Hi Brian! If it's not too nosy, how did you know you had omicron in January? Over the past two years I've been puzzled how folks know which version of anything they had. Another reason I'm asking is because this past New Year's Eve my husband got sick (bedridden, body aches, fever of 102.3). Overnight our son got sick (fever of 100, vomited once or twice and some diarrhea. He was 17 at the time and recovered within 24 hours.). The next day (January 1) I came down with the same thing as my husband (fever 102.3, bedridden, body aches, etc.). My husband was not well for a full three days and I was not well for a full four days. About two weeks later (January 17), my son is sick again with fever of 100 and diarrhea (but recovers within a day), and I'm sick again with same symptoms as January 1. I mostly recovered within three days but about a week later I was having little spikes of fever (99.9 or 100).
I've wondered what we all had, and I'm particularly curious about how I (my son, too) managed to become sick with the same symptoms a second time within the month.
Well, I did everything I could to maximize my exposure in Feb and March 2020 when I was still in SF / The Bay, where seropositivity was ~1.3% in blood donors in the prior December. So since I never got anything then or afterward, until January 2022, it seems unlikely that a Wuhan-like strain (Delta) finally caught up with me in the very last instant possible. More likely Omicron - and BA.2 still wasn't anywhere without heavy travel from South Africa until much later. So BA.1 is a pretty safe bet for the thing that made me sick and gave me two days of brain fog!
If it wasn't for the brain fog I wouldn't be as confident... As for the significance of quick reinfection, geography makes a big difference as far as likelihood of BA.2 being around that early or just some other bug passing through.
Glad you’re better Matt! Those concerned about clots, from infection or “potions” may also want to check out “Enzymes-The Fountain of Life” by D.A. Lopez, MD, Williams, MD, Miehlke, MD. They also work great for inflammation, and many other pathologies.
I assumed I'd get hit hard in the lungs by covid but didn't. I was the "special needs" kid with terrible asthma before it took off in the seventies. Had Delta, and then Omicron nine months later, both gave me a phlegmy cough for a couple of weeks that was worst at night. But then I was back to running with no shortage of breath within three weeks. Really surprised me. Worst thing was the sore throat from hell that first week.
Right, the sore throat was a brief torture for me (struck at night before I could buy some lozenges; I don't understand how humanity got by before lozenges).
Is there a course of SARS-CoV-2 infection where basically only the throat gets hit?
I wonder what I have now. Tue, woke up with throat ache, somewhat elev. tempr. (38.3°C), it felt at first like bronchia might have a little something, but after Tue basically I'm just waking up with a massive sore throat and a _wrecked_ voice like I don't remember having for 20 years, but the ache clears 1..2 hours after waking up (voice stays bad), drinking lots, nasal rinse (which hardly reaches the throat, but for good measure I thought, let's keep that part clean?).
No runny nose, and the cough reflex always coincide with an itch "at the lower end of the throat". *I think* temp normalized after Tue, at least the feeling of "flashes through the head" that I tend to have at higher temp. is absent, still waiting for new coin batteries to arrive, lol.
So far tests for the one and only virus were all neg, though their instructions say nasal swab, so that's what I did. Maybe throat would be smarter (though I resent leaving plastic harpoons from those swabs where I can't remove them so well.
The most bizarre thing, though, is that this nicely queues into the past 5 years of:
Whenever I had anything going on in the Nose/throat/lung area, it was after doing some woodworking 1..2 days before. No fine electro sanding or anything, just cutting some pieces of wood with a Japanese hand saw... ya'd think that carpenters did that for centuries without Steve Kirsch's hazmat headgear, so why would this affect me... but... this is no longer coincidence, argh!
I wonder whether this even has to be something viral... Stuff that's longer lurking around on the mucosa are also bacteria and fungi, eh? And if inhaling abrasive particles rupture the epithelium here and there, maybe some bugs gain an edge...
So, it's pretty clear that you are simply being attacked by Wood Ghosts. Appropriate spiritual rites conducted after woodwork will ensure Wood Ghosts depart in peace.
