There is so much we still don’t know about Covid, but we do know the chances of long Covid go up with each reinfection and if we aren’t going to mitigate spread at all as a culture there is no reason not to expect that people will be infected over and over again. What does that mean for our children and youth? It’s one thing to get a cold every year. Or even to get the flu every couple of years. But to get something that can raise your risk of heart disease and dementia regularly? I despair of our future.
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PCR tests could stay positive for months. But I have not heard of that being the case for rapid antigen tests.
What type are the at-home tests?
Most are rapid antigen tests (the ones that cost about $8 in the US, 0.5€ in Europe).
If your home test does not require a separate machine to run it and looks like a pregnancy test, it is highly likely a rapid antigen test (lateral flow test). These tests detect the presence of viral proteins. It is very unlikely that such tests would detect dead virus.
Cue and Lucira (now acquired by Pfizer) are the two brands of home Covid tests that detect the virus’s genetic material; their tests require a small portable machine to run disposable tests. Technically, the tech they use is not PCR - it is isothermal nucleic acid amplification, but like PCR, some of these tests can also detect pieces of the viral genetic material long after the infection is over.
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A week ago Wednesday and Thursday we had the board members of our company in a conference room in our office for 2 days. Most of the rest of our staff was in the office, but not in the conference room. This past week our CEO, CFO and one of the VP’s were all out with Covid. I didn’t hear if any of the other board members that traveled in had it. I’m just happy that everyone stayed home this week. I am on PTO for the next 2 weeks and getting ready to head out tomorrow for our ski road trip so I’m glad I didn’t get Covid right before we left!
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long time lurker who got confused by the “parent cafe” heading–not sure if there are any other student long covid sufferers here, but i was diagnosed with dysautonomia in december (cardiologist suspects POTS but i didn’t meet criteria in-clinic; full battery of testing will be in may). we don’t know for sure that it was long COVID, but my symptoms became noticeable in the summer/fall after my first/only COVID infection (age 16; june 2022), which i don’t think was a coincidence.
i am lucky in the respect that i do not have “debilitating” symptoms; i can go about school and day-to-day life mostly normally, albeit with a need for increased water intake and to sit down more often. but exercise intolerance has been pretty terrible. i have only been borderline able to dance (which i devoted 6.5 hrs/week to and have been participating in since the age of 3) and do not think it will be realistic for me to continue in college. things like running or dancing my heart out at parties or standing room at multiple hour concerts no longer seems to be an option, and i’ll always have to live with the fear of what a second infection might do to me.
just wanted to share in hopes of fighting against the myth that “COVID is no threat to anyone who is young and otherwise healthy,” especially as the CDC looks at ending isolation practices.
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I’m sorry you have that story to share but appreciate that you did.
Hope you can grasp onto a new normal for you!
Is it affecting your ability to attend classes/do school work?
not directly to my knowledge, but i’m also still getting to understand how it manifests. hot weather makes it worse, so i’m counting myself lucky that the high school has air conditioning (the middle school in our district does not). it definitely came up in a summer program i went to down south last june; i had to step out of classes to lay down when i got too tachycardic and ended up needing to skip most of the big reading at the end, which sucked. indirectly, i may need to go off my ADHD meds until the dance season is over if i want to be able to rehearse, which will absolutely affect my schoolwork if i have to make that call.
@halyardic this website and newsletter may be helpful. It has definitely been helpful to me and those with whom I’ve shared it.
I wish you the very best! It must be tough to be affected in high school.
Eric Topol blog about recent long COVID research:
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One more Covid booster
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Some controversy about this:
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I had COVID in mid-Nov. 2023. Definitely having some memory issues that I did not have before. I am in my 70’s so this is a little concerning. Still doing well with Wordle and Connections 
I just heard a news report that the CDC has dropped the 5 day isolation time for COVID infections.
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If there is no fever.
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As long as the CDC continues to recommend washing hands as a way to prevent COVID, I will continue to believe that they are driven by something other than scientific evidence in their recommendations.
Have flu, RSV, and other upper respiratory infections been shown to have the same elevated risk of heart disease and lower cognitive functioning after infection that COVID has? Have we just found this in COVID because we’ve looked and it’s there with other viruses? This is a serious question. The stuff they are finding about the COVID virus scares me long-term. But maybe it’s there for other diseases too so I should let it go.
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From the article:
Even so, COVID and the flu are nowhere near the same. SARS-CoV-2 still spikes in non-winter seasons and simmers throughout the rest of the year. In 2023, COVID hospitalized more than 900,000 Americans and killed 75,000; the worst flu season of the past decade hospitalized 200,000 fewer people and resulted in 23,000 fewer deaths. A recent CDC survey reported that more than 5 percent of American adults are currently experiencing long COVID, which cannot be fully prevented by vaccination or treatment, and for which there is no cure. Plus, scientists simply understand much less about the coronavirus than flu viruses. Its patterns of spread, its evolution, and the durability of our immunity against it all may continue to change.
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also, long flu is still a thing. i have a close friend who was disabled by flu at age 17-18, missed a significant amount of high school, and is now taking a gap year before college because of the health issues it caused for them
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