#Covid-19 infected

[thistlecrimes]

Things I've learned from getting covid for the first time in 2023

I wear an N95 in public spaces and I've managed to dodge it for a long time, but I finally got covid for the first time (to my knowledge) in mid-late November 2023. It was a weird experience especially because I feel like it used to be something everyone was talking about and sharing info on, so getting it for the first time now (when people generally seem averse to talking about covid) I found I needed to seek out a lot of info because I wasn't sure what to do. I put so much effort into prevention, I knew less about what to do when you have it. I'm experiencing a rebound right now so I'm currently isolating. So, I'm making a post in the hopes that if you get covid (it's pretty goddamn hard to avoid right now) this info will be helpful for you. It's a couple things I already knew and several things I learned. One part of it is based on my experience in Minnesota but some other states may have similar programs.

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The World Health Organization states you should isolate for 10 days from first having symptoms plus 3 days after the end of symptoms.

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At the time of my writing this post, in Minnesota, we have a test to treat program where you can call, report the result of your rapid test (no photo necessary) and be prescribed paxlovid over the phone to pick up from your pharmacy or have delivered to you. It is free and you do not need to have insurance. I found it by googling "Minnesota Test to Treat Covid"

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Paxlovid decreases the risk of hospitalization and death, but it's also been shown to decrease the risk of Long Covid. Long Covid can occur even from mild or asymptomatic infections.

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Covid rebound commonly occurs 2-8 days after apparent recovery. While many people associate Paxlovid with covid rebound, researchers say there is no strong evidence that Paxlovid causes covid rebound, and rebounds occur in infections that were not treated with Paxlovid as well. I knew rebounds could happen but did not know it could take 8 days. I had mine on day 7 and was completely surprised by it.

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If you start experiencing new symptoms or test positive again, the CDC states that you should start your isolation period again at day zero. Covid rebound is still contagious. Personally I'd suggest wearing a high quality respirator around folks for an additional 8-9 days after you start to test negative in case of a rebound.

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Positive results on a rapid test can be very faint, but even a very faint line is positive result. Make sure to look at your rapid test result under strong lighting. Also, false negatives are not uncommon. If you have symptoms but test negative taking multiple tests and trying different brands if you have them are not bad ideas. My ihealth tests picked up my covid, my binax now tests did not.

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EDIT: I'd highly suggest spending time with friends online if you can, I previously had a link to the NAMI warmline directory in this post but I've since been informed that NAMI is very much funded by pharmaceutical companies and lobbies for policies that take autonomy away from disabled folks, so I've taken that off of here! Sorry, I had no idea, the People's CDC listed them as a resource so I just assumed they were legit! Feel free to reply/reblog this with other warmlines/support resources if you know of them! And please reblog this version!

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I know that there is so much we can't control as individuals right now, and that's frightening. All we can do is try our best to reduce harm and to care for each other. I hope this info will be able to help folks.

[juliamccartney]

gentle reminder that it's not too late to get into the habit of wearing masks again 😷

[fxaa]

If you have covid symptoms and are testing negative for everything, do not be so confident that what you have is just a cold. Unless you have multiple negative PCR results or confirmation it is something else theres still a pretty good chance its covid, considering the false negative rate on those (their accuracy peaks at 80% and is as low as 0% first day of infection).

If you are sick with anything cold symptom-y at all right now, stay home if you can and please mask up with a well-fitting n95 if you absolutely need to go out. Consider wearing a mask again right now even if you aren't having covid symptoms, to protect yourself and to protect others from asymptomatic transmission, considering we are in the second biggest surge of the pandemic.

[wat3rm370n]

Unmasked and making everyone sick.

I’ve been hearing about people showing up to work sick, testing positive for covid, and not wearing a mask and working sick, despite the CDC’s recommendation that people “Stay home and away from others”, and even after feeling better they say to mask when resuming normal activities.

CDC - Respiratory Virus Guidance March 1, 2024 Preventing Spread of Respiratory Viruses When You're Sick When you go back to your normal activities, take added precaution over the next 5 days, such as taking additional steps for cleaner air, hygiene, masks, physical distancing, and/or testing when you will be around other people indoors. This is especially important to protect people with factors that increase their risk of severe illness from respiratory viruses. Keep in mind that you may still be able to spread the virus that made you sick, even if you are feeling better. You are likely to be less contagious at this time, depending on factors like how long you were sick or how sick you were.

All year long I keep hearing stories about people who are actively sick and coughing and refusing to mask in confined spaces like subway trains and crowded workplaces. And even people refusing to mask when asked to by trapped elderly people in airplanes and healthcare settings. This is a very dicey situation with the coming American public health dark age and the threat of bird flu and mask bans.

