MY CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH COVID-19

From today you can order four free at-home COVID-19 tests.  They say orders will ship in 7-10 days.  Go to THIS SITE.  It takes about a full minute and is the first no hassle order I've ever made on a computer.  Unfortunately, my request was denied because someone else, who I know, already made this request.  It is only 4 kits/household, period.  

The White House also will take from the Strategic National Stockpile 400 million masks to provide them free.  A limit of 3/person for distribution at local pharmacies and community health centers late next week.  Why not make all 750 million available?   That would be only 2/person.  Supposedly, these masks can only be used once.  On the other hand, I twice bought boxes of these N95 masks and paid only about a buck for each mask.  Not a particularly big deal as announced, but a good PR device to get the nation into safer masks.

According to the New York Times this morning:

Since early last week, new cases in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey and New York have fallen by more than 30 percent. They’re down by more than 10 percent in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. In California, cases may have peaked.

Hawaii is not one of those states.  We yesterday suffered our highest new cases/day rate ever:  

• 6,252 new cases.
• 4466 new cases/million population.

How bad is this, (in new cases/million)?

• Maine 401
• California  1922 (with 78,263 new cases, the highest in the nation)
• USA  1637
• France  7096
• Portugal  4329
• World  395
• Japan  185 (not going up as fast as speculated)

Included in that NYT article mentioned above was a link to a University of Oxford site which provides a calculator for those who want to know what are your chances of dying from COVID-19, where you indicate necessary parameters (age, pre-condition and vaccination status, etc.) to find out your odds of contracting and surviving from COVID-19.  First, they warn that this is only for those living in the UK.  Nevertheless, inserting the sought data, best as I can tell looking at my results:

Risk of catching and being admitted into a hospital 1 in 3175

Risk of catching and dying                                        1 in 4049

Risk of dying following a positive test                      1 in 73

Those numbers are somewhat worrisome, but being a senior citizen, not bad at all, for do you realize in the 2019-20 flu season, about 1 out of every 138 Americans 65 older who had flu symptoms, died from them?

Further, the British calculator says that this link really should be used for those who contract the Delta variant.  You can lower the incidence by a factor of two with the Omicron variant.  In short, if you are fully vaccinated (but not boosted), your odds of death for Omicron are lower than the flu.  Then when you add a booster, this mortality must approach that of a cold.

For the record, worldwide, there have been 335,190,217 total cases.  

• Chance of catching COVID-19  1 in 24
• Chance of dying from COVID-19  1 in 1417

For the U.S.

• Chance of catching COVID-19  1 in 5
• Chance of dying from COVID-19  1 in 60

What this means for the U.S. is that in a group of 100, 20 should by now have contracted this disease.  Wow!  20%.

• Hawaii has currently peaked in number of cases.
• Further, here at 15 Craigside we're surrounded by this virus.  So far 19 of our employees have tested positive. 
• I don't know one person who has gotten COVID-19 in the whole world.  I am well shielded.  
• In 15 Craigside, with our 200 residents, there should have been 40 cases.  There was one, who I think has been cured.  
• I haven't seen any recent data, but at the end of the year 75% of all employees and 90% of residents had taken the booster.  This figure must be higher now because 99.8% of employees took both Moderna shots and about a similar percentage for residents.
• We surely are at herd immunity.
• But this does not mean I live in cocoon of herd immunity because we are allowed to go out at any time.  And Hawaii is a bad place to be today.

So all that led to my close encounter with COVID-19 this past week:

• First, the last time I talked to someone not living with me close-up without a mask was about a month ago when three of us went golfing and rode in the same car without masks.
• Then, I took note of my blog and from three weeks ago began wearing a N95 mask, with a face shield when I entered a store.  No restaurants, family gathering or anything like that.

• 
  But, a week ago at 3AM when I went to the restroom, I had a sore throat with what I felt was a mild fever.  When I woke up, my throat soreness moved to the other side of the throat, so I took my temperature, and read 97.3.  I went down to the electronic thermometer in the basement, and it showed 97.4.  I felt almost okay, so did nothing about that.
• Saturday morning I awoke at 3AM to go to the bathroom and there was a mild irritation to my throat.  I measured my temperature, and it was 99.  I felt warm.
• 
  While 98.6 is supposed to be the ideal body temperature, it depends on which kind of measurement device, how deep you place a physical thermometer under your tongue and differences in individuals.
When I woke up at 7AM, the soreness in my throat had largely gone away, but my temperature was 98.
• So I called my doctor, and was told he was unavailable this weekend.
• I called the clinic and they sent someone up to take my vitals.
• Blood pressure  130/70.
• Oxygen  98
• Temperature 97.5
• These are all good.

• 
  To my surprise, they quarantined me and took a quick COVID-19 test, plus one of those that requires a day or two to get a result.  They are very cautious here.

• 
  The quick test result came quickly, and it was negative.  But they said they had to wait until the other test to release me from lockdown.
• Mind you, being quarantined is my usual life.  I do my blog, watch TV and eat meals which they still deliver.
• No result on Sunday.
• No result on Monday, which was Martin Luther King Day.
• Finally, in the afternoon on Tuesday I was told the second test was also negative.  The flu test was similarly negative.
• So yesterday I was released from quarantine.

Here are my thoughts:

• I was not sick, yet not well.  Maybe from a week ago around 90% right.  I wouldn't walk on a golf course.  
• Never was there any running nose, coughing, upset stomach, sore muscles and the usual symptoms.
• My appetite was excellent through the whole ordeal.  In fact, I'm afraid I ate and drank whatever I wanted to combat this virus, and fear I gained a lot weight.
• 
  By yesterday, I was perhaps 95% of normal.  Same today.  Not quite 100% but okay.
• So what was the cause?
• This was certainly no cold:  I've had a 100 colds in my life and they all involved discomfort, runny nose, coughing and a slight fever.  But no sense of illness, phlegm, etc.
• 
  Was not influenza.  I feel terrible when I have the flu, which I've suffered through for more than a half dozen times.
• This could well have been Omicron-COVID, for I've being boosted, I read that anyone so protected usually shows symptoms closer to a cold.
• If for a whole week my only problem was a very mild temperature and two incidents of mild sore throats for a few hours, maybe it was better to have caught this disease.
• Under normal conditions I would be petrified and would be mentally wrought during the three-day wait.  I was not.
• Instead, I was almost disappointed that the second test was negative.
• In afterthought, though, I'm glad that I was not a victim of Omicron.

I'll close with a photo of Togetsukyo-bridge-at-Arashiyama in Kyoto from Getty Images:

Hope to get there this Fall.

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