Well, we got hit with COVID19 the week before Christmas and here are some things that I've learned after having had the big bad virus.
1-People care WAY more about whether or not you could potentially spread it than they care about how you're doing with the virus. One family member every time we communicated with her would say "I hope you're being careful because people can die from this" and not once did she ask if we were feeling okay. Fortunately for us, we were. But I thought that was rather rude.
2-Once people know you've been infected, they really do treat you like you are a leper. Family members have continually told me they hope we're staying in our quarantine and not infecting others, despite the fact that it's already been the entire length of time the quarantine should be as stipulated by the CDC. My husband is already back at work. He has had no symptoms other than the initial symptom of "no taste or smell" that prompted him to get a test in the first place.
3-The test is not trustworthy. I'm convinced there are a lot of false positives out there based on the test. His test came back as "detected", not positive or negative, which I thought weird. It also states below the results: "Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms. The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019-nCoV infection. This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens." Basically, that's saying that while viral RNA was detected, it doesn't mean that he actually has COVID19. The other interesting factor was the his antibody test for Covid19 came back negative. It's possible that he didn't actually have it.
4-Doctors don't seem to care about treatment during the illness. They didn't give any advice on how to treat it. They didn't give any paperwork or anything. Only whether the viral RNA was detected or not. When I took my 7-year-old in on November 28th because I suspected she might have strep again (based on the white patches that were all over her tonsils) and her strep test came back negative, the doctor at the Urgent care gave me a four page packet explaining all the other potential causes of her symptoms and how to treat them. When her test on December 17th came back positive for COVID (which we didn't find out until the next day even though WE PAID EXTRA for a rapid test!), we were told nothing. No tips on treating any symptoms or anything. I've been treating it like croup. She's been up at night having trouble breathing, like with croup, so I've put her in the hot, steamy shower twice and had her sleep in our room after that. It seems to be working, which makes me question the validity of the test and the cause of her symptoms (sore throat, nasal congestion, croupy cough at night, temperature on the first day which prompted the visit and test, only because just an hour before her dad's test had come back positive). Based on what was printed below my husband's results and how steam has helped her breathing (and I haven't read anywhere of treating covid similarly to croup), I'm not sure she even really had covid19. Also, nobody ever called to follow up with my husband to see how he was doing or feeling.
5-My husband will still have to quarantine in the future for exposure at work and my kids will still have to quarantine at school. I'm fairly certain we all had this bug, as several of us lost taste and/or smell and we all have had coughs, body aches, low fevers and sore throats on and off throughout the ensuing week after my husband and daughter's tests came back positive. If we've had it and therefore have antibodies, why do we need to quarantine when exposed to others who have it? Aren't we at a much lower risk of re-infection? Isn't that why there's a vaccine?
6-We fared well, as I knew we would if we ever got it, simply based on statistics--most people have mild cold symptoms and come through it just fine. It's the ones who don't who are making the news. The vast majority do just fine, and we did. I had body aches on day 6 and when I woke up without the aches the next morning, it was nice. I had head congestion all week and lost my sense of smell. I could still taste though, which was weird. My smell came back on day 12. From the time I started not feeling well, which was actually two days before my husband, until I felt 100% again was 10 days (other than the smell). As soon as my asthmatic son started with a cough, I loaded him up on zinc and vitamin C and he has been fine since (that was four days ago). I also made him start using his emergency inhaler every four hours. All of this makes me wonder about the treatments they have not been recommending (like using your inhaled steroids if you have them, and a steamy shower/humidifier--daughter has had a humidifier in her room since her day 7).
7-I'm fairly certain it has passed through us all and done what it's going to do to us and we should be find to come out of our quarantine. But people are still nervous and don't want us around.
8-the hype surrounding this has been much worse than the disease itself. Yes, I know some people have it bad and even do not survive. But the fear over that small percentage is so great that even I started having anxiety over my children and husband having it and dying. A family member told me that "it's always day ten that's the worst" yet that's the day the CDC says you can resume normal activity if your symptoms are gone. So I spent the first week expecting to wake up to my husband not breathing at all on day 10. That fear was completely unfounded as the statistics simply do not support it. I lost so much sleep over it this week worrying about all of my kids and husband's breathing every night. My husband even used his CPAP throughout the whole ordeal and didn't have any breathing problems at all.
I know that people do not fare well with this disease, but I question if it's actually the same disease. I wonder if there are different strands and why can't they test for that? Does one strand turn into another? Like if we had such a mild bout with it but had passed it to someone else, would they have to the serious strand? How does that work? I feel like there are unanswered questions that nobody seems to be trying to answer.
Also, this has given me a completely hopeless outlook for the coming months and years. The vaccine rolled out while we were in our quarantine and we are being told by the media outlets that we will still have to physically distance from each other, wear masks, and keep events canceled. Then why the vaccine? If it doesn't work well enough to bring back some normalcy, why have it? And if that's the case and 2021 turns into more of the same--few sports, games being canceled left and right, no youth dances, no youth activities, no regular church classes, quarantine at the drop of a hat over and over again...what's the point of living this way?
