed had PEG as an inactive ingredient .
If I do get Covid the majority of medications along with most OTC stuff has PEG so I am very limited in what I can take. Just have to keep trying to dodging the bullet and hope for the best should I do get Covid.

I wonder if others have false positives with the home test? I lost my faith in the home test.

Perhaps more than you want to know, but...

Under the best of conditions lateral flow tests, the common covid home tests are not perfect. In typical home use, much lower.

There is a large company that writes definitive summaries and reviews for medical and scientific researchers. I think that they are the best in the world, the Cochrane Organization. Here is a quote from their overview and evaluation of 152 studies of the accuracy of home Covid tests(antigen);

In people with confirmed COVID-19, antigen tests correctly identified COVID-19 infection in an average of 73% of people with symptoms, compared to 55% of people without symptoms. Tests were most accurate when used in the first week after symptoms began (an average of 82% of confirmed cases had positive antigen tests). This is likely to be because people have the most virus in their system in the first days after they are infected. For people with no symptoms, tests were most accurate in people likely to have been in contact with a case of COVID-19 infection (an average of 64% of confirmed cases had positive antigen tests).​

(My bold)​

How accurate are rapid antigen tests for diagnosing COVID-19?

www.cochrane.org

So, with symptoms, the probability is that there could be a one in four chance the test failed, but bear in mind that tests can fail positive (you don't have Covid, but the test says positive), and the tests can fail negative (you do have Covid, but the test says not). Lots of things can cause a test to fail from environmental things (dust, pollen, etc.) to blood or other organisms in the sample, to sampling issues (clumps of gunk, wrong part of the nose, sample too small, sample too large), and of course user error.

Not to throw anyone in particular under the bus, but watching my MIL try to do a test was hoot. She's not normally a fan of following directions, e.g. recipes, or being willing to read a user manual. My wife and I were both desperately holding in the giggles trying to shepherd her through a self test. Left to her own devices, I'd bet money that her test results would be zero percent accuracy for some large number of tries.

Pregnancy tests are much, much more accurate, in the high 98-99%, for a host of technical reasons, and billions of dollars of work.

All the best,

Peter

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

I've had Covid thrice. Each time less bad than the last. I've also had the flu numerous times in my life. Sinus infections. It's just an illness.

 

[jyoutz]

I've had Covid thrice. Each time less bad than the last. I've also had the flu numerous times in my life. Sinus infections. It's just an illness.

Yep, but not fun. I’ve had it twice and felt weak for two weeks afterwards.

 

[MossRoad]

A very small number of folks have been shown not to get infected with SARS-cov-2 (the Covid virus). They have no antibodies in their blood, and when challenged with the virus nothing happens. The current belief is that their cell surface receptor is just sufficiently different to give those folks protection against the current strains.

A larger number of folks, but still a small percentage get asymptomatic infections. Those folks have antibodies in their blood.

Having a spectrum of immune responses to viruses and communicable diseases is how species survive...

All the best,

Peter

It reminded me of the movie The Andromeda Strain...

Hall realizes that the alcoholic Jackson survived because his blood was acidic from drinking Sterno, and that the baby lived due to his blood being too alkaline from constant crying, suggesting that Andromeda can survive only within a narrow range of blood pH.

 

[newbury]

Pregnancy tests are much, much more accurate, in the high 98-99%, for a host of technical reasons, and billions of dollars of work.

And with pregnancy the results are much more definitive - yup, she had a baby.
With C19 - well maybe it was the flu or RSV.

 

[Fixastuff]

It’s nothing until the Chinese release part 2 that activates it. lol. Im really just making this up so don’t take me seriously.

 

[MossRoad]

It’s nothing until the Chinese release part 2 that activates it. lol. Im really just making this up so don’t take me seriously.

Or should we...........

 

[Valveman]

On my 4th-5th day just riding it out. Must be KP3 cause you guys describe the systems exactly. Lol! Feeling better but haven't been this sick since November 2019, which was a few months before Covid existed. I think maybe they are just able to test for more stuff than before, so what we were told was the Flu years ago was the same thing? Remember when the death tally every night was from the flu?

 

[Snobdds]

It reminded me of the movie The Andromeda Strain...

Hall realizes that the alcoholic Jackson survived because his blood was acidic from drinking Sterno, and that the baby lived due to his blood being too alkaline from constant crying, suggesting that Andromeda can survive only within a narrow range of blood pH.

Hollywood is not real life.

 

[Fixastuff]

Or should we...........

What’s the saying about truth in jokes?

 

[Dftodd]

I've had Covid thrice. Each time less bad than the last. I've also had the flu numerous times in my life. Sinus infections. It's just an illness.

Sinus infections are yearly for me and the wife.

 

[ponytug]

And with pregnancy the results are much more definitive - yup, she had a baby.
With C19 - well maybe it was the flu or RSV.

With known infectious diseases, the nucleic acid lab tests can be very good 90+%. Some, like C. diff testing, almost aren't worth using in my opinion.

There is always the case that it was covid, plus flu, plus... docs don't find very many because they don't often test for all at the same time because insurance companies hate paying for "unneeded" tests. (Well, you didn't know it was unneeded until you know what it is..., so it is a bit, but not entirely chicken and egg.) When people look carefully, patients often have a number of infections at the same time. I remember one patient who came in for something unrelated like a broken arm, and her blood had 42 different parasites in it.

Hollywood is not real life.

No, it is not.

But acidosis and alkalosis are know to affect the course of many diseases. Michael Crichton, who wrote the book the movie is based on, was educated at and had an MD degree from Harvard medical school. So, he had a pretty good grounding in science and medicine.

Michael Crichton - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I've often wondered if his time in medical school traumatized him, and he decided to write about scientists as being villains as a result. Generally, I think the books are well crafted, and often scientifically and medically quite accurate, except of course for the plot idea, e.g. alien life form, time travel...

All the best,

Peter

 

[MossRoad]

Sinus infections are yearly for me and the wife.

Bronchitis every October for us.