COVID life experiences

[AndrewMeronek]

My Christmas was undone by getting COVID. I am fine, I just had a fever that lasted for about 3 days. But I ended up having to get a Christmas Eve gig sub, which kind of sucked. I feel I'm lucky to have actually found someone after some begging. And all the family Christmas get-togethering was killed for me; fortunately we were able to postpone.

Anyway, for the New Years gigging, I ended up having 2:

One on Dec 30th which was actually just a random big-band-in-a-bar gig but as a last-minute call because their regular lead bone player couldn't do the gig due to unforeseen problems (I don't know any details). But - this being the first gig back from being sick (and testing negative a few days before) playing lead: this felt like utter terribleness. The chops just didn't want to work.

Then, for my Dec 31 gig everything felt pretty great. Maybe my body just needed to protest for a day???

I don't have any great insights here. I just thought it might be nice to share.

[Posaunus]

Glad you had a mild case and have recovered, Andrew. (Not everyone is so lucky.) Happy new year.

[Kbiggs]

My Christmas and New Years were derailed by COVID. My first case. I’ve had all the vaccinations so it was thankfully mild, but it was pretty awful compared to a cold or the seasonal flu. I haven’t played in two weeks, and I’m still congested in head and chest. Yesterday was my first negative test, so I might actually start the new year by practicing!

[LeTromboniste]

Yup, same here, had to give away my Christmas day concert and two rehearsal days after getting a (light) case of Covid. Still feeling a bit tired and my breath is definitely a bit shorter. With a CD recording on bass next week, I'm hoping everything is back to normal by then.

[spencercarran]

I was off the horn for over 2 weeks when I had covid - less for feeling super rough, and more that I was still testing positive so wouldn't go to rehearsals or performances. Reasonably certain I picked it up at rehearsal from a bandmate with fewer ethical compunctions about going out while actively sick.

[ghmerrill]

This is interesting to me. I see reports like this from people who are obviously a lot younger than I am, but whose COVID experiences were worse (often significantly worse) and lasted longer. So maybe it's worth mentioning this for future reference ...

No problems during the height and full run of the "pandemic". My wife and I isolated, vaxed up, and took sometimes laboratory level precautions about disinfecting stuff. Of course, a degree of isolation is pretty much our normal lifestyle anyhow. After things seemed to have run their course (a year and a half ago), our son flew out from Seattle with our two grandchildren for a week family vacation at the NC beach. That never happened. A couple of days after they arrived, my granddaughter came down with COVID. Then grandson and son, and then my wife. Not me. Son (mid-40s, in good health) had a rough time for a few days. Kids were miserable for a few days. Wife likewise. Wife (age 73 at the time) toughed it out.

An entire week later, I spike a temp and do the test. Positive. Immediately call my primary doc (Duke Primary Care), get a video interview, and -- in part because I'm in the official "high risk" group (75 at the time) despite otherwise very good health -- a Paxlovid script. I go on the Paxlovid regimen immediately -- i.e., same day as temp spike and physician consult.

I had ONE bad night -- which is to say pretty achy, fever, headache, pretty severe chills. The next day I'm okay. And so it went. Maybe some residual fatigue for a few days, but that was all there was to it. So when I see a lot of reports from younger people (including son and daughter and grandchildren) who had noticeably worse times with COVID, I think one thing: Paxlovid. Of course, if I weren't such an old coot and if I didn't have some of the key comorbidities, I wouldn't have qualified for the Paxlovid.

Wife's comment: "I should have gone for the Paxlovid. Next time."

P.S.: The beach vacation was held the following summer. But my son caught COVID again on the flight back. Not nearly as bad the second time -- over symptoms in about a day. Not surprising.

[Posaunus]

My wife had the same experience with Covid as Gary. Caught it immediately, started Paxlovid the next day. Had a pretty easy time of it as a result. This is a nearly miracle drug. Definitely worth asking for.

[AndrewMeronek]

Glad you had a mild case and have recovered, Andrew. (Not everyone is so lucky.) Happy new year.

Thanks!

My Christmas and New Years were derailed by COVID. My first case. I’ve had all the vaccinations so it was thankfully mild, but it was pretty awful compared to a cold or the seasonal flu. I haven’t played in two weeks, and I’m still congested in head and chest. Yesterday was my first negative test, so I might actually start the new year by practicing!

Yeah, I feel pretty fortunate that my lungs didn't seem to get attacked much at all.

Caught it immediately, started Paxlovid the next day.

Obviously I did not go this route. But I'm never really been hit hard by flus anyway; maybe my parents did something different when I was a kid or I'm just lucky and got an immune system that is pretty good at fighting flus.

