Ken Kurtis
Contributor
I cleared the L.A. County mandatory 10-day isolation last night so can resume life (somewhat) today. Will continue to wear a mask even when I don't have to for at least another week or so just to make sure I don't inadvertently infect anyone else. (CDC says no live virus nine days after first symptoms but I'm being cautious.)
I feel fully recovered. Exhaustion was one day, fever lasted about three days, fatigue wasn't that bad but I took a lot more short naps (15-60 minutes) than I usually do, never had any breathing issues (pulse oxygen was always in the 95-99 range), cough faded away, runny nose continued for a number of days and was the most annoying part. Got an infusion of monoclonal antibodies on Wednesday and even though my symptoms were very minor at that point, the runny nose stopped the next day and I felt peppier even by that evening. Everything seems back to normal today (Saturday).
The most frustrating thing in all of this is trying to figure out what went wrong. I try to be very careful. I mask up in public, especially indoors, I try to avoid people I don't know, I try to wash my hands &/or sanitize often (but maybe not as often as I should), but I also wanted to get on with life. The most obvious candidate for where I got infected was one of two major sporting events I attended (masked) but again, hard to specifically pin things down. I was eating/drinking so removed my mask at times but when was the danger time? Impossible to know. That's the frustration. Hard to know what to correct if you don't know what the deficiency was in the first place. So we do the best we can.
There can be two takeaways from this, one a false one that plays into confirmation bias and the other what I believe to be the truth. The false narrative would be to say that even though I was fully vaxxed, I got COVID and that shows the vaccines don't work as advertised. Couldn't be further from the truth IMHO.
The vaccines are not a guarantee against getting sick, they're a hedge against getting HOSPITALIZED &/or DYING. My case was relatively mild as things go. It was no worse than a mild flu that hung around for a week. I would hate to think what the reaction would have been had I NOT been vaccinated.
I think the true lesson here is not only that the vaccines work but that the Delta variant (which is what I assume I got) is HIGHLY contagious, evidenced by the fact that it broke through my vaccine defenses and the mitigation measures I tried to take. If you are walking around un-vaccinated, you essentially have a big "INFECT ME" sign on your back. I don't understand the motivation of those who continue to push drivel and nonsense about COVID nor do I understand how seemingly intelligent people can have a blind eye and be so un-educated in this particular aspect of our lives.
As a kid, I grew up on "Romper Room." One of the sayings to get you to behave well was, "Do be a Do-Bee, don't be a Don't-Bee." Maybe we should change that for the COVID era to, "Do be a Do-Vax, don't be an idiot." (Or something like that.)
I feel fully recovered. Exhaustion was one day, fever lasted about three days, fatigue wasn't that bad but I took a lot more short naps (15-60 minutes) than I usually do, never had any breathing issues (pulse oxygen was always in the 95-99 range), cough faded away, runny nose continued for a number of days and was the most annoying part. Got an infusion of monoclonal antibodies on Wednesday and even though my symptoms were very minor at that point, the runny nose stopped the next day and I felt peppier even by that evening. Everything seems back to normal today (Saturday).
The most frustrating thing in all of this is trying to figure out what went wrong. I try to be very careful. I mask up in public, especially indoors, I try to avoid people I don't know, I try to wash my hands &/or sanitize often (but maybe not as often as I should), but I also wanted to get on with life. The most obvious candidate for where I got infected was one of two major sporting events I attended (masked) but again, hard to specifically pin things down. I was eating/drinking so removed my mask at times but when was the danger time? Impossible to know. That's the frustration. Hard to know what to correct if you don't know what the deficiency was in the first place. So we do the best we can.
There can be two takeaways from this, one a false one that plays into confirmation bias and the other what I believe to be the truth. The false narrative would be to say that even though I was fully vaxxed, I got COVID and that shows the vaccines don't work as advertised. Couldn't be further from the truth IMHO.
The vaccines are not a guarantee against getting sick, they're a hedge against getting HOSPITALIZED &/or DYING. My case was relatively mild as things go. It was no worse than a mild flu that hung around for a week. I would hate to think what the reaction would have been had I NOT been vaccinated.
I think the true lesson here is not only that the vaccines work but that the Delta variant (which is what I assume I got) is HIGHLY contagious, evidenced by the fact that it broke through my vaccine defenses and the mitigation measures I tried to take. If you are walking around un-vaccinated, you essentially have a big "INFECT ME" sign on your back. I don't understand the motivation of those who continue to push drivel and nonsense about COVID nor do I understand how seemingly intelligent people can have a blind eye and be so un-educated in this particular aspect of our lives.
As a kid, I grew up on "Romper Room." One of the sayings to get you to behave well was, "Do be a Do-Bee, don't be a Don't-Bee." Maybe we should change that for the COVID era to, "Do be a Do-Vax, don't be an idiot." (Or something like that.)
