I felt very sick. Tested negative twice, then positive. I immediately isolated until I felt symptom relief - I didn’t want to get my family sick. My isolation wasn’t as extreme as in 2022 - I left my bedroom, masked, to get food, and watched TV masked with my family from a distance. To me, COVID is just way more unpredictable than other viruses. If I give people a cold/flu, that stinks, but there certainly is zero risk of long-term illness with a cold/flu. When family members have a cold/flu, we don’t isolate them or have them mask - we take the risk because those illnesses are way more predictable/less severe than COVID.
Another reason to test is if you’re interested in Paxlovid. I was, for sure!
That’s really not true thousands of people die of the flu each year. And we still don’t understand the triggers of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and other autoimmune diseases.
I just recovered from Covid. Felt like a nasty cold, but it cleared up very quickly, except for minor lingering fatigue and drainage. One day I was coughing so hard I was practically vomiting, and the next day, no cough. My husband is a few days behind me, but he’s had a harder time of it. He is allergic to most cold medications, and 12 hr Sudafed prevents him from sleeping, so it’s tough to control the symptoms. He’s on Paxlovid, which doesn’t seem to be helping.
What we would have done, in retrospect. As soon as we realized we had Covid, get the Paxlovid. It’s more effective the earlier you take it. Also, should have gotten the most current Covid booster before our Europe trip, but we didn’t realize Covid was a thing any more. Several people in our tour group got Covid, fortunately upon return home.
do you treat the risk of flu more seriously (eg wearing a mask when traveling or when infected, getting vaccinated more regularly) compared to before the pandemic?
Earlier this year I did isolate with Covid when I probably wouldn’t have done with flu. But relatives are not doing that and next time I’m not so sure. And even though I got it during travel, I’m not bothered about wearing a mask on an airplane in future. However I don’t think I’m treating the flu any differently than before the pandemic (didn’t bother with vaccination this year for example).
At least in my mind, the flu vaccines seem to work a lot better than the covid ones. In the 25 years that my family has bern getting the flu vaccine, only twice have someone gotten the flu. The first was younger S in March when the vaccine was probably waning. And his was still mild enough that he played soccer 90 minutes with it before it dawned on us it might be the flu. (Other parents at the game mentioned their kids had had it). Second time I got it in April (during COVID times) when the vaccine definitely had waned.
And in both cases we got tamiflu early enough and we were better in about 24 hours. Tamiflu also seems more effective than paxlovid.
I don’t have a lot of faith that the covid vaccines help that much anymore. I will still get them because if it helps at all, great. I don’t mind shots. But I don’t feel more protected really
I know what you mean in terms of getting COVID, but according to the article cited above, vaccines seem to significantly decrease the risk of long COVID.
This is why I continued to test. We were scheduled to travel to a different city to help D move out of her apartment, and if I tested positive in the few days before the move, we would not go and she would have to make alternate arrangements (she doesn’t have a car.) I truly thought I had Covid and wanted to know asap so D had time to formulate a plan B. By day 6 my symptoms were resolved but I just wanted to be sure I was still testing negative as that was moving day. And yes, we had a stockpile of tests to use up.
The last airplane trip, I wore an N95 mask outbound only, because getting COVID-19 would disrupt the purpose of the trip, but it would be less of a concern on the return when I could more easily stay away from others, work from home, etc.
Regarding flu, I do take it seriously enough to get the yearly vaccine, but it seems that most do not take flu that seriously, perhaps because most people use “flu” to describe lots of minor illnesses that are not flu.
The COVID-19 vaccines do seem to be more effective than flu vaccines against the targeted variant of the virus, but COVID-19 virus mutates much faster than flu virus. The three months between the FDA recommended target strains and COVID-19 vaccine availability leaves only a limited or no window of time when the vaccine you can get matches the circulating variant well. On the other hand, even with the longer time of production for flu vaccine, in many years, the vaccine matches the circulating variants well.
Both COVID-19 and flu vaccines do reduce the risk of severe disease if you get the disease despite vaccination.
Flu vaccine effectiveness from year to year can vary widely, because of the lead time necessary to make a best guess regarding what strains are likely to be circulating during the upcoming flu season, which is not really different than covid vaccine lead time and considerations. Hopefully we can get to a similar point in estimating covid effectiveness.
It doesn’t make sense to me that people would mask and protect others from covid, but not flu.
I looked up Christopher Cross because we’re going to see him in concert Wednesday night.
He got COVID in March 2020 after going to Mexico City for a concert. He said the trip was before people were masking. He got a pretty bad case, then developed Guillain-Barre syndrome as a complication. All of a sudden, he couldn’t move his legs at all. He was in the hospital for 10 days and really thought he might die. He had to postpone a tour for more than a year.
He did promotional announcements, urging people to mask and get the vaccines. Now he raises money for research to combat GBS.
Agree, but flu has a not insignificant rate of morbidity and mortality which you can easily google. Each year around 25,000-40,000 people die of flu in the US, I expect it would be lower if people masked or isolated when they had flu.
And what’s the likelihood of getting long COVID now for vaccinated people (many on second or subsequent infections), compared to unvaccinated people in 2020?
Another perspective is flu is less contagious than COVID. We’ve had each of our kids test positive for the flu in the past two years - one got tamiflu - both were fine within 48 hours. We kept a slight distance, didn’t mask, and no one else got it. Everyone gets vaccinated for flu (and COVID).
Interesting that some people will get the Covid shot every chance they get but not get the flu shot. I get the flu shot every year but will not get another Covid shot. I had the first two but no boosters. Never had Covid to my knowledge.