That said, it's a pretty good bet that my vaccinations that I got during the pandemic shutdown also helped.

[spencercarran]

This is interesting to me. I see reports like this from people who are obviously a lot younger than I am, but whose COVID experiences were worse (often significantly worse) and lasted longer.

...

I had ONE bad night -- which is to say pretty achy, fever, headache, pretty severe chills. The next day I'm okay. And so it went. Maybe some residual fatigue for a few days, but that was all there was to it. So when I see a lot of reports from younger people (including son and daughter and grandchildren) who had noticeably worse times with COVID, I think one thing: Paxlovid. Of course, if I weren't such an old coot and if I didn't have some of the key comorbidities, I wouldn't have qualified for the Paxlovid.

There's a lot of random luck, it seems, in how people are affected. I've known some elderly and not particularly fit people who barely noticed their (untreated) COVID, and some young and quite athletic people who felt it was the sickest they'd ever been and were sidelined for prolonged times. In my case I had a couple days of headache and fatigue, and otherwise it felt more or less within the range of a bad cold - unpleasant, but I was still able to from home without trouble. Biggest annoyance was waiting for negative test results so I could feel comfortable returning to rehearsals in groups that included much more at-risk people.

[ghmerrill]

There's a lot of random luck, it seems, in how people are affected.

It's almost certainly not random, but it would take a lot of effort to slice and dice the circumstances to see that. One of the problems is that "normal people" only hear reports from various "news" sources -- with a high variability of accuracy and completeness. Even if you hear reports from people you know, you often don't know the whole story on their medical histories or genetics -- and anecdotal evidence is unreliable. You don't know which strain of a (particularly fast-mutating) organism affected them. Public health (and its data) isn't at the individual test tube and microscope and organism level. It's at the population (or sub-population or group or cohort) level. And some of the databases used in public health (AERS and VAERS are examples) are such "dirty data" (self-reported, vague, ambiguous descriptions, etc.) that they really aren't of much use except possibly as an early warning system. So you see what appears to be randomness, but likely is not.

If you're willing to dig into the epidemiology reports and studies (if you have access to them), even then you have to be extremely careful to evaluate things like the selection of the data set, methods to arrive at conclusions, and (big one!) assumptions made in various parts of that process. It's fatiguing -- even if you're a professional.

[BrassSection]

My experience was during the initial go-round. Grandson brought it home from school and shared with my daughter, wife and myself. Was just recovering from a second knee replacement so doc figured that’s why it hit me hardest in the family. Just felt tired, and lost appetite. Wound up dehydrated and had a rapid temp drop. Trip to ER, found pneumonia and 2 blood clots. Spent 24 hrs in hospital, basically got thrown out after pegging breath test. They exclaimed “Healthy people can’t do that, how did you!” Told them I play brass instruments. Pneumonia cleared real fast, small blood clot in lung and leg never an issue…on blood thinner for 6 months. Took about 2 weeks to regain all endurance. Only long term my nose isn’t as sensitive to smells as it once was, but then again 20+ years in a pulp and paper mill environment didn’t help that either. Due to Covid church was shut down, so no weekly playing. Trumpet playing grandson had his band music, so we both kept our chops on our trumpets with regular “Band practice” at home.

[JubyChan]

Well im glad youre feeling better. Hopefully you'll stay healthy for the rest of the year. Ive had covid 3 times now. Id be pretty depressed if covid took me out when i had a performance to look forward to.

[ghmerrill]

Only long term my nose isn’t as sensitive to smells as it once was, ...

This is a recognized effect in a number of COVID cases. There's some literature on it and what appears to be a reasonable understanding of the mechanism involving a low-grade long-term inflammatory response to COVID, but you'd have to dig into the literature to find that. My ENT doc was involved in one of the studies.

[tbdana]

Like Gary, during the pandemic I vaxxed up, isolated, and did lab-level sanitizing. I escaped covid entirely until summer of 2022 when I was buying a house for retirement and had to fly there. The person on the plane behind me was very sick. I had an N95 mask on. Still got sick. Did Paxlovid 3-day regimen, which made me feel better, but a few days after I was done with the drugs it came roaring back. I was one who ended up with long term covid and tremendously bad long term respiratory problems.

Last summer I was in a pit orchestra doing a musical when people in the cast started dropping from covid. I didn't get it. Over Christmas the trombone player sitting next to me kept leaning over and talking right into my face. Three hours after the gig he texted me to say he had just tested positive for Covid. I didn't get it. So far, so good after my initial bout with it.