Surviving the plague
Jun. 23rd, 2022 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellTL;DR: I'm fine now, and yes I do know that Omicron doesn't protect much against itself.
Welp, COVID-19 finally caught up with us. My worst fear was catching it and giving it to the SO, who has bigger risk factors than me, but the SO wound up being the one who caught it first. Which at least means my masking protocol for outside the house is working.
I had a relatively mild case, for which I thank science. After having bonus lingering side effects from two entirely different vaccine platforms (J&J primary, Moderna booster) I was thinking I had damn well better have decent protection, and so I do.
As for the idea that omicron strains have been reduced to a mild cold... it depends on what your definition of "mild cold" is. I've certainly had worse colds, but I'm prone to really bad colds. I did wind up missing one day of work, although ironically that was because I felt so much better one evening that I had a poorly timed burst of energy and hardly slept that night. Rest and fluids handled most of the symptoms; I did wind up taking a Tylenol when my sinuses were clearing out and everything was achy and itchy.
The biggest difference from a cold was the symptoms showed up in the wrong order. Rather than head symptoms first, it started with a coughing and throat-clearing, then moved to a sore throat and fever for a couple days, then lodged in my sinuses.
I never had any of the classic original symptoms. No loss of taste or smell, no trouble breathing, no horrible dry cough.
I do have a slight lingering cough, but that's completely in line with typical cold symptoms for me. I don't appear to have any serious respiratory or metabolic issues hanging on. I've been back to normal activity levels for a couple weeks, and I was able to ride my bike up the hill to the light rail station on Monday and felt fine afterwards, so I'm fairly confident I have dodged long COVID.
So it seems to have worked out okay this time, not that I want to spin that roulette wheel again anytime soon. (Even with omicron carrying roughly half the risk of long COVID of previous strains, that's still a 5-15% chance.) And unfortunately omicron doesn't seem to add much protection against itself. Studies are finding that people can be reinfected as soon as three weeks after a previous infection. It'll be masks in public for me for a while yet.
Welp, COVID-19 finally caught up with us. My worst fear was catching it and giving it to the SO, who has bigger risk factors than me, but the SO wound up being the one who caught it first. Which at least means my masking protocol for outside the house is working.
I had a relatively mild case, for which I thank science. After having bonus lingering side effects from two entirely different vaccine platforms (J&J primary, Moderna booster) I was thinking I had damn well better have decent protection, and so I do.
As for the idea that omicron strains have been reduced to a mild cold... it depends on what your definition of "mild cold" is. I've certainly had worse colds, but I'm prone to really bad colds. I did wind up missing one day of work, although ironically that was because I felt so much better one evening that I had a poorly timed burst of energy and hardly slept that night. Rest and fluids handled most of the symptoms; I did wind up taking a Tylenol when my sinuses were clearing out and everything was achy and itchy.
The biggest difference from a cold was the symptoms showed up in the wrong order. Rather than head symptoms first, it started with a coughing and throat-clearing, then moved to a sore throat and fever for a couple days, then lodged in my sinuses.
I never had any of the classic original symptoms. No loss of taste or smell, no trouble breathing, no horrible dry cough.
I do have a slight lingering cough, but that's completely in line with typical cold symptoms for me. I don't appear to have any serious respiratory or metabolic issues hanging on. I've been back to normal activity levels for a couple weeks, and I was able to ride my bike up the hill to the light rail station on Monday and felt fine afterwards, so I'm fairly confident I have dodged long COVID.
So it seems to have worked out okay this time, not that I want to spin that roulette wheel again anytime soon. (Even with omicron carrying roughly half the risk of long COVID of previous strains, that's still a 5-15% chance.) And unfortunately omicron doesn't seem to add much protection against itself. Studies are finding that people can be reinfected as soon as three weeks after a previous infection. It'll be masks in public for me for a while yet.
