Break on Through to the Omicron
Nothing like catching COVID to pique your interest in talking about it. I’ve heard it said that everyone was eventually going to get it, but I kept thinking, “Nah, I’m careful with masking, I’m vaccinated and boosted, my work environment is quite safe, and I’m not very social anyway. I’ll be one of the lucky ones who never has to deal with it.” Welp, the best laid plans…
I’m pretty sure it started with my youngest son bringing it home from school. Masking and distancing are not required, plus he was the first to come down with the cold-like symptoms that ended up spreading to all but my two oldest boys. Everyone had relatively mild cases, so on the plus side, now we’re super-immune! A few takeaways:
- Our testing options are awful.
- My youngest boys were the first to present symptoms, but they recovered after a day or two and we didn’t see anything different from typical cold symptoms. We would have got them tested, but there is essentially no testing available in Fernley, and going all the way to Fallon or Reno seemed like too much work.
- Lindsey caught it next, and she made the trek to Fallon to get a PCR test, which came back positive…five days later!
- I was the most recent to get it. Had both rapid and PCR tests at the same time. Rapid was negative, PCR results were promised within 72 hours, but that window has come and gone. Instead I got a text from the Washoe County Health District asking me to take a survey because they were notified that I tested positive (this came before Lindsey’s results, so it was the first we learned that we all probably had COVID).
- I'm lazy.
- I’d heard the terms rapid and PCR thrown around for over a year, but never paid attention to the difference. Apparently the rapid tests are a better indicator that you are contagious (PCR can return positive well after), but they are also more error prone. Fun!
- I had a small tickle in my throat for a couple of days. Until the third day when I got congested, I kept going about business as usual thinking, “I’m vaccinated. This is a cold. I can’t stay home for every minor symptom.” But we are in the middle of an insane omicron spike, so I should have been more careful. Bullet point #1 not being the case would have helped too.
- Science is an amazing blessing.
- Granted some unvaccinated people still have mild cases, but having my family as up-to-date as possible on their vaccines significantly reduced our chances of severe illness. Just look at that graph on the right!!!
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