Hope your parents recover quickly and completely. I know covid wasn't closing things here until late February.

Four years is also the length of a presidential term, of course.

The health clinic came to work yesterday to administer shots for one of w latest variants (can't recall which but it started with an E followed by some 1s and 3s). It was Moderna, all of my previous shots were Pfizer. It's really knocked me on my ass today, earlier I had a fever of just over 102.

And I'm still feverish

I've had four Pfizer and two Moderna.

I got covid for the first time in August or September 2023, which seemed surprisingly long. It was right before some new formula of booster was supposed to come out, so I couldn't get it when it was new and since then I haven't bothered. Cassandane got it for the first time like three weeks before I did. (Just long enough that she didn't worry about getting it from me again.) Atossa tested positive for the first time while I was sick, but only once and never had symptoms, so we figured her test was faulty or contaminated by me.

Hmm. I forgot to get this round of Covid boosters. I got one back in 2022.

You're going to lose cell phone service.

I had two Pfizer, 2 Moderna and a Novavax. Novavax was no big deal for me, though Tim noticed something. I got it 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. Still managed to get COVID for the 1st time last week. It took me 48 hours to get Paxlovid. 5 days later Tim got sick and got his prescription in less than 24, and he had a lot less coughing.

Primary care is a mess here now. The state has a telehealth program that gets you to an NP fast which is great if you qualify for Paxlovid, but they don't refer you to anything if you need another treatment and don't qualify. I elected the overnight mail option. But the next day, I called and the people at the telehealth company couldn't see the records of the mail-order pharmacy start-up. The pharmacy people thought I was a regular mail order customer and told me it took them 2-3 days to process things, so I had to do another appointment. I was able to get my meds.

When Tim got sick, he requested in the visit our regular pharmacy, but they sent it to the one we had clicked. He did another visit and had it sent to our pharmacy where I can do curbside pickup. Unfortunately, the first pharmacy had already looked up our insurance info and filled it. Our pharmacy can't fill it, because that location was closed for the day. I'm practically in tears. The brilliant pharmacist at Wegmans figured out that she could temporarily bill a government code from 2022 because there was a small supply of government purchased Paxlovid left and then reversse the charges the next day, because she is supposed to bill private insurance. I want to write a letter to her manager, because she was so great and saved the day right before closing on a Saturday.

I should have had it sent to the local CVS, because I now know that they have a drive-through, but I hate CVS and was worried about going into the store. My insurance will only cover it once every 180 days, so I'd better not get it again for 6 months. The privatization of the supply of treatments for an infectious illness sucks so bad, and I'm really worried about a lot of people's access going forward.

I'm grateful for the service, but I had to be savvy to navigate it. I got Paxlovid after 48 hours and still missed a whole week of work. I think Tim will fare a bit better.

I wish the coughing people had stayed home from the exhibit or had worn masks. People were desperate and trying to crash the exhibitI also wish it hadn't been so overrun, hot and stuffy and they had done a bit more to clean the air. I probably shoukd have worn an N95 instead of the KF94. It was a lot worse than a cold. It felt like a cold after taking Paxlovid for 2 days, but before that it was fever, chills, nausea, body aches and feeling light-headed, just completely unable to get out of bed.

My second bout was in late August and I was initially irate that my doctor's office insisted on seeing me before prescribing Paxlovid, but it turned out my blood pressure had gotten really wacky and I was too light-headed to notice, so I'm actually glad I got checked out. That and serious reflux and periodic exhaustion/brain fog are my only ongoing long Covid problems, but Friday I have another procedure to stretch the scar tissue reflux burned into my esophagus during my first round of Covid before I was getting treated, which is something I'll just have to keep having done every nine months for the rest of my life if I want to be able to swallow and speak normally. I still feel fairly lucky in the scheme of things (all the more so because all my symptoms were typical of long Covid and showed up promptly on tests and so I never had to deal with being doubted/minimized/misdirected, just got what care I could insert the circumstances) but boy does it suck nonetheless.

What if you just took up sword swallowing to keep the tissue stretched?

What if you just took up sword swallowing to keep the tissue stretched?

Stupid phone.

Still just once for me, in August 2022.

As far as I know I've still just gotten it once (BA.2 wave, May 2022). RWM got it a second time after Thanksgiving, but I never tested positive. I've had two Moderna initially, and then three Pfizer since then (one each winter). I've had a lot of clear exposures (an hour-long meeting with someone who came down with symptoms later that day, a superspreader family gathering with 50+ people, plus the aforementioned RWM having it), so my immunity seems to be holding up pretty well.

