@snowball - I had a horrible cold in April with all of the symptoms your D has except I was not that fatigued. This cold was so much worse than when I had Omicron in January. I took many home tests with the cold (all negative) and the doctor did a PCR test (negative) when I went in for the ear infection and got antibiotics. The congestion hung on afterwards for a couple of weeks. When I had Omicron it was over and done with in a few days.
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@showmom858 I hope it is only a cold, or a bug! We have our first beach trip with the kids, spouses and the granddaughters in 10 days; if it is Covid, we have to worry about her husband and toddler getting it before they are scheduled to leave. Plus we have to add on their time to be well and not able to give it to the rest of us. I have been looking so forward to this trip, that I worry I have jinxed it. Of course, any of us could get Covid at any time. I just had bragged that of the 8 of us, none of us have had Covid to our knowledge; 3 of us work in healthcare. Me and my big mouth!
D, SIL, GD, H & I all had a terrible cold last week. D had to go to an in person meeting out of town, and although she did wear a mask, she most likely picked it up on the trip. D & I tested twice each, and we were negative. I was watching GD (17 months) & she started having trouble breathing ⊠next thing I knew, she was barking like a seal. D was able to get an appointment with the doctor right away, and GD had croup. The doctor tested her for Covid & flu, in case her croup was the result of either. She was negative for both, and the doctor told D, âThere have been and still are plenty of other viruses out there for us to catch.â
Youâre supposed to test no sooner than 5 days after exposure. I was exposed on a Friday to my friend who woke the next morning with symptoms and tested positive (she was exposed to her daughter who started symptoms on Wednesday before but only sore throat/stuffy nose, nothing else so she assumed allergies). I was sure I would test positive after she tested positive. I started with sore throat Monday morning and tested same day. Tested negative with home test but symptoms continued and worsened gradually. I still assumed I was positive and isolated. I retested on Wednesday (5 days after exposure and sure enough tested positive). Vaxed and boosted. Itâs just rampant.
Exactly- and instructions say to test 5 days after exposure. If you have symptoms you can do one test 5 days after exposure. But if no symptoms my box said to use two tests (still 5 days after). I think it just takes a while to show up - rapid tests detect high viral loads so you maybe need few days to build up to that level. PCR test detects much smaller loads so itâs more sensitive and can maybe detect sooner. Problem is you can start to have symptoms 2-3 days after exposure and itâs most transmissible in those early days. So if youâre symptomatic you pretty much have to assume you might have it until you can confirm with neg test 5 days after exposure. If you donât know when your exposure was, then itâs even trickier.
H and D both vaccinated tested positive on rapid tests with Omicron on the first day of symptoms.
There is a virus going around now, and for us, it was as bad or worse than covid. I tested five times over the course of the illness with rapid test, nasal swab PCR, and saliva PCR), all negative. My D was sure it wasnât Omicron because she had it twice already, most recently only a month before. But I was suspicious because the symptoms were so similar. I wondered if it could have been RSV, after looking at a list of symptoms, but I wasnât tested for that. I was tested for flu A and B and it wasnât flu. There was a sore throat, a lot of sneezing, low fever in the evening, body aches, some congestion but not crazy Omicron mucus. My D felt it in her lungs but H and I didnât. It lasted several days which werenât awful as far as viruses go but it drained us and recovery was slow.
I rarely get sick but this was another one of those experiments. Anyone remember the one about (I think) college kids who had cold virus sprayed up their noses and the ones who got sick were the ones who hadnât had as much sleep? In the days before I was sneezed on I was taking care of a friendâs puppy while she was away and for three days my morning wake time was 3 AM. 
I kept a strict bedtime during the pandemic and my H has begun to do that recently as well, and he did better than D and I during this latest virus.
Mono is also making the rounds. One of my kidâs friend has covid, mono, strep, and pneumonia, all of them, now.