Or yes, I suppose some sort of molecular conflict with the microbiome is possible. If your particular resident friendlier bacteria tend to find wood particles toxic then it could be the same as taking a weak antibiotic only to favor a more pathogenic, heartier bacteria strain. Or simply lead to dysregulated cellular immunity resulting in immune cells creating a mess. But, that's really a few orders down below Wood Ghosts in plausibility.
As for SARS-CoV-2, were the negative tests PCR or RAT? Obviously, RAT can be a bit less sensitive - only positive at true "infection"-adjacent viral loads as opposed to asymptomatic infection or post-recovery. But if you had symptoms at all I would expect RAT to be positive at some point. But yes, oral samples can be positive when nasal are not in cases of lower viral loads (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262701v1)
It was RAT. I suppose the feeling of a rotating cactus in the throat counts as symptoms.
Wood Ghosts, eh? More dangerous than homeopathic snake venom I bet.
My throat has been kinda hypersensitive to "stuff in the air" for 20 years, though. At some point I couldn't stand to be in that "new" old parents' house after living in it for a year or so, moved out, but whenever visited, my throat revolted basically after opening the front door, or holding something out of that house in my hands - blind tested. Since then, stuff like tobacco smoke, molds on some fruit in the store, or when someone has moldy stuff in a trashcan that's not perfectly airtight, make my throat react. But drawn blood by the allergologist in the same building as the ENT who saw that the throat was irritated minutes ago, concluded: "no allergy ". Ain't that weird.
I don't know about your body but both times when I had that sore throat it lit up a RAT. My youngest son had the throat in August but his RAT was negative.
Not sure what type of precision there is in blood-based allergy testing. Allergies involve pre-cell-binded IgE in tissues (binds to both mast cells and regular cells), and the receptors that IgE latch onto can be scaled up, so there can be a disconnect of "log anything" between circulating IgE and tissue-resident IgE. Which is why skin allergy tests just go straight to the skin.
But given that the woodworking thing seems to operate on a delay (unless I misread), it does seem to be something else...
Sorry, recovered would have been more accurate. Not a co or secondary infection - my wife has that. My three sons all got it from us and they too have the lingering cough issues.
I had covid last year and the defining physiologic feature to me was the amount of hypoxia vs lack of illness. I didn't really feel that bad and I even had a completely normal lung CT, but I could desat myself into the 80s within 30 sec of holding my breath. My conclusion at the time was that it must be either a shunting issue (as described in this study) or a red blood cell problem.
Today is my “release from isolation” day from my second bout with Covid (WT - Jan 21) and this was much more cold-like than my first go-round. And I really couldn’t believe how out of breath I got by simply going up one flight of steps. Sadly I did not read this earlier cause I just pulled out my handy-dandy pulse oximeter and couldn’t get it to go below 97 after a few flights of stairs (and it wouldn’t drop by holding my breath). Alas it would have been interesting to see, but I guess I’m going back to normal.
My chest felt "hungry", like hunger pangs, only in my chest. My SATS never tested below 92, though I did not try to hold my breath. It was (is) truly a weird illness, unlike anything prior. Unnatural.
Your comment made me realize I didn't characterize the impact of HPV on oxygenation correctly! Saturation will be a reflection of productive pulmonary blood flow / all pulmonary blood flow, and the job of HPV is to keep that near 100% by eliminating non-productive flow from the denominator. Incredible how breathing is such a math game.
Yes it really is. This would explain the ventilator issues too. Covid patients required crazy high levels of "PEEP" (positive end expiratory pressure) to maintain oxygenation, which could be a result of shunting. High PEEP is known to cause lung ruptures, esp in a situation with a lot of brittleness from inflammation. Early in covid, though, it was the only option because no one at the time was willing to run high flow oxygen on an open circuit due to contagion concerns.
Ah, good ol' mitochondrial at it again! This is pretty interesting. It at least gets us closer to figuring out what may be happening.
The article from The Conversation is a strangely good summary and I like the little diagram, although the authors couldn't help themselves from making a comment about the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell...