If you go by excess deaths vs. 2015-19 average, the US is holding steady at about +11%. Excess deaths vs. projections, just 2%. The latter might be better if the projection accounts for population growth and aging, but the source doesn't clearly state that it does.

The guy in Florida with multiple comorbid conditions who keeps sending my father-in-law Newsmax-y stuff just won't seem to die.

13: Oh, have you lost cell phone service?

I wonder if the projection is correcting for fentanyl deaths? That would explain the substantial difference, since 2015-2019 includes some years from before the big fentanyl problem.

I need another booster.

For the last two weeks I've been sick with Covid-like symptoms, but it ain't Covid. I still feel rough. I'm thinking this is what "Long Rhinovirus" feels like.

scar tissue reflux burned into my esophagus during my first round of Covid

Did you feel reflux symptoms while you had Covid or did that develop later? I ask because I had Covid in July 2022. In early 2023 I started developing a reflux problem, which I still have to a degree* after making significant changes to my diet plus taking medication. I didn't think it was Covid-related and no one has suggested it is, but I have wondered. I had an endoscopy last that showed some damage but fortunately minor at that point.

*I guess it might more accurately be GERD rather than specifically the acid reflux symptom itself. I don't

I don't

know where that sentence was going to go.

20: I like you, Moby!

Thanks. You too.

I had an endoscopy years ago, but I can't find the picture of my stomach anymore.

I got reflux during covid, I think because of drinking too much.

How much have social mores around covid shifted? Boring story time: I had dinner with a friend last week. A few days later I found out that she had been exposed to covid earlier in the week. She was already feeling ill on the day that I met up with her, and then tested positive the next morning. I didn't hear this from her -- I found out two days later from another friend, who was outraged that friend #1 hadn't notified all of her contacts, and took it upon herself to sound the alarms.

I was pretty annoyed initially, especially since I had visited my (elderly and not in perfect health) parents in the intervening period, but then I thought, well, prior to 2020, if I came down with a cold I wouldn't necessarily have notified everyone I came into contact with the day before. And maybe covid is more like a regular cold or flu now? On the other hand, in 2024, if I came down with the flu I probably would notify everyone I had close contact with the day before. Anyway, I've decided not to be upset about it, although I might have felt differently if I had gotten sick, or if I had gotten my elderly parents sick.

Wait, heartburn is a long-term covid effect? I was blaming it on eating too much spicy food after twelve Life Units.

You're supposed to key her car and she's supposed to pretend she doesn't know it was you.

twelve Life Units

Are you robbing the blood bank for drinks?

So the world melted down just about 1 Life Unit ago

Thanks. My attention span isn't good.

I've had six shot and so far am still a COVID virgin. Oddly, I've had a few small reflux episodes for the first time ever this year. I suppose I could have had a completely asymptomatic COVID infection, but I doubt it.

Anyway, I've decided not to be upset about it . . .

That's probably wise, just in terms of minimizing stress; but I think she absolutely should have let you know when she tested positive (and probably warned you beforehand).

How much have social mores around covid shifted? Boring story time: I had dinner with a friend last week. A few days later I found out that she had been exposed to covid earlier in the week. She was already feeling ill on the day that I met up with her, and then tested positive the next morning. I didn't hear this from her -- I found out two days later from another friend, who was outraged that friend #1 hadn't notified all of her contacts, and took it upon herself to sound the alarms.

I would continue to notify contacts, but I'm probably behind the curve.

For example, last week I had a coworker say, "I was out with a friend last Friday, the friend just let me know he tested positive for COVID, I'll work from home the rest of the week " which was good because the coworker tested positive two days later.

I was very thankful to find out I had acid reflux and not an impending heart attack.

I did once notify some recent contacts after getting the flu pre-covid, but it's because they had a relatively young infant.

While RWM had covid I went to work and taught, but masked while doing so. I didn't tell anyone why I was masking though. We didn't tell anyone at the giant thanksgiving we'd been at that she'd caught covid, but in that case from previous conversations I was pretty sure they wouldn't want to know, and it was a big enough gathering with enough kids (many of whom had sniffles of whatever sort) that I figured everyone would assume they were likely to have been exposed to some illness anyway. I did tell my parents (who we'd seen maybe 4 or 5 days before symptoms) that we'd come down with it. I didn't feel like there's a clear protocol anymore.

I keep reading "RWM" as "Robert Wood Morris" and wanting to ask if anyone else does that before I realize that I've confused "Robert Morris" and "Robert Wood Johnson". I should get out more is what I'm saying.

