Recovered from COVID

 

Last Sunday marked a week from my first symptom, and the day I received my negative COVID test. This was sufficient to return to work, but the World Health Organization's current guidelines say that you might be contagious for ten days after showing your first symptom, so I'm still wearing a mask until Wednesday.

Apparently this year has been twice as bad as last year for rate of infection. They're calling it a wave, which is a term I haven't heard for awhile. Although that might have less to do with the word losing relevancy, and more so be because I, like most people, haven't been listening to the scientific community on the topic as much lately. I didn't know rates had doubled or that we were in a wave until after I got sick, which motivated me to look into it. 

Even if it's infectious, I think lethality is still not as bad as it once was. Last I checked, even though we're still considered to be in a pandemic, we lost our status as a Global Health Emergency, and I'm pretty sure I'd have heard about it if we regained that title.

They can't gather data like they could before the home rapid tests were made widely available, so they're getting it from rates of hospitalization and wastewater.

I remember when the Omicron variant came out in 2021. I hadn't heard of a variant since Delta, which I knew was the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet. I looked up where Omicron was and it was the 15th. I was shocked to see how many strains had developed without my hearing about it.

Since so much time has passed, I decided to see which variant we're on today and it's... still Omicron. I'm wondering if new types were coming out fast enough that they gave up on the Greek letter theme. Apparently we're dealing with "subvariants" within the already established strains. They haven't bothered to give them catchy names, though.

One contribution to me getting sick for the first time could be that I missed a round of vaccination. Last time I was in the doctor's office there was a poster with suggestions on whether or not you needed to vaccinate. Because I wasn't within a certain age range or met the criteria for being immunocompromised, it suggested it was unnecessary. However, now its being suggested that everyone get it every six months. Although, apparently getting sick gives you three months of natural immunity, so I have to wait for that to be used up now.

In my last post, I said that the lower line on the test that indicates COVID was lighter for me than my brother, and since my symptoms were also lighter I wondered if there was a correlation. Well, after I began to feel better, the bottom line continued to get fainter, so I really wonder if it is the case.

I had a COVID app on my phone that at one time gained a bit of traction. Users were supposed to let it know when they were infected. It would then backtrack the signals of the phones of people whose paths you'd crossed with the same app and alert them that they'd been exposed. It never told me it suspected anything. Every once in a while it would tell me it hadn't detected any exposures, and I would always be surprised I still had the app. I used to think there was a non-negligible chance that I'd forget to input my own status if I ever got infected.

 In fact, it took me until just now to remember that I should have let it know when I got sick. I just looked into it and it says the app isn't compatible with my phone. I changed phones a little while ago and it transferred my apps but I guess the creators didn't bother to keep it relevant. Pointless thing.

Lee-Anne, my mother and my brother are all still sick. I was the first to recover. I mentioned that Duncan had it the worst with a high fever, but I only recently learned that he's lost his sense of taste and smell. This always sounded like the most unique of the COVID symptoms. I wondered if it was just the usual sense of distortion that comes with congestion, but from how I've now heard it described, it sounds a bit different.

I wanted to do something productive with my quarantine time, especially after I started to feel better. To be honest with you, basically all I did was binge read an online comic. Our cats got used to having me around again, like they did during lockdowns.