Also, random question Brian but were you still looking into natokinase? I was wondering about that and I have some articles scattered somewhere in my tabs. 🤷♂️
Well then I suppose green energy enthusiasts should encourage mitochondria to be used as an alternative energy source. Then we can say that the mitochondria are the power house of the [power] cell.
Not sure if it's related, but I am five weeks post-Covid (exposure on 9/25, first symptoms 9/27) and the cough is the weirdest part. The phlegm continues to this day, though slowly abating. I have not had a cold in years, but I have never had the drainage/clearance issues for so long. Otherwise I did not have a bad case and I rebounded after a week of work-from-home.
Kudos (not really) to the inventors of this virus. It is truly a unique experience.
Very interesting article, Brian. John, I coughed for 6 weeks when I had Covid in August 2021. I was really sick for 3 weeks, but the cough lingered, because of the mucous. To get rid of it, I used Mucinex, the 12 hour 1200 mg dose, 1 daily. I used almost a whole box. I also used systemic/proteolytic enzymes to help get rid of fibrosis in the lungs. Nattokinase, and lumbrokinase. Look up cystic fibrosis and the use of the enzymes. They are also useful for clots, see Dr. Mercola, enzyme fundamentals article, as well as many other publications. I have a history of bronchitis and have had excellent results from both. Also, oil pulling. Interestingly, my husband, who was sick at the same time, had a dry cough, no mucous. Hope this helps you and anyone else dealing with this, it isn’t fun!
I take it you mean "rebounded" as in got back to normal (not "rebounded" like Walensky). Glad to hear of your recovery, though the cough is certainly unfortunate. Post-acute cough isn't mentioned for any of the Long Covid kids in the scans so hopefully that is a good thing for you. Could be a co-infection with something...
Hi Brian! If it's not too nosy, how did you know you had omicron in January? Over the past two years I've been puzzled how folks know which version of anything they had. Another reason I'm asking is because this past New Year's Eve my husband got sick (bedridden, body aches, fever of 102.3). Overnight our son got sick (fever of 100, vomited once or twice and some diarrhea. He was 17 at the time and recovered within 24 hours.). The next day (January 1) I came down with the same thing as my husband (fever 102.3, bedridden, body aches, etc.). My husband was not well for a full three days and I was not well for a full four days. About two weeks later (January 17), my son is sick again with fever of 100 and diarrhea (but recovers within a day), and I'm sick again with same symptoms as January 1. I mostly recovered within three days but about a week later I was having little spikes of fever (99.9 or 100).
I've wondered what we all had, and I'm particularly curious about how I (my son, too) managed to become sick with the same symptoms a second time within the month.
Well, I did everything I could to maximize my exposure in Feb and March 2020 when I was still in SF / The Bay, where seropositivity was ~1.3% in blood donors in the prior December. So since I never got anything then or afterward, until January 2022, it seems unlikely that a Wuhan-like strain (Delta) finally caught up with me in the very last instant possible. More likely Omicron - and BA.2 still wasn't anywhere without heavy travel from South Africa until much later. So BA.1 is a pretty safe bet for the thing that made me sick and gave me two days of brain fog!
If it wasn't for the brain fog I wouldn't be as confident... As for the significance of quick reinfection, geography makes a big difference as far as likelihood of BA.2 being around that early or just some other bug passing through.
Thanks for the reply!
Glad you’re better Matt! Those concerned about clots, from infection or “potions” may also want to check out “Enzymes-The Fountain of Life” by D.A. Lopez, MD, Williams, MD, Miehlke, MD. They also work great for inflammation, and many other pathologies.
I assumed I'd get hit hard in the lungs by covid but didn't. I was the "special needs" kid with terrible asthma before it took off in the seventies. Had Delta, and then Omicron nine months later, both gave me a phlegmy cough for a couple of weeks that was worst at night. But then I was back to running with no shortage of breath within three weeks. Really surprised me. Worst thing was the sore throat from hell that first week.
Brutally sore throat was the worst symptom for me as well.
It was bad enough to cause serious time dilation for me.
Right, the sore throat was a brief torture for me (struck at night before I could buy some lozenges; I don't understand how humanity got by before lozenges).
