right. Exactly as I said. Them having covid has no bearing on the fact of them being hospitalized nor on the effect on their health of their stay. It does require personnel to gown up in addition to wearing their usual masks. Since my daughter “graduated into a pandemic” she knows little else.
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I’m sorry I misunderstood your comment. In a way, a patient having Covid can have an impact on their health to the extent that the care may be impacted due to its effect on other resources. I know it takes longer for H to round, patients have been moved around to isolate them, the nursing staff will offer to go into the room to so that H doesn’t have to (he appreciates the offer but will not routinely take the offer), staffing shortage etc. H, having been in practice well before Covid, does feel there are differences.
I just think any time the ability to provide care is in any way compromised it can have an impact on health - even if small and not recognized. I also think there is so much we still don’t know about Covid that it’s impossible to say the virus is not having an effect.
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Comparison of adverse events after vaccination with Pfizer vaccine and unvaccinated COVID-19 infection in Israel:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2110475
The vaccine was associated with greater rates of swollen lymph nodes and shingles. However, the most concerning adverse effects like heart issues including myocarditis and arrhythmia, clotting issues, heart attacks, and strokes were much more strongly associated with infection than vaccination (if at all on the latter).
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I posted this on the covid discussion thread but I will post here as well. It’s about a possible change in how covid vaccines might be used in the future.
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My DH tested positive this morning and was prescribed Molnupiravir instead of Paxlovid. He was told it has fewer drug interactions. Since getting it I have googled Molnupiravir and it seems like it is universally considered less effective than Paxlovid. Should I be worried? So far his symptoms are mild.
I would expect there’s a reason your husband was prescribed molnupiravir, a reason that made it dangerous for him to take paxlovid. If you are worried could you speak with his doctor? It really would be better hearing from him/her than a non-doctor internet stranger (me!).
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In our area, very few people get Paxlovid. Most of my friends have gotten “infusions”. I’m assuming these are some type of antibody infusions. No matter what treatment you’re given, get a pulse oximeter to monitor your oxygen levels.
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The infusions (monoclonal antibodies) were great but are no longer effective against the most recent strains. I assume someone is working on updating them? unless they’ve decided the anti-virals are better.
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That page is paywalled.
But would it be correct to guess that it says that rapid antigen tests are best used for precautionary testing immediately before an event (such as meeting a medically vulnerable person) and for checking when you may no longer be contagious if you do get COVID-19?
If so, that would not be different from their use last year or before.
It claims that the test is 80% accurate overall, but people test too early or incorrectly. `The good news is that they are still able to detect the variants.
It seems noone uses them before a gathering. I do. I have requested that others do this and end up not attending because noone will test. My kids and I continue to test before seeing each other, knowing the tests are not 100% assurance. Mitigation, not perfection!
I still get 8 tests a month for free at the pharmacy. The tests are so easy and quick. I think the obstacle is psychological: people want to think this is over (and it is indeed a better situation than March 2020).
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I don’t have an unlimited number of gift articles. Here are the first few paragraphs:
We’ve all heard the anecdotes: Your friend’s spouse or child gets Covid-19 — a known exposure to the virus, all the hallmark symptoms, a positive test, no question about it. Then your friend starts to feel crummy, so they do a quick swab, but their test result is negative. What gives?
Experts say that rapid home tests are still a helpful tool for stopping the spread of Covid-19, but they’re not foolproof. Here are a few explanations for why you might get a false negative result — and how to increase your chances of accuracy next time.
You’re testing too early
The most likely reason a rapid test would produce a false negative is that there isn’t enough virus circulating in your body. The tests require a lot of virus to be present to turn positive, much more than PCR tests do. When people test early — right after an exposure, or with the first tickle in the throat — viral load tends to be low.
“The tests just aren’t very sensitive,” said Dr. Sheldon Campbell, a professor of laboratory medicine at Yale School of Medicine. “It’s an inherent limitation of this kind of test.”
