2021-10-26

The COVID experience (vaccinated)

Sorry to say that COVID has managed to finally hit many of our family, in spite of (almost) all of us being very careful in lots of ways, and (almost) all of us having vaccines.

My wife has also been unwell, but we are both starting to get over it now.

I have spent the last 10 days or so feeling like shit - started like a nasty cold, and LFTs every day negative, but finally on day 4 it was +ve LFT, and then +ve PCR.

It was not until around day 8 that I lost my sense of smell, which is just weird - my nose is clear now, but I simply cannot smell, not even my ground coffee. I can still taste but it is a bit off.

Someone else described this, and I am inclined to agree - it felt like it was trying to get on my chest, but thankfully did not manage it. Even so, my blood oxygen levels dipped quite a lot. I can only imagine how bad it would have been if I had not been vaccinated.

It has been ups and downs a bit - on day 7 I really thought things were getting a lot better, I felt mostly fine with a bit of a blocked nose. I then spent days 8 and 9 in bed!

Sadly, at least one person that has now got it was unable to have a vaccine, and it looks like a newborn has it too. These are worrying times for all of us. We can only hope they recover quickly.

And those that have not got it have had to run around shopping and getting medicines for those that have - and we really do all appreciate that.

Remember, you are only as strong as the weakest link - make sure you all have your vaccines please! Don't be put off nagging people to get their vaccine, as I was. Personal choices are important, and make good sense right up until those choices impact others around you - then they are no longer just personal choices. Vaccines don't just help reduce the risk to yourself, and your family, but help reduce the spread and mutations. Getting a vaccine is being part of a community.

I do now have some IgG and IgM antibodies though. These did not show after the vaccines, which I believe is to be expected as they are different.

But everyone, stay safe.

P.S. Whilst the isolation is over, there are some symptoms lingering - a simple walk to the shops made me tired and out of breath, and I still have an annoying cough, even if no longer infectious. It will be interesting to see how long this lasts. Day 12 - can just about smell the coffee again.

P.P.S. The lingering cough is not fun - just spending an hour on a phone call really kicked it off and felt grotty for rest of the day. No idea how long this will go on for. ... Weeks later and still up and down with this.

P.P.P.S. It has lasted over a month, on and off, but finally feeling at lot more normal now.

4 comments:

  1. Antibodies *are* expected after vaccination, but, again, not everyone has the same response to vaccination. What you don't get from vaccination is IgA, which (when seen in response to respiratory diseases) is mostly found in the airway's mucous membranes. This is not terribly surprising given that the current vaccines are aimed at reducing death and serious illness, which means they want to target virus that gets into the lungs, not the relatively light cases that just replicate in the airway. So IgA would be the wrong sort of antibody to aim for.

    At least you can't get hit with one side-effect: COVID seems to be able to induce type 1 diabetes, not by killing the beta cells but by inducing dedifferentiation and redifferentiation into other types of pancreatic cell. This is *strange*.

    (Further note that having low antibody counts does not mean you are not protected, and having the antibody counts drop off *also* does not mean you aren't still protected. All antibody counts drop off after infection: memory B and T cells hang around to re-create them as needed on reinfection. This is crucial: if this didn't happen, by about age 5 the bloodstream would be as thick as treacle from all the antibodies in it.)

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  2. Oh, and, get well soon! Having other people around is probably really good: it was *seriously* unpleasant going through it alone because I somehow had to cook for myself etc while trying to self-isolate and not go out and while wanting to do nothing but sleep. (Though this is something one gets used to with illnesses if one lives alone.)

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  3. Thank you for posting your experience plus a polite and good reminder for anyone who has yet to be part of the solution and get vaccinated.

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  4. I took the new Meta Covid Vaccine, and now I have a persistant Meta logo in the top left corner of my field of vision. Getting a Meta Covid Vaccine is being part of a community. Join Us!

    ReplyDelete

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