mekka okereke :verified:
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.
mekka okereke :verified:
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
mekka okereke :verified:
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.
Mary Branscombe
@stepheneb @ShadSterling @mekkaokereke there's a bunch of evidence that new variants do viral replication in different places; for a lot of them it's been the nasal cavity when the OG virus was back of the throat, so swabbing different locations will give better results for different variants
Stephen Bannasch (316 ppm)
@ShadSterling @mekkaokereke sorry you got COVID, and want to thank so much for detailing your experience and experiments. I’m very curious if you or anybody else sees any new research that might back up your observations. Something plausible might be that the RATs still work with new strains but the viral load is distributed differently so following the instructions (swab nostrils) is not useful for testing for being contagious.
ShadSterling
@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
mekka okereke :verified:
🚨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
mekka okereke :verified:
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.
mekka okereke :verified:
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.
mekka okereke :verified:
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.
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