My PCR test came back negative. Iâm relieved that I didnât pass COVID to all my weekend guests, but I still have no idea what is going on with my sense of taste.
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The terrible co!d I had in April really messed with my taste buds. Nothing had much taste for weeks and I do enjoy a glass of wine a few times a week and all alcohol tasted bad to me for awhile.
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typical click-bait headline from the so-called journalism folks. The article says 84 million Americans have tested positive for covid. In other research, CDC has estimated that 200m folks have likely had covid (with many of those having minor or no symptoms).
So what is unclear in this article is the denominator. Is it 1 in 5 of the 84 million or 1 in 5 of the 200 million? Regardless, it certainly is not 1 in 5 of the 260 million US adults which is what the headline infers/states.
(yeah, math is hard.)
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Iâm linking to the CDC study, here: PostâCOVID Conditions Among Adult COVID-19 Survivors Aged 18â64 and â„65 Years â United States, March 2020âNovember 2021 | MMWR
Math can be hard, and yes, the KSTP write up is not good, clearly not written by someone who understands studies and data.
This was a large study (about 2M patients) which separated patients into those who had covid and those didnât, then searched for 26 clinical conditions attributed to prior covid infection, and found:
The absolute risk difference between the percentage of case-patients and controls who developed an incident condition was 20.8 percentage points for those aged 18â64 years and 26.9 percentage points for those aged â„65 years. This finding translates to one in five COVID-19 survivors aged 18â64 years and one in four survivors aged â„65 years experiencing an incident condition that might be attributable to previous COVID-19.
The long covid estimate from this study is also in the ball park of two other large, long covid studies, which are cited in the CDC MMWR study.
You can read the rest of the details at the CDC MMWR link above.
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About why some sick people never test positive
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Paywalled. Would you be willing to provide a summary?
basically it talks about how some people may not test positive because their immune system is fighting the virus so its not replicating enough to show, yet they also feel crummy at the same time because of the same thing -the immune system fighting it.
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interesting. I was wondering if my co-workerâs H had long covid, but not Iâm not sure and pretty worried about him. Heâs 70 y.o. and after a Disney Trip complained of headaches and just not feeling good. Headaches are NOT common for him, but he continued on like normal. After nearly a week, they took him to the doctor - negative for covid (PCR), strep and flu. BUT, it was found that heâs been walking around with a 102-103* fever. Never thought to check it before. The next day a chest X-ray revealed pneumonia, so they started him on mega antibiotics plus an antibiotic shot. > 24 hours later, he still has a 102-103* fever unless on tylenol/advil. That just sounds like thereâs something else going on. They did do bloodwork and that should be back today, but I am worried about him.
Food for thought
The page does not seem to address whether a negative antigen test for someone who is actually infected likely means that the person is not yet contagious or is post contagious, as was generally though to be the case with previous variants (i.e. rapid antigen testing was suitable for precautionary testing before events, even though it gave false negatives for the purpose of diagnostics).
If this is no longer the case, then precautionary testing just became less useful (or much more expensive to use rapid PCR or NAAT tests).
Ugh. My son will need to get a PCR test every Sunday since he needs to go for out patient treatments at the hospital. The clinic where he will be tested is 1 1/2 miles from his apartment. Unfortunately itâs a very busy stretch of road that is stressful to walk. There is a free ride service, but it tends to be unreliable at times. Iâm hoping his housing staff can give him rides but sometimes theyâre short staffed.
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Ugh! I understand rules and all but there should be some understanding of the burden this is
Yeah, everybody tells me theyâll work it out but then they never do. It gets old. And whoever called from the hospital to arrange the test screwed up and made an appointment for a sick visit. I just happened to find out when I called the clinic to ask another question. They had to change the time to accommodate the test.
(Side note: This is why mental illness is so tough to deal with even when the person is willing to get help. If thereâs not someone like MOM to oversee everything, itâs a mess. Case managers are useless.)