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

No positivity here YET but today is the day I would normally drop my kids off at their mom's house (we're joint custody, weekly switch). She called this morning and SHE has COVID. Both kids have been over at her house for periods of an hour or more over the past few days, so they're definitely both exposed. And of course we're keeping them here now for the duration, so we have at least secondary exposure. I tested this morning just to be safe, negative. We'll watch for symptoms and see how it goes. I totally feel like we're on a rubber raft with sharks circling. Meanwhile I'm working on an article about how our schools are getting ready to open next week with not only no masks (mandates now prohibited by state law) but no reporting at all. The school system has shut down its COVID data dashboard and is essentially treating it like a cold or any other illness. But the community level is at least as high as its been for the start of the last two years of school, and both of those saw big jumps in infections the first few weeks of classes. Gonna be interesting to see how the "don't ask, don't tell" approach works.

The school system has shut down its COVID data dashboard and is essentially treating it like a cold or any other illness.

Sorry to hear that, though this seems to be the way things are moving. No word yet on our kid's school, but he doesn't start until the end of the month, but I'm hoping the dashboard is up again this year. My workplace, as I think I mentioned, didn't just stop updating their dashboard, but nuked it completely - along with any links to COVID information.

The thing is of course, people are still going to stay home if they're sick — and damn well ought to! Which, if the past two years are any guide, suggests a fair amount of likely mayhem, particularly if/when teachers are sick.

I'm still testing positive today and B's meant to get the kids back tomorrow. We hate that we'll probably have to tell them to stay with their mum/gparents for a few more days cos a) I'm still germy and b) we are both as weak as kittens and can barely feed/look after ourselves let alone 2 not-sick teenagers.

Thought I was rallying, today I feel like I have glandular fever or something. Blerugh!

Ugh. I tested negative at the ten-day mark, but I'm still coughing and feeling the pressure on my chest. I'm figuring that doesn't mean much now that I'm officially covid-negative, but it still gets a bit stressful at times.

So sorry for you all, it sounds like it pretty much sucks.

Woke up really exhausted this morning but starting to feel better.

So I had a severe exposure to COVID on Saturday and on 1:30 AM Monday I got symptoms so I called my provider's office to leave a message for them, except I couldn't just leave a message for them, they had to transfer me to the after-hours nursing hotline. So I got to sit through 20 minutes of questions to give my information to an intake person who said a nurse would call me right back as soon as possible.

Well, nobody called me back by 8 AM and at this time my actual doctor's office was open, so I called them and spend 20 minutes going through their phone tree and answering questions and then they said "Oh you're a healthcare employee, you have to call our Special Healthcare Employee Hotline"

So I called their Special Healthcare Employee Hotline and went through _their_ phone tree and said "OK we can send you in to be tested, here's the nearest testing site, our next appointment is at 2:15"

So I went in at 2:15 and they said "Do you want the rapid test or the definitive test", like I would wait half an hour in line for a rapid test I could fucking get at home, so I said "definitive please" so they said "OK one definitive coming right up, you'll have results in 24-48 hours, we'll send it to you through our portal, by the way you have to sign up for our portal"

Joke's on them because I was ALREADY signed up to their portal for some goddamn reason, so that's an hour I saved right there. Anyway so this evening they write back and say "Hey! Guess what! You have COVID!" And that's it. I have COVID. I kind of knew that already. Are you going to do something with that information? OK, yeah, because I'm an employee from the healthcare system I can't get healthcare from my _doctor_, I have to get special urgent support from people who will spare no expense to do as little as possible.

So because it's after-hours I call the after-hours employee hotline _again_ and get a very nice person who takes calls for the on-call nurses to not respond to. I have to give her my complete health history, I guess because she's just an admin person and she doesn't get access to my medical information. In order to protect my healthcare privacy, I have to reveal all of my most personal health information to every single person in the healthcare system I talk to every time I talk to anybody.

"So what are your symptoms?"
"I, uh... I had a definitive test for COVID and it came back positive. I have COVID."
"OK, but what are your symptoms?"
"Uh... sore throat?"
"OK, just sore throat, then."

Right. Just a sore throat. Probably nothing to worry about. Also, I have COVID, just so you know.

So anyway I spend another 20 minutes going through their phone tree and giving every piece of personally identifiable information I can think of to this person and she said "Hope you feel better soon."

Gee. That's nice. That's really nice of her.

You know what would fucking help me feel better soon? IF YOU COULD GET ME SOME FUCKING TREATMENT FOR THIS DISEASE I'VE BEEN TRYING TO TELL YOU I HAVE SINCE FUCKING 1:30 AM MONDAY MORNING. I BET THAT WOULD HELP.

But, you know, I appreciate her thoughts and prayers. I appreciate that our healthcare employee COVID hotline is run off thoughts and prayers. Benefits of working for a faith-based organization, I guess.

unfortunately, if you are generally healthy and are having mild symptoms (in other words, can breathe without assistance) there's very little a doctor is going to say you should do besides rest, isolate, monitor your temperature and oxygen levels, and maybe take dayquil/nyquil if you aren't feeling great.

right, in other words, i'm once again personally responsible for the failures of capitalism. i'm supposed to wait for my mild disease to become severe and potentially life-threatening and _not_ take the medication proven to alleviate symptoms because i live in a failed state which has since its inception been unable to keep us safe and healthy from a pandemic which, in march of 2020, _was_ controllable, if the people in authority had actually _enforced_ all of the measures recommended by epidemiological experts.

my primary interest, as always, is less in complying with the normative rules of a system which wants me dead, but to make sure that system fails to kill me for as long as possible.

what to do if you test positive for covid: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QERtKd1aDLDTjYAmaOOR5NVymJ-OhAFyU3EQQh4-VTM/edit

links in there to people who will issue a paxlovid rx via online consultation.

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.