rona moved in: ilx0rs with the bug report on their progress

thanks caek. i'm also informed that pharmacies are now authorized to dispense paxlovid _without_ a doctor's prescription to people who meet selected risk criteria. here's the info from one of my queer friends:

First of all, the Emergency Use Authorization for Paxlovid was modified to permit direct dispensing by pharmacists. No Rx from a doctor needed.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-pharmacists-prescribe-paxlovid-certain-limitations

Second, here's the official screener doc so you know what rules you in and rules you out for Paxlovid:
https://www.fda.gov/media/158165/download

note that these are some pretty fuckin' broad guidelines. it also _occurs_ to me that, since pharmacists can directly dispense, it would be possible to do some pharmacy shopping - get a five-day scrip from one pharmacy and then get another five-day scrip from a different pharmacy. you'd want to pay cash in case the insurance company gets pissed off, and i don't know what the cash cost would be. this might come in handy given that a _large_ number of people, including the friend who provided this information to me, are reporting that a five-day dose is insufficient to prevent a second "rebound" case of covid. of course i'm not an epidemiologist and therefore i don't know for _sure_ that a ten-day course would mitigate the risk of a "rebound" case, so i certainly wouldn't _recommend_ it to anybody, but it's certainly _possible_. given that official government institutions are consistently incapable of keeping up with the evolving epidemiological risk presented by covid, being a strong self-advocate, particularly if you're a member of a subaltern population of the sort that capitalist institutions have _always_ been at least implicitly exterminatory against, maybe isn't a bad idea.

I'd have some caution glomming onto Paxlovid, theres some indicators it can cause rebound infections apparently.

I'm now on day 12 of being unwell, and after a fairly mild up and down illness, in the last few days Ive gotten quite sick, with a hacking, pertussy cough that is causing terrible pain in my throat, and something that gums up my eyes so bad at night that I cannot open them in the morning and have to "wash" them open with medicted eyewash pads. Oh and the fatigue and still no sense of taste or smell.

Cold meds last 3 hours at most, but at least they do allay the worst of the cough and aches and thank GOD we scored some codiene early on.

B is pretty much recovered now, which is a relief. We're both negatve on RATs now too, so now its just me and this nagging chest/sinus thing. I'm hoping it clears up soon...

I'd have some caution glomming onto Paxlovid, theres some indicators it can cause rebound infections apparently.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce)

sigh, that's the problem with getting sick in the middle of the complete collapse of western civilization. i'm overall in _favor_ of the complete collapse of western civilization but at the same time i'd really like to not die from it, and how exactly to accomplish that is unclear and is becoming _increasingly_ difficult.

i mean this is fucking ludicrous. the whole thing is fucking ludicrous. why am i going out of my way to try and get a rare and precious prescription for a medication that's _not_ proven safe or effective, that might in fact make COVID _worse_? i'd be better off just taking a horse sedative.

i'm changing my primary care physician to a naturopath and buying a tarot deck.

Kate, what did they say when you asked for a paxlovid prescription?

nothing at all, of course, that's what the health care system is set up to do. you spend as much time as possible on phone trees and every time you talk to somebody they tell you to call somebody else, or call later, or put in a request through this website, or go to this site and do this thing. it's impossible to actually _help_ everybody who needs help so you set up processes to (a) make your workload manageable and (b) make sure you aren't held personally responsible for failing to help someone who needs it. which of course health care providers _shouldn't_ be held personally responsible, i understand the situation, the whole situation has been immensely traumatic and everybody who's quit can quit. everybody who's left is burned out and fatigued and is acutely, acutely aware how little they're actually accomplishing. how long do we have to fucking keep up this farce? how many more people do we all have to watch die while people keep telling each themselves, increasingly implausibly, that "it could be worse"?

not could, _will_. it will keep getting worse, every month, worse, and it will continue indefinitely, until we are all dead or until we _collectively_ decide to walk away from the institutions which are perpetuating the problem. symptomatic relief isn't enough. you have to treat the underlying condition.

