Sharing in case this helps someone.
The last time someone in our household got Covid, we were able to keep it from spreading to anyone else. ♥️🙏🏿 This time we were not so lucky. My Covid high score streak is finally broken! Rona got me y'all!
Completely unscientific observations of how this thing looks to have beat our mitigations:
Day 0: Contagious. No symptoms. Negative tests.
Day 1: Contagious. Slight symptoms. Negative test.
Day 2: Contagious. More severe symptoms. Positive tests.
Our family doesn't eat indoors, doesn't go into buildings unmasked, wears masks in dense outdoor situations, wears a full elastomeric mask when flying.
For the past few weeks, even when outdoors, I've seen a few friends coughing, and I immediately put my mask on. They then say, "No dude, relax, it's not Covid, I tested this morning!" And I said, "🙅🏿♂️ Sure! That's what 'Rona *wants* me to think! 😷" 4 friends this happened with, and all 4 tested positive the day after their little coughs.
Mitigations that worked last time:
* Positive person moved to the remote room in our house with its own sliding door to the patio
* Masking tape and rolled up towel put around the door to seal them in.
* AC run on not heat, not cool, but "move air" through the hypoallergenic filter.
* Feed the infected person by wearing a mask and leaving trays of food on the patio, like feeding Hannibal lecter!
* Me spending a week outnumbered by my toddlers, while my wife watches SpongeBob and relaxes
At first I couldn't figure out why the same mitigations didn't work this time, but then I noticed the pattern of who was getting infected and when.
6 people drove back on a 4 hrs road trip after 4th of July. The front passenger had sniffles, but tested negative. They tested multiple times in a row to be sure.
A theory: front passenger caught Covid during the trip and were on their "day zero, negative results" day.
Driver and passenger directly behind them had their "day 0," two days later.
On the "day 0: no symptoms, negative test" day, and "day 1: slight symptoms, negative test" day, I tried out another theory, and it kind of worked.
My hypothesis was that if you're able to spread covid, but your test is showing negative, then you're either testing wrong, or you're testing right, but the right method is not showing the right result.
We usually do the nasal and cheek and tongue swab.
So we burned a bunch of tests on everyone testing everyone multiple ways.
We tested:
* Nasal only
* Nasal, and tongue and cheek swab
* Nasal, tongue and cheek, and hold swab in air near back of throat and cough
* Nasal, and cough
* Just cough
Adding the cough turned "day 0 negative" into a slight positive test, and "day 2 positive" into a super dark purple line positive test. Darker than we've ever seen. 😬
My totally unscientific understanding of this, is that this is a "throat Covid," not a "nose Covid." And that the false negative rate is higher for this wave.
🚨Talk to your doctor before doing any of what is implied by the following. Seriously. If you don't, you are exercising the exact same judgement as the Ivermectin sipping anti-vaxxers. Which is none. Don't do it. You are not smart if you take a drug based on a Mastodon thread written by some tech bro.🚨
* Long Covid sucks. Try to avoid it.
* There are well understood, relatively safe, relatively cheap drugs, that can reduce your chances of getting long Covid
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(23)00299-2/fulltext
Oh, what we could have done differently, that may have yielded a different result:
* Treat road trips like airplanes. Super annoying, but we should have all masked on the 4 hr drive. 🤷🏿♂️
* Added coughing to our testing.
* Understood better (remembered) that a lot of transmission happens before a positive test. We should have all preemptively masked in the house, once one of us tested positive.
Yeah, we have a Corsi Rosenthal box, and a real air purifier too.
And we have a powerful UV light on a timer that we put in the isolation room and program to light up for an hour when we're not in there.
On the level of caution, I'd say we're extreme for the USA, but par for the course for some parts of China and Korea.
@mekkaokereke @DirkK @joeyfox @cleanairkits excellent thread, matches my strategy al most exactly with exceptions. We didn't have a uv light. Pos person shared a bathroom. She took Paxlovid and wore an N95 when leaving her isolation room. The rest of us wore procedure masks at all times. Zero spread.
Feel better!
@mekkaokereke That’s a tough break. If you’re in a car with an infected person that long … masks could have alleviated but I think y’all would have gotten it anyway. Masking the infected would have helped most
IME, the rapid tests now aren’t showing positive until day 2 or 3 of the infection. It stinks
Rest, rest, rest, drink water. SpongeBob is hilarious. Best of luck 🙏
@mekkaokereke I hadn’t heard of the cough method before, but at some point I switched to these “alternative swabbing instructions”, based on reading about what was getting fewer false negatives as the new variations were gaining prevalence:
cough 3-5 times, then swab on the inside of both cheeks, above and below the tongue, on the gums and hard palate, for a minimum swabbing duration of 30 seconds
@marypcbuk @stepheneb @ShadSterling @mekkaokereke
and the government is still pretending the pandemic is over
@stepheneb @ShadSterling @mekkaokereke I seem to recall at least one study going by to the effect that most transmission happens from the pre-symptomatic, while some transmission happens from the asymptomatic.