It can be confusing to have recognizable symptoms and a negative test, but experts say the early signs of Covid-19 — like fever and fatigue — are typically caused by your immune system’s initial response to the virus and are not necessarily a reflection of viral load.
Rapid tests are best used as an indicator of when you’re contagious with Covid-19 rather than when you’re infected with it, said Dr. Paul Drain, an associate professor of global health at the University of Washington. And in order to prevent the spread of the virus, contagiousness is what really matters.
Supporting this idea, scientists in Dr. Drain’s lab found that samples taken from people with Covid-19 who had very low levels of the virus (below what a rapid test can detect) were unable to infect cells in a petri dish. This suggests that people with small amounts of the virus also wouldn’t be able to infect another person, Dr. Drain said.
You need to test again
To receive an emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration, manufacturers must submit data showing that their rapid test is at least 80 percent accurate, which means it will return a false negative one out of five times. Because people often test too early, false negatives are even more common in the real world.
A large meta-analysis of over 150 independent studies of rapid tests reported that, on average, the tests correctly detect a Covid-19 infection 73 percent of the time when a person is symptomatic. For asymptomatic infections, the accuracy drops to 55 percent.
Other research suggests that the accuracy of rapid tests improves a few days into an infection. A large study released as a preprint paper last year showed that rapid tests were only 60 percent accurate on the first day of a person’s infection if they had symptoms. If the person was asymptomatic, the accuracy dropped to just 12 percent. However, doing a second test 48 hours later improved rapid test accuracy to 92 percent for people with symptoms and 51 percent for asymptomatic infections. A third test after another 48 hours improved accuracy to 75 percent for people without symptoms.
Because of this, the FDA now recommends so-called serial testing: If you think you’ve been infected with the coronavirus but test negative, test again in 48 hours, after the virus has had more time to replicate. If you’re still negative, take one more test in another two days. (Unfortunately, for the sake of accuracy, this will mean spending more money on tests.) The FDA made this announcement in November 2022, and manufacturers are required to change rapid test packaging to reflect the new guidelines.
“A negative does not necessarily rule you out of having the disease, and that’s why multiple tests are recommended,” said Nathaniel Hafer, an assistant professor of molecular medicine at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School who worked on the repeat-testing study. “If you’re positive, you can feel pretty confident that you’re positive. If you’re negative, that repeat test is really important for increasing the accuracy.”
Basically, it seems like the same information about rapid antigen testing that has been known all along.
Perhaps it would help people understand and use rapid antigen testing better if they were told that they were tests for contagiousness, not tests for infection. In other words, a negative rapid antigen test means that you are unlikely to be contagious, but you could still be infected (what is commonly called a “false negative”, since that refers to infection, not contagiousness).
Does the page mention use of rapid antigen tests after you have COVID-19, in order to see when you are no longer likely to be contagious (since some people may test positive on rapid antigen tests after the 5 or 10 days commonly mentioned these days)?
Exactly why the Feds haven’t changed the messaging. Besides it being too confusing for most, it’s a distinction without a difference. If the point of the test is to reduce transmissions, the key is finding those who are contagious and stay home before they go spread their contagion. OTOH, if someone has covid, but is no longer contagious…
Except that the messaging suggests that rapid testing is prone to false negatives when they really mean false negatives for infection, which does not invalidate their use to check for contagiousness.
So I did 4 of the rapid tests during the time I had Covid recently. I thought I was getting a cold on 1/12. Then I woke up on 1/13 with a headache, nausea and a running nose. I tested that morning and was positive. I felt better within 2 days, but waited to test and just kept working at home. The next 2 tests I took (48 hours apart) still showed a faint positive line not a dark positive line like the first test. I took the final test 2 days ago as I was going to go in the office yesterday. That test was negative. So from my first positive test it took me 10 days until I finally tested negative even though I felt fine after 2 days.
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This is what I’ve been saying. It makes me wonder if I’ve had it at some point, but just not been contagious enough to make a rapid turn positive. (PCR tests for adults are unavailable and/or take too long to be useful.)