When I got Covid and c.diff, I ended up having a conversation via zoom with an urgent care doctor, mostly about the c.diff meds but I also chatted with her about the covid. She considered prescribing me paxlovid but ended up not, as we didn't think I was immunocompromised. My father, who's pretty high-risk but also quadruple vaxxed, also got covid recently, and his doctor chose not to give him paxlovid out of concern about interactions with his other medications. Both of us had unpleasant but ultimately not dangerous cases of covid. Both of us are still coughing and feeling chest pressure that seems to be gradually getting better. The people I know who took paxlovid had milder cases, though one of them had a rebound, also mild. If I could go back and take the paxlovid, I might, but it's very hard to say what the right choice was.

I'm sorry you're still feeling bad, Trayce. Do you have an inhaler? I was prescribed one during a bad bout of bronchitis years ago, and I've pulled it out again and started using it for the chest stuff. It's been helping a lot.

My main lingering symptoms at this point are sun/heat sensitivity - like, I can very easily get too much sun on a hot day and start feeling sick - and my heart rate being all over the place. But I started out with what I'm pretty sure is mild POTS, so this isn't something new, just Covid aggravating something that was already there. It's still early days, so I'm hoping all of that fades with time like the cough. I've tried swimming and it makes my heart go all bumpy, but I can manage doing laps with a kickboard, so I'm starting with that and hoping to get back to real swimming soon.

so my apologies for the posts upthread i'm having kind of a difficult time and am a little (wobbles hand horizontally). i talked to a nurse and they were very nice and considerate and answered my questions, and _yes_ a lot of people who take paxlovid get rebounds but so do a lot of people who _don't_ take paxlovid? so she recommended paxlovid, and i'm going to pick it up. wish me luck. good thing: i'm now within walking distance of a pharmacy, i don't have the car right now. feeling really shitty about the people i infected, including my ex who's working really hard to get the place ready to go on the market. regarding the interactions, there's one minor interaction, it's not a drug that's super important to me to take and the nurse recommended i cut back my dose, which i'm fine with.

i guess i get to figure out what the long-term effects of covid look like for me... the last couple of years i've had a _lot_ of new symptoms, most of which are pretty directly attributable to the world being a dystopian hellhole. the way physical illness _changes_ you i think... there's a tendency to only want to understand it in clinical terms, and that's not really how i look at things. i already have issues with my heartrate being all over the damn place and severe sun/heat sensitivity, things can always get worse i figure!

I don't have an inhaler no. I havent even spoken to a doc since I got sick. Its a long story - my main GP is in the CBD, and was easy to get to when I worked in an office but of course not now I'm WFH all the time. And per our state's rules I wasnt allowed to leave the house while spicey anyway.

The racking cough is fucking painful, but I think it is slowly getting better.

best wishes to everyone else who's suffering from the virus at the moment

I tested positive for COVID on a couple of home tests on Tuesday afternoon after having a sore throat and some congestion over the previous 24 hours. so far I've only experienced minor cold-like symptoms — nasal and chest congestion, occasional cough, fatigue — so I've just been resting at home and taking cold meds. I've never registered a fever. my mom tested positive on the same day (and her boyfriend on Saturday) so I may have caught it from her. her symptoms seem to be about the same as mine.

the expected response I got when I contacted HR at work was, "there is no paid time off available for illness or COVID other than available accrued vacation time that you may have." this is perfectly legal in New Hampshire! I'm SOL, as I've only worked there for 10 months, and my vacation time will only begin to accrue after my one year anniversary. if I'm not feeling completely awful, I plan to return to work with a mask on Sunday and hope that I don't infect too many people. my employer is essentially punishing its employees with a financial penalty for staying home with a potentially lethal illness and rewarding them if they're desperate enough to show up for work again before their illness has properly run its course. my CEO is a locally famous Bezosian entrepreneur who runs his business like a sweatshop and took no protective measures against COVID during last winter's surge. I hope he dies of COVID very soon, but I doubt he has the decency to do such a thing.

(should mention that my company also has locations in Massachusetts, where employees are entitled to paid sick leave because state law provides for it)

I feel outraged every time I read about people in the US not having basic workplace rights like paid sick leave. I’m sorry you aren’t able to curl up in bed and not worry about work.