For planning purposes, everyone's infectious all the time. Which is tough on a whole lot of other things but is at least a simple rule.
Oh no! Please get better soon!
* Open mouth wide
* Hold test swab as far back in throat as you can without touching anything
* Cough two or three times, so droplets and particles from deep in your throat and lungs would hit the swab
That’s super interesting, thanks for sharing with the rest of us… maybe some good can come from your misfortune.
Can I ask where you are? <as he listens for coughs around him>
@DavidM_yeg @mekkaokereke I believe Mekka is still in the SF Bay area. Which yeah, is showing definite uptick in community levels in the wastwater. Below is Palo Alto, from the Cal-SuWers dashboard:
Here in Edmonton, the Covid wastewater levels are still at the lowest-since-Omicron started levels. But I'll be keeping an eye out for a post-Stampede surge in Calgary (although they're still high enough anyway that early cases from an imported variant won't be obvious).
@AmeliasBrain @DavidM_yeg Ah sorry! Thought I had replied.
Bay Area.
@AmeliasBrain @IPEdmonton @mekkaokereke
Edmonton and Calgary have had such different patterns over the last year. Noticed as I’m looking around the province that High River appears to have stopped monitoring at the end of 2022…?
@DavidM_yeg @IPEdmonton Yeah, that one has given me a start a few times as I've clicked over the map, suddenly seeing that "recent" spike. I wish they'd more clearly indicate it was archived.
I mean, I wish a lot of details of that mapping page were different. The animations are more confusing than helpful, given the shifting scales between maps. But still: I'm glad it's still there & getting updated!
Yes, government funded but not administered. Thank god that UCalgary has taken it on…. given the political climate for the next four years it’s probably for the best that its not ‘in house’ as part of public health (which ultimately *is* where it belongs).
I suspect someone(s) in High River decided to stop cooperating with the program… which doesn’t surprise me based on the folks I know there.
No nasopharyngeal swab? That's what I use every time I test, on the understanding that it's the gold standard (and I've found it's not *that* hard to do on myself), even though the diy test instructions never mention it.
My dad (actual Dr and head of surgery, has run Covid overflow ward during horrible high fatality spike, lost co-workers to Covid), says nasopharyngeal is either much more or much less accurate depending on who's doing it. 🤷🏿♂️
If a trained medical professional is doing it, it's more accurate.👍🏿
But if you're doing it at home, most people are not going back far enough, and are going at the wrong angle. They're going *up* the nose, not *back* to the back of the throat.
Excellent data-point, thanks!
I'm... reasonably confident in my diy NP swab technique: go in horizontal, slow & gentle, until the swab hits firm resistance way in the back of the throat, at which point a good three inches of swab have disappeared and my eyes are watering freely. 30 seconds twirling it in place, and the swab comes out *soaked*. (Learned it from an ear/nose/throat doc's how-to videos on Twitter in like 2021.)
I can see it wouldn't be for everyone, though. 🤣
Also, daaamn. Much respect to your dad, right in the thick of it.
@tunguska @mekkaokereke I knew how to do this pre covid having been taught the "nail in nose" trick, which uses the same technique.
Who knew that a circus freak show trick would come in handy over the last few years.
@Kay @mekkaokereke @tunguska Huh… same rule as for smoking pork ribs; “low and slow”.
TIL
@mekkaokereke I'm a little sad about this framing.
Of course the point is partly fair: a good sample is needed for good test results.
But suggesting that using self-tests well is not feasible for mere mortals doesn't match my perspective at all. Sure, a lot of people haven't been taught (which is a failure in public communication).
However, in fact it is very easy, given the right type of self-tests, and a minute of instruction, to perform good swabs. Let's frame this as something to learn?
@mekkaokereke Learning how to angle that swab is definitely easier than tying shoelaces :)
(And yet, somehow we assume that most people will figure out shoes 🤷)
@mekkaokereke Aw, i guess at least you get to watch spongebob now (and relax!).
And yeah about tests, i'm pretty sure i got 'rona at least once, maybe two, and i never tested positive, but the symptoms were too close to ignore.
Negative test ≠ it's not covid.
Get well!
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