Our defenses have been penetrated

[ritaxis]

So what happened is one of my daughter's coworkers came to work sick, tested positive later in the day. Now my daughter is sick & trying to isolate from her husband & child & the rest of us are doing the Schroedinger's virus shuffle. Trying to figure out what's the correct testing schedule & when I can assume that a negative test can really be trusted. How long do I have to isolate if I keep getting negative tests?

By my calculations, my first test should be tomorrow because my first possible exposure from that source would have been Monday. But I have felt ill all day so I tested today, got a negative. I honestly felt awful a few days ago and tested negative then. I didn't have any special reason to suspect exposure then but I had sixteen free tests and I figured I should test if I feel that bad. I also tested my blood pressure and blood sugar, both normal enough. No fever either. I even did an informal heart attack screen on myself, that's how bad I was feeling.

Of course, I could be somaticizing anxiety. I could. But it seems more responsible to look for physical causes that can be treated first. If I'm negative, I'll make an appointment after the testing period is over to discuss these bouts of feeling awful.

Comments

[graydon]

I'm so sorry!

With Omicron, while the rapid tests are biochemically reliable -- if you get a sample with omicron in it into the test, it will work -- in practice they're not reliable because Omicron isn't necessarily sufficiently in the upper respiratory system to be detected. (There's a gastrointestinal version that's fairly common and which can evade rapid testing through the whole course of the disease.)

Someone who is infected is about 80% likely to not be infectious after 10 days. 15 days is in the upper nineties. The right tail is long which is why they want people to test out of isolation. Which does take a positive test somewhere in the process, which is vexed.

I hope everything goes just as well as it can.

[ritaxis]

Thank you for those numbers! The CDC has pretty much caved in to the scienceless, which is terrible considering some of the great work they've done in the past.

I'm concerned about that gastrointestinal thing-most of my "feeling awful" is abdominal.

[graydon]

You're welcome!

I got them from a researcher at Sick Kids whose twitter account is gone, so I'm not finding the original reference.

Gastro COVID is absolutely a thing and if you can talk to your doctor about it I would.

[carbonel]

I hope the rest of you manage to stay healthy!

[thomasyan]

Hope you recover quickly and the rest of you stay healthy!

[redbird]

I am not a doctor or epidemiologist, but I gather that it takes at least two negative RAT tests to be meaningful.

Yes, definitely try to figure out why you're feeling miserable if it's not covid -- I get the feeling that a significant number of people believe, or are acting as though they believe, that covid is the only relevant infectious disease. If you (one) tested positive for covid and then test negative, it's reasonable to treat that negative test or tests as meaning you're recovered; otherwise, a negative test only indicates "not covid," but says nothing about any of the diseases we knew existed before 2020.

[ritaxis]

My thoughts exactly! The main thing that covid has done to my thinking in general is that I'm taking all sorts of disease much more seriously than in the past. I think back on how I too used to go to work and school sick and congratulate myself for being tough and brave and determined. And I used to think it was fine for kids to get "mildly" ill, that it would train up their immune systems. But apparently measles-which I didn't think of as a mild disease, at least I knew better than that, but there are people to this day who think that because it's a "childhood disease" it's not serious-apparently it makes the immune system forget everything it's learned, wiping out all those trained cells. If one virus can do that, so can others, and anyway, it's clear now that many diseases which are not all that severe in the acute phase leave various systems of the body quite weakened.

So now I'm much more protective about "minor colds" and so on & I'm willing to stay home with the grand goblin if there's snottiness around even if no "serious" disease has been diagnosed.

I'm blaming a certain portion of my fatigue and head thing on the cumulative effects of viral infections throughout my young adulthood, even though there's no solid evidence for it (my symptoms are so generalized that they're undiagnosible, at least in the health care context I can access). My daughter has something similar-but-different going on, and I'd like to spare the grand goblin if possible, because it's been really disappointing to go through life like this.

[brooksmoses]

When I had Covid back in May, I found https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/quarantine-isolation.html to be quite useful for answering the "How long do I have to isolate if I keep getting negative tests?" questions.

Also, I found that I didn't actually get a positive rapid test until the day after I had a feverish night, and the line on the test was exceptionally faint. (Probably due to the things graydon mentioned, though I do note that a week later after Paxlovid and no symptoms for most of the week, the test was quite strongly positive.)

May your immune system be strong!

[ritaxis]

Thank you for the link!

How did you get Paxlovid? Kaiser told Emma that it was only for old and immunoicompromized people. I'd really be a lot happier if she could get some, since I do feel that she's a bit more vulnerable with the fatigue syndrome.

[brooksmoses]

Many doctors seem to have that erroneous impression. siderea posted a couple of posts talking about this: 1, 2. Per the FDA prescribing guidelines, it is for people that the CDC considers at elevated risk from Covid, which is much larger than what most doctors think of as "old and immunocompromised" -- the full list is here.

I did hear that some people had trouble with Kaiser being excessively strict, and suggested calling urgent care to talk to an RN.

Personally, what I did was schedule an appointment at one of CVS's "Minute Clinic" places, and showed up (thoroughly masked, of course!) and said that I believed that I qualified for paxlovid and asked for a prescription, and they were quite happy to go ahead with it as a very routine thing. I don't recall if they actually asked for my qualifying condition or just had me certify that I had one.

Anyway, while chronic fatigue per se is not on the CDC list, I expect that some of its comorbidities may be, and certainly "physical inactivity" seems like something that having fatigue syndrome would cause.

[pameladean]

I am so sorry that coworker was so oblivious, and hope for the best outcomes all around.

And I hope you feel better, argh.

P.

[ritaxis]

She got Paxlovid! I feel better now.