[xxxscene-rawrxxx]

i juzt turned 20 nd now i haz covid... thiz zome bz!!!! gawd dammit!!!!!!!!

im a zombeh now raaaawr xD

buuttt zrzly, i feel horrible. thiz iz ztupid man :(

[daisiesonafield-blog]

Abstract:

Full article here

[2bpoliticallycurious]

This is an important rebuttal to the recent serious misinterpretation of data from a Cochrane review of mask use. This is a gift link, so anyone who wants to read the entire article can do so, even if they do not subscribe to The New York Times.  Here is a summary of some of the problems with the studies in the review and with their interpretation: 

While the review assessed 78 studies, only 10 of those focused on what happens when people wear masks versus when they don’t, and a further five looked at how effective different types of masks were at blocking transmission, usually for health care workers. The remainder involved other measures aimed at lowering transmission, like hand washing or disinfection, while a few studies also considered masks in combination with other measures. Of those 10 studies that looked at masking, the two done since the start of the Covid pandemic both found that masks helped. [emphasis added]

Below are some more highlights of the article.

Now the organization, Cochrane, says that the way it summarized the review was unclear and imprecise, and that the way some people interpreted it was wrong.

“Many commentators have claimed that a recently updated Cochrane review shows that ‘masks don’t work,’ which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation,” Karla Soares-Weiser, the editor in chief of the Cochrane Library, said in a statement. [...] She said that “this wording was open to misinterpretation, for which we apologize,” and that Cochrane would revise the summary.

Soares-Weiser also said, though, that one of the lead authors of the review even more seriously misinterpreted its finding on masks by saying in an interview that it proved “there is just no evidence that they make any difference.” In fact, Soares-Weiser said, “that statement is not an accurate representation of what the review found.” [...] So what we learn from the Cochrane review is that, especially before the pandemic, distributing masks didn’t lead people to wear them, which is why their effect on transmission couldn’t be confidently evaluated.

[emphasis added]

[See more highlights from the article under the cut.]

To use randomized trials to study whether masks reduce a virus’s spread by keeping infected people from transmitting a pathogen, we need randomized comparisons of large groups, like having people in one city assigned to wear masks and those in another to not wear them. As ethically and logistically difficult as that might seem, there was one study during the pandemic in which masks were distributed, but not mandated, in some Bangladeshi villages and not others before masks were widely used in the country. Mask use increased to 40 percent from 10 percent over a two-month period in the villages where free masks were distributed. Researchers found an 11 percent reduction in Covid cases in the villages given surgical masks, with a 35 percent reduction for people over age 60.

Another pandemic study randomly distributed masks to people in Denmark over a month. About half the participants wore the masks as recommended. Of those assigned to wear masks, 1.8 percent became infected, compared with 2.1 percent in the no-mask group — a 14 percent reduction. But researchers could not reach a firm conclusion about whether masks were protective because there were few infections in either group and fewer than half the people assigned masks wore them. [...] Lab studies, many of which were done during the pandemic, show that masks, particularly N95 respirators, can block viral particles. Linsey Marr, an aerosol scientist who has long studied airborne viral transmission, told me even cloth masks that fit well and use appropriate materials can help.

Real-life data can be complicated by variables that aren’t controlled for, but it’s worth examining even if studying it isn’t conclusive.

Japan, which emphasized wearing masks and mitigating airborne transmission, had a remarkably low death rate in 2020 even though it did not have any shutdowns and rarely tested and traced widely outside of clusters.

David Lazer, a political scientist at Northeastern University, calculated that before vaccines were available, U.S. states without mask mandates had 30 percent higher Covid death rates than those with mandates.

Perhaps the best evidence comes from natural experiments, which study how things change after an event or intervention.

Researchers at Mass General Brigham, one of Harvard’s teaching hospital groups, found that in early 2020, before mask mandates were introduced, the infection rate among health care workers doubled every 3.6 days and rose to 21.3 percent. After universal masking was required, the rate stopped increasing, and then quickly declined to 11.4 percent.

In Germany, 401 regions introduced mask mandates at various times over three months in the spring of 2020. By carefully comparing otherwise similar places before and after mask mandates, researchers concluded that “face masks reduce the daily growth rate of reported infections by around 47 percent,” with the effect more pronounced in large cities and among older people. [...] Masks are a tool, not a talisman or a magic wand. They have a role to play when used appropriately and consistently at the right times. They should not be dismissed or demonized.

[emphasis added]

These are just some highlights from the article. I recommend using the gift link and reading the whole article. From everything I’ve read (in this article and elsewhere) high quality masks that were appropriately worn helped save lives during the pandemic. The spread of misinformation about masks by people who are politically motivated, could well lead to unnecessary deaths when the next pandemic arrives.

