Medicine

Here is my comment (edited for clarity and to avoid identifying individuals) on a social media platform in response to a post attacking a candidate who supports every woman's right to reproductive freedom. I don't often participate in social media arguments on topics like this as I find it rarely useful. However, this particular post was so replete with inaccuracies, and written with language designed to generate outrage rather than share information or offer a perspective, that I felt obliged to speak up.

Covid is still very much with us, and will remain a significant public health problem for the foreseeable future. However, the Covid landscape has changed substantially over the nearly 4 years since it arrived. I recently spent some time reviewing and updating my assessment of my risk and my process for deciding what I am comfortable doing.  

I will start with my understanding of my personal risks, which I divide into three categories: acute or short-term risks, chronic risk related to long Covid (PASC), and long-term risks from Covid’s impact on other disease processes.

Here's some information about what most of us have been calling long Covid or post Covid, but which leading researchers prefer to call post-acute Covid. (The term PASC for post acute sequelae of Covid has been proposed but has not been much used in the media.)

I was invited to a New Year's Eve Day gathering of some friends who have met annually for a couple decades or more, but who had not met during the pandemic. Our group number 25-30, all in our 70s now. The invitation said masks were 'welcome' but said nothing more about precautions. I was thrilled and excited, but also puzzled at the lack of mention of testing.

A friend recently shared online that he was at Day Seven of a flu that had been ‘kicking my butt all week’. With fever, sweats, cough, fatigue, muscle aches. He’s a smart and responsible guy and had RAT-tested himself twice at the onset of his symptoms and assumed because his two RATs were negative and his symptoms were consistent with Influenza A which was known to be present in his areas, it meant it he didn’t have Covid.

I suggested he retest himself (the explanation is below) and he reported a definite and nearly immediate positive:

I have been getting lots of requests for ‘my opinion’ about the novel coronavirus pandemic, where we are now, and what is coming.  Here goes: