- Jul 17, 2019
- 3,726
- Pool Size
- 13000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- Pentair Intellichlor IC-40
This has absolutely nothing to do with pools, but I am writing this to share our COVID experience over the last 2 weeks in case it may help others. I realize that this is a very small sample size of the entire COVID population, but is our real firsthand experience with COVID.
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Since this turned out to be a lengthy post (and I hate reading lengthy posts), here is my speed read summary of the points I tried to make in my ramblings below:
- COVID symptoms do not have to be the alarming symptoms you see in the news. They can be as simple as a slight sniffle. Don't assume you do not have COVID just because you do not have a fever, cough, shortness of breath, loss of taste, etc.
- Get tested and take extra precautions every time you have the slightest symptoms, even if you think it may just be allergies. The testing is easy to do and easy to find.
- Rapid COVID tests are not accurate and can have false negatives. Get the 2 day test to be sure.
- Vitamin C, D3, and Zinc are important for your immune system and recommended if you think you may have been exposed.
- Nobody has all of the answers and you have to make the best decisions you see fit for your family's safety, their sanity, the health of others around you, and the health of the economy. My philosophy before COVID and after having COVID is to be smart but some reasonable risks to live a semi-normal life are okay. Your opinion may differ from mine, and that is okay too.
***************************
Before we got COVID we cancelled much of our activities for 2020 like everyone, but we would take what I would consider "reasonable risks", while making sure we followed the safety protocols in place including masks and distancing. Our kids attended in person school, we allowed them to partake in their extracurricular activities including basketball and band, my wife would still go to her yoga class, and we would occasionally go out to eat. Each one of those activities elevated our risk of exposure, but was a carefully calculated risk and helped keep our sanity over the last 12 months.
A few days before Christmas, my wife developed a runny nose. It was simply a runny nose, no chills, cough, fever, and really no different than the regular runny nose she gets from seasonal allergies. Wanting to be super cautious, she made an appointment with her doctor and they tested her like they had several other times through the year when she or the kids got any sort of sniffle, ear infection, etc. Great news, no COVID and they gave her some antibiotics since she has a history of sinus infections. Now we could focus on Christmas and not worry about COVID or sinus infections.
My mom came in town on the 24th and we did our normal Christmas traditions, modified for 2020. Candlelight church service on the 24th was at a large outside sporting arena to allow social distancing. Heck the church even used glow sticks instead of candles so everyone could maintain their social distancing as we "lit our candles". After church we had reservations at a nice seafood restaurant, which followed the safety protocols of limited capacity seating and you have to wear a mask when not at your table. It was nice to have a somewhat normal Christmas Eve.
Christmas Day came and we opened presents that morning. My wife still had a runny nose and a slight cough from the draining. It wasn't horrible, but we did jokingly make the comment that we were glad she was negative on her COVID test. After we cleaned up the mess from opening presents, my wife checked her email and I heard an audible gasp from the living room. She had an email saying that her COVID test came back positive.
Not knowing what to do, she called the doctor's office and got their holiday answering service. Impressively, the doctor called back a few minutes later. She explained that the rapid tests were not very accurate and can give false negatives especially if you just stated having symptoms. For those reasons, she also sends the swab off to the lab for the more accurate 2 day test done in a lab. The email was generated from the more accurate lab test.
That Christmas morning news was on par with receiving a jelly of the month gift instead of a cash bonus (Christmas Vacation reference). The questions raced through our minds. How does this happen? How many people did we unknowingly expose, including my 74 year old mother? Do we all have it? What do we need to be doing now?
Below is what the doctor had us do, and it may be helpful to others in a similar situation or even just getting you through the winter:
Back to Christmas Day, we were at a loss of what to do. My mom said that the damage was likely done and we might as well have our planned Christmas dinner and she would just hit the road afterwards. That night, the kids and I developed a runny nose. It felt very much like allergies to me.
On the 27th, I scheduled tests for the kids and I. We did the rapid tests. I came back positive and both kids negative. This rapid test is frustratingly inaccurate and may give you false hope if you try and be proactive and test at the onset of symptoms. The published false negative rate is 20% for the test, but 3 of the 4 of us received a false negative with the tests. Please do not trust the negative results with this one, and this is why many employers/schools will not take the rapid tests as proof to return back to work.
24 hours after receiving her negative test, we took my daughter to her regular pediatrician where she tested positive. We all had the same mild symptoms, basically a runny nose, and out of 6 total tests we had 3 positive and 3 negative. At this point, we just assumed my son was positive and stopped messing with the stupid inaccurate testing.
Over the next couple of days, our symptoms remained mild and would come in waves. Mainly we would have headaches that come and go, especially if we didnt drink a ton of water and have sinus congestion. Nobody ever had a fever, and only my wife had a cough. My wife and I did lose our sense of taste and smell, but that was the last symptom to arise at 4+ days after testing positive and well after the point of being contagious. We did find comfort in using the spa and found that the steam from the spa helped with the sinus congestion/pressure that I used it almost daily. Oddly enough, my mom never developed symptoms, tested negative and is almost done with her 14-day quarantine.
As we are symptom free and coming off of our quarantine period, I'm trying to reflect over the last 14 days and really the full year of COVID craziness.
Am I thankful that we only had mild symptoms? Absolutely. Most people will have mild symptoms, but it is not something to mess around with if your symptoms get worse.
What would I have done differently? Obviously if I could pinpoint the day my wife picked it up, she would not have gone to yoga that day or the store. Looking at the full year though, I felt like we did what made sense for our family. We cancelled some things, we changed our behaviors, but we also lived our lives especially with the kids. Its not like they can pause life and come back and join the marching band or basketball teams when they are finished with school. They are only this age once and we wanted them to be able to experience things with appropriate precautions of course.
What do I think about masks and attending in-person school? Masks work, period. Sure they can be uncomfortable, but suck it up and wear one. They arent one size fits all, but literally everyone sells them now. Buy a couple different types and sizes to see what works best for you. My kids are in school surrounded by hundreds or thousands of kids a day, each of them have a mask on. There have been COVID positive kids in their schools, but the kids are wearing their masks and not spreading it in school to each other. If the masks did not work, it would spread through the schools like wildfire. Instead, the entire student body population of 16,000 kids had just handfuls of cases at any given time at each campus. I expect that to jump up a bit over Christmas break, but that will be driven by family exposure, not in-school exposure.
What do I feel about how the US/world reacted? First of all, I'm impressed by what you are seeing from first responders, scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and 90% of the population. Progress can be slow and frustrating at times, but if you look at the intentions of everyone, everyone is working really hard towards the same goal to end this pandemic. Mistakes have been made, and will continue to be made, but that has to be expected.
With all of the good that you are seeing now, I do really worry about the long term impact to our economy and the precedence we are setting with our response in 2020. COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic, and I want to make sure that our response to the next one is appropriate for the actual pandemic at hand. Pandemics happen every few years and I want to make sure we do not automatically go into a panic lockdown for the next bird flu, swine flu, MIRS, SARS, Ebola, COVID, etc. The media and pharmaceutical companies are making a lot of $ off of this reaction, and I hope that they will do the right thing in the future and not have an over-hyped response to make a buck. Time will tell.
Thanks for reading and thanks for letting me get my quarantine thoughts down on paper. Hopefully nothing I said was too controversial or offensive, and that someone reading will be better prepared for their own COVID story.
*****************************
Since this turned out to be a lengthy post (and I hate reading lengthy posts), here is my speed read summary of the points I tried to make in my ramblings below:
- COVID symptoms do not have to be the alarming symptoms you see in the news. They can be as simple as a slight sniffle. Don't assume you do not have COVID just because you do not have a fever, cough, shortness of breath, loss of taste, etc.
- Get tested and take extra precautions every time you have the slightest symptoms, even if you think it may just be allergies. The testing is easy to do and easy to find.
- Rapid COVID tests are not accurate and can have false negatives. Get the 2 day test to be sure.
- Vitamin C, D3, and Zinc are important for your immune system and recommended if you think you may have been exposed.
- Nobody has all of the answers and you have to make the best decisions you see fit for your family's safety, their sanity, the health of others around you, and the health of the economy. My philosophy before COVID and after having COVID is to be smart but some reasonable risks to live a semi-normal life are okay. Your opinion may differ from mine, and that is okay too.
***************************
Before we got COVID we cancelled much of our activities for 2020 like everyone, but we would take what I would consider "reasonable risks", while making sure we followed the safety protocols in place including masks and distancing. Our kids attended in person school, we allowed them to partake in their extracurricular activities including basketball and band, my wife would still go to her yoga class, and we would occasionally go out to eat. Each one of those activities elevated our risk of exposure, but was a carefully calculated risk and helped keep our sanity over the last 12 months.
A few days before Christmas, my wife developed a runny nose. It was simply a runny nose, no chills, cough, fever, and really no different than the regular runny nose she gets from seasonal allergies. Wanting to be super cautious, she made an appointment with her doctor and they tested her like they had several other times through the year when she or the kids got any sort of sniffle, ear infection, etc. Great news, no COVID and they gave her some antibiotics since she has a history of sinus infections. Now we could focus on Christmas and not worry about COVID or sinus infections.
My mom came in town on the 24th and we did our normal Christmas traditions, modified for 2020. Candlelight church service on the 24th was at a large outside sporting arena to allow social distancing. Heck the church even used glow sticks instead of candles so everyone could maintain their social distancing as we "lit our candles". After church we had reservations at a nice seafood restaurant, which followed the safety protocols of limited capacity seating and you have to wear a mask when not at your table. It was nice to have a somewhat normal Christmas Eve.
Christmas Day came and we opened presents that morning. My wife still had a runny nose and a slight cough from the draining. It wasn't horrible, but we did jokingly make the comment that we were glad she was negative on her COVID test. After we cleaned up the mess from opening presents, my wife checked her email and I heard an audible gasp from the living room. She had an email saying that her COVID test came back positive.
Not knowing what to do, she called the doctor's office and got their holiday answering service. Impressively, the doctor called back a few minutes later. She explained that the rapid tests were not very accurate and can give false negatives especially if you just stated having symptoms. For those reasons, she also sends the swab off to the lab for the more accurate 2 day test done in a lab. The email was generated from the more accurate lab test.
That Christmas morning news was on par with receiving a jelly of the month gift instead of a cash bonus (Christmas Vacation reference). The questions raced through our minds. How does this happen? How many people did we unknowingly expose, including my 74 year old mother? Do we all have it? What do we need to be doing now?
Below is what the doctor had us do, and it may be helpful to others in a similar situation or even just getting you through the winter:
- Hydrate - Always have a glass of water near you and drink it and refill it all through the day. That is a good rule of thumb in general, but we have all been super thirsty even upping the water by about 2x what we normally drink
- Vitamin C, Vitamin D3, and Zinc are very important and being low in any of those can increase your risk of COVID complications. Some studies also show elderberries to help lessen complications. There are many options out there, just make sure you are getting at least 100% of your daily value of each of those. We used an immunity vitamin with Vitamin C, zinc and elderberry and then a separate vitamin D3 supplement to get to our 100%.
- Daily baby asprin - She said this can help thin mucus and also help with blood clotting if you end up needing be in bed or hospitalized later on.
- Move around - Dont just curl up in bed or on the couch. Get up, be productive, take walks if you safely can, etc.
- Get a Pulse Oximeter - This is the little clip that goes on the end of your finger and measures your oxygen %. We picked up one from CVS for around $50. The doctor said normal readings are 96-100% and if you drop below 92% you need to seek further medical attention.
