Had your own case of COVID yet? It's estimated that as of November 10, 94 percent of Americans had had COVID at least once, and that many of those infections were in the last year. Your bad cold could have been COVID, but you may not have self-tested. Or maybe you were truly asymptomatic. I'd say being asymptomatic would be good except that someone who is asymptomatic and doesn't know it could be infecting lots of other people.
Speaking of being contagious, I found a comparison of the flu, RSV, and COVID in terms of how long a sufferer remains contagious. For flu, consider yourself contagious for five to seven days after the onset of symptoms. The contagion period for RSV is three to eight days, though some infants with less developed immune symptoms can be contagious for as long as four weeks. Evidence is showing that a person with COVID can remain contagious for as long as eight to ten days. Going to a holiday gathering? If you have any respiratory symptoms now, I wouldn't go. And testing yourself the morning of the gathering is not a bad idea.
So far, there is no reason to fear a BQ.1 or BQ.1.1 surge. France was the first country to get a high proportion of BQ cases; it became the dominant variant there in October just as hospitalizations were falling. Only now are hospitalizations and cases starting to increase, and that increase has not been rapid. BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 are now dominant here in the US, and there have been no major increases in cases, percent positivity, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, or deaths. Some models show the BQs hanging around for several months. This may be the first time in the pandemic that a variant with marked immune evasion has not caused a major new wave of infections.
Between vaccinations and natural immunity from infection, the SARS-CoV-2 virus may well be having difficulty finding new hosts. The bivalent booster does have some neutralizing antibody cross-protection against BQ1.1. Now if only more people would get that booster. Are we there yet, "there" being out of the woods and free from worry? Many experts say we are not. The SARS-CoV-2 mutation rate has risen by 30 percent in the past year, meaning that Omicron and its subvariants could still mutate into something more dangerous. How lucky do you feel?
3 comments:
Yep. Caught it from my mother, passed it along to my husband. It affected my throat and lungs, mainly. I didn't have the nose-as-a-faucet symptom that usually comes with a cold. Still have a lingering cough, though.
Bird 'Pie
Nope, I'm just coming out of a three week chest infection (big tick to the nose as a faucet) but I never lost my sense of taste, had no fever and the home test said it wasn't covid. I had an antibody test after about a year and then from April 2021 was testing weekly because of care home visiting so I think I'd have spotted it if I had it. It could be that I'm lucky or just that I have had every booster shot going, three of which made me ill.
My Covid case in early September included dripping nose, some nausea, fever, some coughing, and malaise. Paxlovid made me feel better almost immediately after I started it. I didn't have the sore throat some have mentioned.
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