[strawberry-cow-sorceress]

[ID: a tweet that reads “We’ve done an analysis to show that countries that reduced Covid more effectively won more Gold medals than expected at the Paris Olympics and vice versa” above a link to a study titled “Possible impacts of national response to COVI…" end ID]

study linked in tweet:

Obviously correlation is not necessarily causation, but I, for one, am not particularly surprised by these findings. COVID ravages the body in ways that can be hard to detect and athletes (and anyone else who begins serious physical exertion within 6 months of a COVID infection) are at much higher risk of developing Long COVID than people who get radical rest following an infection.

COVID is preventable, though! N95s have been found to be nearly perfect at blocking COVID and Mask Blocs can help you find free or cheap masks and tests in your area. Many even ship within their state if you’re worried about not living in a big city. COVID is not inevitable and more people masking means less COVID in the air!

here’s a link to an article about the N95 study:

and here’s the study itself:

[onbearfeet]

Roommate Cryptid has the plague and maybe I do too?

Welp.

So I got a text this afternoon from a friend, informing me that, after 4 years of dodging the bullet, she developed covid symptoms the day after she gave me a lift home from a 4th of July barbecue, and had now tested positive. I tested immediately, and was negative.

Roommate Cryptid tested positive. Later in the day, he developed mild brain fog.

This is a little odd because, while he was also at the barbecue, he left before Covid Friend arrived. It's possible that my negative is a false one and I gave him the plague despite still being asymptomatic, but we're currently playing a somewhat grim game of I Got It From Agnes. Results so far:

The hosts of the barbecue on the 4th: negative, asymptomatic

The hosts' children: asymptomatic, probably too young to provide a good sample for a home test.

My mother, whom I saw unmasked on Saturday the 6th: negative, asymptomatic

My friend T, for whom I did a favor on Sunday the 7th while she wore a surgical mask and I wore an N95: negative, asymptomatic.

RC's and my friend J, whom RC saw on Friday the 5th: positive, asymptomatic.

RC's sister, with whom he had dinner Friday evening: negative, asymptomatic.

Everybody in the grocery stores I visited on Sunday while wearing an N95: I'll never know.

Everybody in the Target RC visited on Sunday while not masked: ditto.

So maybe RC got it from me, and I'll test positive tomorrow. Maybe I'm actually negative, and RC got it from J, and the timing is a coincidence because there's so much plague about. Maybe somebody else at the barbecue was passing the plague around and RC caught it that way. I'll update this as I get more data if anyone's interested.

Any which way, this is your irregularly scheduled reminder to wear a fucking mask and get your jabs if you can because actual systematic anti-covid measures make Economy Jesus cry or something, and you never know when Roommate Cryptid will be asymptomatically buying USB sticks in your local Target.

[queer-assthetic]

Re the horrific US vaccine misinformation campaign in the Philippines:

USAmericans and privileged citizens from the global north generally must really wake up as to how their governments have minimized COVID to their own populations while simultaneously exploiting the global south and denying them health resources. COVID is still around, it's still a pandemic, it's still killing and disabling people domestically and internationally, and it's worse for people in the global south

In the US, the govt has and is continuing to misrepresent the very real dangers of COVID, how it causes long term disability and death, and how it disproportionately affects people of color - especially trans people of color. The current efforts to ban masks will serve to further criminalize the vulnerable and isolate the disabled. The US has allowed anti science viewpoints to grow rampant in this country to the joy of the right and due to the complacency of the left.

These domestic and international consequences are the result of valuing capitalism and economy over human lives. The result of mainstream eugenics, white supremacy, and individualism.

[pipzeroes]

I mean masking for pathogen reasons, not costume etc. reasons (and ideally with a well-fitting, effective mask preventing air from leaking in from gaps between face and mask; surgical masks stop spittle but not airborne transmission).

Also maybe check out this video if you like gabber and/or memes

[anotherobsessedsomething]

Me has Covid me is scared

[tweedfrog]

"Infective Sars-Cov-2 in skull sawdust at Autopsy, Finland" is not a string of words I ever wanted to hear

[aqua-cultured]

Thinking about how Covid rebound being a thing I hadn't even heard of before my doc mentioned it in passing the other day when she was telling me there's basically no risk for it and i can go places maskless after thursday, how it was downplayed so much i didn't even consider it as a risk, how I made decisions without accounting for it and endangered people i care about, how media and the government is too busy making us go back to normal it doesn't sufficiently educate the public, how I made it four fucking years doing everything right and it was likely ruined cause i had to drink water on a plane with some asshole who just couldn't miss their Hawaiʻi vacation

[nando161mando]

Bird flu in Canada may have mutated to become more transmissible to humans

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/19/bird-flu-cases-mutation-canada