- There are other drugs, including Regeneron and plasma treatments that are very effective but reserved for those that need it the most. Stay in contact with your doctor so that you can quickly be put on those additional medicines if you need them and early on when they are the most effective. Luckily we did not need them, but I felt they were a phone call away if we did need them.
Back to Christmas Day, we were at a loss of what to do. My mom said that the damage was likely done and we might as well have our planned Christmas dinner and she would just hit the road afterwards. That night, the kids and I developed a runny nose. It felt very much like allergies to me.
On the 27th, I scheduled tests for the kids and I. We did the rapid tests. I came back positive and both kids negative. This rapid test is frustratingly inaccurate and may give you false hope if you try and be proactive and test at the onset of symptoms. The published false negative rate is 20% for the test, but 3 of the 4 of us received a false negative with the tests. Please do not trust the negative results with this one, and this is why many employers/schools will not take the rapid tests as proof to return back to work.
24 hours after receiving her negative test, we took my daughter to her regular pediatrician where she tested positive. We all had the same mild symptoms, basically a runny nose, and out of 6 total tests we had 3 positive and 3 negative. At this point, we just assumed my son was positive and stopped messing with the stupid inaccurate testing.
Over the next couple of days, our symptoms remained mild and would come in waves. Mainly we would have headaches that come and go, especially if we didnt drink a ton of water and have sinus congestion. Nobody ever had a fever, and only my wife had a cough. My wife and I did lose our sense of taste and smell, but that was the last symptom to arise at 4+ days after testing positive and well after the point of being contagious. We did find comfort in using the spa and found that the steam from the spa helped with the sinus congestion/pressure that I used it almost daily. Oddly enough, my mom never developed symptoms, tested negative and is almost done with her 14-day quarantine.
As we are symptom free and coming off of our quarantine period, I'm trying to reflect over the last 14 days and really the full year of COVID craziness.
Am I thankful that we only had mild symptoms? Absolutely. Most people will have mild symptoms, but it is not something to mess around with if your symptoms get worse.
What would I have done differently? Obviously if I could pinpoint the day my wife picked it up, she would not have gone to yoga that day or the store. Looking at the full year though, I felt like we did what made sense for our family. We cancelled some things, we changed our behaviors, but we also lived our lives especially with the kids. Its not like they can pause life and come back and join the marching band or basketball teams when they are finished with school. They are only this age once and we wanted them to be able to experience things with appropriate precautions of course.
What do I think about masks and attending in-person school? Masks work, period. Sure they can be uncomfortable, but suck it up and wear one. They arent one size fits all, but literally everyone sells them now. Buy a couple different types and sizes to see what works best for you. My kids are in school surrounded by hundreds or thousands of kids a day, each of them have a mask on. There have been COVID positive kids in their schools, but the kids are wearing their masks and not spreading it in school to each other. If the masks did not work, it would spread through the schools like wildfire. Instead, the entire student body population of 16,000 kids had just handfuls of cases at any given time at each campus. I expect that to jump up a bit over Christmas break, but that will be driven by family exposure, not in-school exposure.
What do I feel about how the US/world reacted? First of all, I'm impressed by what you are seeing from first responders, scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and 90% of the population. Progress can be slow and frustrating at times, but if you look at the intentions of everyone, everyone is working really hard towards the same goal to end this pandemic. Mistakes have been made, and will continue to be made, but that has to be expected.
With all of the good that you are seeing now, I do really worry about the long term impact to our economy and the precedence we are setting with our response in 2020. COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic, and I want to make sure that our response to the next one is appropriate for the actual pandemic at hand. Pandemics happen every few years and I want to make sure we do not automatically go into a panic lockdown for the next bird flu, swine flu, MIRS, SARS, Ebola, COVID, etc. The media and pharmaceutical companies are making a lot of $ off of this reaction, and I hope that they will do the right thing in the future and not have an over-hyped response to make a buck. Time will tell.
Thanks for reading and thanks for letting me get my quarantine thoughts down on paper. Hopefully nothing I said was too controversial or offensive, and that someone reading will be better prepared for their own COVID story.
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