Is there a course of SARS-CoV-2 infection where basically only the throat gets hit?
I wonder what I have now. Tue, woke up with throat ache, somewhat elev. tempr. (38.3°C), it felt at first like bronchia might have a little something, but after Tue basically I'm just waking up with a massive sore throat and a _wrecked_ voice like I don't remember having for 20 years, but the ache clears 1..2 hours after waking up (voice stays bad), drinking lots, nasal rinse (which hardly reaches the throat, but for good measure I thought, let's keep that part clean?).
No runny nose, and the cough reflex always coincide with an itch "at the lower end of the throat". *I think* temp normalized after Tue, at least the feeling of "flashes through the head" that I tend to have at higher temp. is absent, still waiting for new coin batteries to arrive, lol.
So far tests for the one and only virus were all neg, though their instructions say nasal swab, so that's what I did. Maybe throat would be smarter (though I resent leaving plastic harpoons from those swabs where I can't remove them so well.
The most bizarre thing, though, is that this nicely queues into the past 5 years of:
Whenever I had anything going on in the Nose/throat/lung area, it was after doing some woodworking 1..2 days before. No fine electro sanding or anything, just cutting some pieces of wood with a Japanese hand saw... ya'd think that carpenters did that for centuries without Steve Kirsch's hazmat headgear, so why would this affect me... but... this is no longer coincidence, argh!
I wonder whether this even has to be something viral... Stuff that's longer lurking around on the mucosa are also bacteria and fungi, eh? And if inhaling abrasive particles rupture the epithelium here and there, maybe some bugs gain an edge...
So, it's pretty clear that you are simply being attacked by Wood Ghosts. Appropriate spiritual rites conducted after woodwork will ensure Wood Ghosts depart in peace.
Or yes, I suppose some sort of molecular conflict with the microbiome is possible. If your particular resident friendlier bacteria tend to find wood particles toxic then it could be the same as taking a weak antibiotic only to favor a more pathogenic, heartier bacteria strain. Or simply lead to dysregulated cellular immunity resulting in immune cells creating a mess. But, that's really a few orders down below Wood Ghosts in plausibility.
As for SARS-CoV-2, were the negative tests PCR or RAT? Obviously, RAT can be a bit less sensitive - only positive at true "infection"-adjacent viral loads as opposed to asymptomatic infection or post-recovery. But if you had symptoms at all I would expect RAT to be positive at some point. But yes, oral samples can be positive when nasal are not in cases of lower viral loads (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262701v1)
Still it sounds more like a bacterial thing.
It was RAT. I suppose the feeling of a rotating cactus in the throat counts as symptoms.
Wood Ghosts, eh? More dangerous than homeopathic snake venom I bet.
My throat has been kinda hypersensitive to "stuff in the air" for 20 years, though. At some point I couldn't stand to be in that "new" old parents' house after living in it for a year or so, moved out, but whenever visited, my throat revolted basically after opening the front door, or holding something out of that house in my hands - blind tested. Since then, stuff like tobacco smoke, molds on some fruit in the store, or when someone has moldy stuff in a trashcan that's not perfectly airtight, make my throat react. But drawn blood by the allergologist in the same building as the ENT who saw that the throat was irritated minutes ago, concluded: "no allergy ". Ain't that weird.
I don't know about your body but both times when I had that sore throat it lit up a RAT. My youngest son had the throat in August but his RAT was negative.
Not sure what type of precision there is in blood-based allergy testing. Allergies involve pre-cell-binded IgE in tissues (binds to both mast cells and regular cells), and the receptors that IgE latch onto can be scaled up, so there can be a disconnect of "log anything" between circulating IgE and tissue-resident IgE. Which is why skin allergy tests just go straight to the skin.
But given that the woodworking thing seems to operate on a delay (unless I misread), it does seem to be something else...
And freezies, too.
The only time in my life where I literally prayed "please God don't let me swallow" and wondered if would actually do permanent throat damage.
Sorry, recovered would have been more accurate. Not a co or secondary infection - my wife has that. My three sons all got it from us and they too have the lingering cough issues.