I'm sorry unregistered, that's annoying. I hope you continue to feel relatively minor symptoms. It's so depressing and kind of soul crushing to see how quickly American workplaces have gone back to not giving a fuck about employees after pretending to care for a few months in 2020.

xp we barely have paid sick leave in the UK though, not like we're in much of a position to judge. statutory sick pay isn't going to pay anyone's rent.

anyway hi I got covid for my birthday this year. so far just a bit of a cough and my voice is a bit scratchy

thanks y'all. the fact is that shithole workplaces like mine have never given a fuck about their employees and have only ever made grumbling efforts to protect them from the impact of the pandemic when the law has compelled them to do so. as I understand it, my employer was required to provide paid COVID sick leave until the end of 2020 under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, but now that there are no federal or state laws requiring it, it can go right back to squeezing the life out of its employees with impunity.

tbf I've had plenty of time to curl up in bed, but it's definitely stressful to consider that I might miss out on hundreds of dollars of income if my condition should take a turn for the worse

get well soon, bovarism! (xpost)

so angry on your behalf. inhuman fucking country

^appreciated. I wish I had the power to deliver even a tiny slap on the wrist to my company, but at this point all I can really do is start looking for jobs as soon as I recover and vet my potential employers much more carefully this time around. but it sucks having to shop around for employers on the basis of whether they provide for basic humans rights. a quick google search shows that 23% of private industry workers in the US still didn't have access to paid sick leave as of March 2021, which is appalling

Hugs.

IN my country its the law you have to isolate for 7 days if you test positive. But theres no payment assistance so if yr on casual wages/no SL yer shit out of luck. But I think our govt recently did bring back a casual worker assistance payment?

I've been lucky, I work from home so ths last 2 weeks Ive only fully called in sick about 3 days - the worst of my illness was last weekend which was handy. Ive just been working 3/4 horizontally on the couch under blankets.

to me it seems like a common courtesy thing.

like I had two shitty roommates back in 2019 and one day, after I'd been walking through the common areas they themselves were sitting/watching TV in for the entire weekend, they just decided to tell me one day they all had the flu, and to avoid them (after I'd already been heavily exposed to them when they were contagious).

I didn't get it but I was livid.

but now, if you get mad at someone for not disclosing COVID, whoa whoa whoaaaaaaaaaa, doc, hey have some decorum here, we can't be expected to quarantine forever just because we're sick!

(the lack of sick/COVID pay is ridiculous. we were a little more lenient than what the law allowed, but as soon as the governmental requirement ended, they ended it. someone asked me about COVID pay during our last class and I bit my lip and said we didn't have it anymore - we of all people can afford to grant it, there's no excuse. but we do also give fairly decent wellness time that can be used not just for you being sick, but family members, or mental health.)

I'm finally basically better, aside from some grumbly congestion of no real bother. Smell/taste is back. Fingers crossed it looks like I'll avoid any long term complications. Now I need to try and get fit again - I lost 5kg during this and I'd like to keep that going!

<3 glad you’re on the mend

suspect i'm getting a bit of a rebound case. my initial case was _extremely_ mild - as soon as my symptoms manifested (accidentally said "systems" which i guess is technically correct as well, haha) i spent the next two days bugging everybody i knew until somebody gave me paxlovid. i feel disproportionately exhausted and achy... telling actual covid apart from the insane amounts of life stress i'm going through is difficult but i _feel_ like i'm getting a reasonable amount of sleep and am therefore probably a bit physically ill.

You're not the first person to get a rebound case after Paxlovid. Best wishes!

they don't even give out paxlovid here unless you're in a high risk group

I tested negative this morning! I still cough occasionally but that's about it. got off pretty lightly again, didn't lose taste, never had a temperature

yeah a couple of my friends got covid around the same time and they're getting over rebounds now. not super worried about it except it pushed back my surgery revision date, no surgery within 7 weeks of having covid. i'm not really stressed about it tho, it's a pretty minor revision. i'm not even testing, i just don't get out much and don't like sticking shit up my nose (no wonder i never made it during the indie sleaze days). "high risk group" is loosely enough defined that i qualify... a combination of stress eating and getting shorter means i'm now obese again.

yeah just "obese" doesn't qualify in the UK, you have to have a serious medical condition - cancer, autoimmune diseases etc

Yeah in AU you have to be over 50+ have at least 2 risk factors in those kind of categories (heart problems/cancer/diabetes/obesity/asthma) or, be First Nations. I didnt even bother asking. I was too sick to go anywhere to have gotten it anyway?

Partner only got an antiviral cos he got hospitalised with his.

