Wednesday morning
Slept until 8am, wow. I did wake at 4am needing a puff of Albuterol due to asthma. But then went back to sleep. No fever as I wake, and my other symptoms seem not as bad as yesterday morning. But I still feel sick. But maybe yesterday was peak misery for this thing, we'll see.
I spoke with T last night, he asked why I didn't go to urgent care to get Paxlovid, and I said it's because my symptoms weren't serious enough. Really, I've had colds that were worse than this. But I've also had COVID before, and have received ALL the recommended shots for a typical adult. How many is that now, five? There were the initial two in April 2021, then I think we all got a booster six months later of the same shot? And then the new bivalent shot about a year later, and now this completely updated shot another year later? Strangely it's not easy Googling this timeline. But, I've definitely had all the shots, plus COVID once before. So, maybe after all that prior exposure, COVID becomes more like the common cold in a typical adult.
So why don't the shots keep us from getting COVID? What good are they if they don't? Well, like influenza and the roughly 200 viruses causing colds, COVID keeps mutating to evade our immune defenses. But if you've been exposed via previous infection and vaccines, your immune system has seen something similar to COVID before, and can ramp up antibodies for the new strain more quickly. You may still feel sick, but the infection is not as dangerous as if your immune system had to start from scratch. This is why the death rate from COVID has always been much lower in people who have received all their shots.
But the death rate from COVID is also much lower in people who have already survived their first infection. After that Omicron wave of late 2021 infected the majority of the population, the death rate from COVID plummeted for everybody. Moreso for the vaccinated, but also for the unvaccinated.
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OK, time to get up for breakfast and feeding the cats. Then I'll figure out how much work I can do today.
I spoke with T last night, he asked why I didn't go to urgent care to get Paxlovid, and I said it's because my symptoms weren't serious enough. Really, I've had colds that were worse than this. But I've also had COVID before, and have received ALL the recommended shots for a typical adult. How many is that now, five? There were the initial two in April 2021, then I think we all got a booster six months later of the same shot? And then the new bivalent shot about a year later, and now this completely updated shot another year later? Strangely it's not easy Googling this timeline. But, I've definitely had all the shots, plus COVID once before. So, maybe after all that prior exposure, COVID becomes more like the common cold in a typical adult.
So why don't the shots keep us from getting COVID? What good are they if they don't? Well, like influenza and the roughly 200 viruses causing colds, COVID keeps mutating to evade our immune defenses. But if you've been exposed via previous infection and vaccines, your immune system has seen something similar to COVID before, and can ramp up antibodies for the new strain more quickly. You may still feel sick, but the infection is not as dangerous as if your immune system had to start from scratch. This is why the death rate from COVID has always been much lower in people who have received all their shots.
But the death rate from COVID is also much lower in people who have already survived their first infection. After that Omicron wave of late 2021 infected the majority of the population, the death rate from COVID plummeted for everybody. Moreso for the vaccinated, but also for the unvaccinated.
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OK, time to get up for breakfast and feeding the cats. Then I'll figure out how much work I can do today.