I had covid last year and the defining physiologic feature to me was the amount of hypoxia vs lack of illness. I didn't really feel that bad and I even had a completely normal lung CT, but I could desat myself into the 80s within 30 sec of holding my breath. My conclusion at the time was that it must be either a shunting issue (as described in this study) or a red blood cell problem.
Today is my “release from isolation” day from my second bout with Covid (WT - Jan 21) and this was much more cold-like than my first go-round. And I really couldn’t believe how out of breath I got by simply going up one flight of steps. Sadly I did not read this earlier cause I just pulled out my handy-dandy pulse oximeter and couldn’t get it to go below 97 after a few flights of stairs (and it wouldn’t drop by holding my breath). Alas it would have been interesting to see, but I guess I’m going back to normal.
My chest felt "hungry", like hunger pangs, only in my chest. My SATS never tested below 92, though I did not try to hold my breath. It was (is) truly a weird illness, unlike anything prior. Unnatural.
Yes, I agree, "unnatural" is the right word.
Your comment made me realize I didn't characterize the impact of HPV on oxygenation correctly! Saturation will be a reflection of productive pulmonary blood flow / all pulmonary blood flow, and the job of HPV is to keep that near 100% by eliminating non-productive flow from the denominator. Incredible how breathing is such a math game.
Yes it really is. This would explain the ventilator issues too. Covid patients required crazy high levels of "PEEP" (positive end expiratory pressure) to maintain oxygenation, which could be a result of shunting. High PEEP is known to cause lung ruptures, esp in a situation with a lot of brittleness from inflammation. Early in covid, though, it was the only option because no one at the time was willing to run high flow oxygen on an open circuit due to contagion concerns.
Lets keep doing studies on a FAKE virus...
Please stop sending comments on this FAKE web site, Richard!
Ah, good ol' mitochondrial at it again! This is pretty interesting. It at least gets us closer to figuring out what may be happening.
The article from The Conversation is a strangely good summary and I like the little diagram, although the authors couldn't help themselves from making a comment about the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell...
In olden times they were considered the windmills of the cell.
Also, random question Brian but were you still looking into natokinase? I was wondering about that and I have some articles scattered somewhere in my tabs. 🤷♂️
Shelved that one.
Well then I suppose green energy enthusiasts should encourage mitochondria to be used as an alternative energy source. Then we can say that the mitochondria are the power house of the [power] cell.
Not sure if it's related, but I am five weeks post-Covid (exposure on 9/25, first symptoms 9/27) and the cough is the weirdest part. The phlegm continues to this day, though slowly abating. I have not had a cold in years, but I have never had the drainage/clearance issues for so long. Otherwise I did not have a bad case and I rebounded after a week of work-from-home.
Kudos (not really) to the inventors of this virus. It is truly a unique experience.
Very interesting article, Brian. John, I coughed for 6 weeks when I had Covid in August 2021. I was really sick for 3 weeks, but the cough lingered, because of the mucous. To get rid of it, I used Mucinex, the 12 hour 1200 mg dose, 1 daily. I used almost a whole box. I also used systemic/proteolytic enzymes to help get rid of fibrosis in the lungs. Nattokinase, and lumbrokinase. Look up cystic fibrosis and the use of the enzymes. They are also useful for clots, see Dr. Mercola, enzyme fundamentals article, as well as many other publications. I have a history of bronchitis and have had excellent results from both. Also, oil pulling. Interestingly, my husband, who was sick at the same time, had a dry cough, no mucous. Hope this helps you and anyone else dealing with this, it isn’t fun!
I take it you mean "rebounded" as in got back to normal (not "rebounded" like Walensky). Glad to hear of your recovery, though the cough is certainly unfortunate. Post-acute cough isn't mentioned for any of the Long Covid kids in the scans so hopefully that is a good thing for you. Could be a co-infection with something...
Correct. Bad terminology on my part.
I mean, it will be too late to *start* worrying after it happens!
I am worried about LT effects of the virus. I am unvaxxed. Still worried about it.