Finally caught a case this weekend at an extremely bad time - traveling with my whole extended family for a funeral. No way I was affording an extended hotel stay, so managed instead to rent a car and drive 9hrs home to isolate and quarantine. Made it back just in time for fever to knock me flat on my ass, where it still has me 2 days later, despite Paxlovid. I know it’ll pass but man, it’s got me like a motherfucker. But it seems that nobody else in my family got infected, so for that I’m thankful. (Also thankful for the blessing of having enough sick time.) Had grand hopes about ticking off the remaining unwatched discs in my Criterion Bergman box, but so far all I can do is watch crappy 90s cop movies. Tried watching some Sergio Leone at first but looking at all those tired, sweaty, smelly, unhealthy, overheated dudes hit a bit too close to home.

Well hell. After almost 2 1/2 years and an escalating amount of indisputably risky behavior (or what we in Tennessee call, "getting on with our lives") it done got me. Symptoms started yesterday, allergy-like. Negative rapid test last night, but temp started rising today so I went for a PCR. Then when I got home I did another rapid test and ZOING that line sure shows up bright when it shows. Hovering around 101 degree fever right now, not feeling great Bob. Biggest bummer is our final planned trip of the year was in two days, to NYC to see the Open and A Strange Loop and eat at delicious restaurants. All canceled now. (If anyone wants good tickets to A Strange Loop this Friday, give me a shout — I'll do an ILX discount for less than StubHub will give me.)

Fortunately we just dropped the kids at their mom's yesterday, so it's just me and my wife in the house. I'm isolating upstairs, she has no symptoms and is negative at the moment. As a bonus, my work partner ALSO tested today after I reported to him, because he was feeling kind of rundown, and he's positive too. We're only a two-man operation putting out a daily subscription email, so here's hoping we don't both get completely incapacitated. (I think our readers will understand if we have to skip a day tho.)

Anyway, I had a good run. (Without COVID I mean. I don't mean that in a fatalistic way.)

Sorry to hear it, tipsy. Hugs.

Thx. Also I'm open to persuading on whether I should get paxlovid. I'm 53 and have no serious health risks. The side effects of paxlovid seem kind of crummy, but otoh better safe than sorry? Has anyone here dug into that more than my cursory reading?

Depending on the seriousness of my case should I get infected, I may forego paxlovid too.

My doc's office is closed for the day anyway, so I guess I can just see how I feel in the morning. I'll still be within the antiviral window then.

Feel better, tipsy.

sorry to hear this tipsy. get better soon. i have no opinion on paxlovid but i have said many times that tylenol is your best friend. treat it as a golden gift.

Sorry Tipsy, get well soon!

Thanks all! And One Eye Open I hope you're on the mend.

Bummer, sorry to hear about the diagnosis

I had the Delta back in November, when they were still recommending a 10 day isolation period.. I was pretty good about it, but did go out for a walk at the Port of Oakland on a Sunday afternoon, when there's nobody around

Too bad about the cancelled trip, but hopefully you'll at least partially enjoy this little break from life.. I kinda did (somewhat)

tipsy, if your wife is looking after you make sure youre both masked up every single time you go near each other. I didnt with my othr half (I masked, he didnt) and eventually I caught it. Though whos to say if it was in the window before we knew he had it too I suppose...

Yep, we’re both masking any time she brings me food or drink, or when I have to enter the rest of the house. But she was definitely heavily exposed, since I already had some symptoms the last night we shared a bed. Fingers crossed! We have friends and family who have offered to help if we both end up sick.

Aaaand now my wife has a fever too. No positive test yet, but I imagine it will come tomorrow. Fun. At least we’ll be able to stop wearing masks in the house I guess.

Ugh, good luck, my friend.

Yeah its harder with no one to schlep for you :( my sympathies.

tips! how are you?

I don't even know what Paxlovid is.

I was looking for this thread the other day but couldn't find it for the life of me so I posted in the Outbreak! thread instead. My dose is still no worse than a nasty cold, not much fever, the sore throat has abated (thank God), still coughing quite a bit though and it's generally unpleasant but not horribly so.

One fairly comic incident. When you're off sick where I work you're supposed to phone in and leave a message on an answering machine. So I had a bit of a rough night on Tuesday with coughing fits and when I woke up in the morning and tried to leave a message to say I'd definitely tested positive for the rona all that came out was this croak like a cross between Dalek and coffin lid being opened. Still at least they'll know I'm not faking it!

Get well.