I got the J&J vaccine first, then Pfizer every time thereafter. Had zero reaction to any of them (same with the flu, Shingrix, polio, and tetanus; I could be a tackling dummy for nursing students), still haven't gotten Covid unless it was asymptomatic and undetected.

41: Jealous about the lack of infection.

I did not go to a dentist appointment 6 days after infection. I suppose I could have done a negative test, but they needed confirmation of the appt ob day 4 of my infection.

Since Tim also got infected. Another doctor asked me to wait until 10 days after his infection before coming in the office and to switch any appointment to virtual.

Heebie,

Your parents are to be congratulated (and I certainly congratulate them) for having delayed covid for so long! There are so many ways, small and large, that we can reduce the risk of covid, and they all add up. Or, y'know, maybe they were just very, very, very lucky. And as they say, it is better to be lucky than smart.

Re: notification of covid exposure, a relative came over with her husband for lunch (indoors, unmasked, of course) on a Saturday, and notified me the next day that she'd come down with covid. [I didn't catch it -- at least, the test came back negative] So the protocol as far as I know it, is still to notify your recent contacts. If I learned that somebody had failed to do so in an interaction with me (or heck, with others) I'd think less of them, and be much more wary in their presence. I think it's still much worse than a cold (three bouts of covid yield a 38% chance of long covid, ffs) and people who pretend otherwise are morally deficient. I don't insist that they take the same precautions I take, but they should notify their contacts if they do fall ill.

More about notification: I have a friend who's got some upper respiratory bug [not covid]. He had it early in Dec, and he *still has it*. So longer than six weeks. A couple of weeks ago, he had lunch with a friend, and that friend got the bug. Which surprised my friend, b/c it's been over a month. So he's basically isolating until his symptoms are gone. There are a lot of bugs out there this winter, and people aren't taking them seriously, so just passing them along to their contacts.

22: GERD is clearly related to post-Covid/long Covid/just plain Covid and more studies are being done now that should make some of the links clearer, if not the reasons why. The UK study description I'm linking there shows a 41% increased risk of GERD in the year following Covid, which sounds like you.

The doctors we deal with have been clear that there are some post-Covid infections or responses, so this second time I had Covid in August I had a series of sinus infections/bronchitis following it until early January, which was both annoying for reasons of being sick and sniffly and disgusting and because I kept being sick and put on steroids and couldn't get my vaccine until recently. Little Selah was 9 during her first and actually only bout and she also immediately got a series of sinus infections after it, which her pediatrician said at the time (early 2022) they were basically expecting because it was so common. She ended up seeing an ENT and is now considered to have allergies (always did) and asthma (has had an active diagnosis on and off) and none of that seems to be Covid-specific.

My parents didn't get Covid until last August/September 2022 and then my dad promptly also got some sinus infections etc. (living in a river valley is gross in terms of air quality and the layers of pollen, which I'm sure is part of it) and started having heart problems. I have no idea whether he told his doctor that this also had happened to his daughter with long Covid earlier in the year, but his doctor insisted on just considering it a post-viral response since we can't know whether it was Covid or one of the later infections that set things off. Which is fair and probably strictly accurate but also DUDE. Seems like a way of avoiding just calling something long Covid? He had a procedure done last spring to reset his heartbeat (clearly I don't know the details) and it went well. He still has less energy than before, but seems to be basically fine. I think that's actually one kind of typical long Covid story, though not the kind that makes it into the press.

IANA infectious disease expert but 45 just seems wrong. The lunching friend got a bug, but from your friend? Lingering upper respiratory symptoms after six weeks seem so unlikely to be infectious. I think of that as the slow cleanup phase of the immune response, with hardly any of the original viral titer still around. But what do I know. Not much really. I should do some reading.

You should be worried about getting gonorrhea from washing your hands.

Longer response to 22 is that I might as well detail my own Covid/long Covid story because it's unfogged and why not? The two younger kids and I tested positive in late January 2022. I have asthma and my BMI was high enough to count as a risk factor, so I knew it might hit me harder. This was right at the beginning of the Omicron wave, but mine/ours seems to have been the tail end of Delta. (My partner Odile, who was teaching in a high school then and even as the last person masked there got it twice and then once more in her new job this summer when she presumably passed it to me, got sick the day after I came out of quarantine and had very different symptoms so we presume she was Omicron. Nia, the oldest child, has so far not ever tested positive despite never being good about masking as soon as she left the house, always sharing mascara/vapes/whatever with friends, in and out of hospitals and now a residential facility where there have been enough infections things have gotten shut down. It's possible she's immune as she believes she is, or maybe it's just luck.)

Selah recovered quickly and was back to school within a week. Mara, who has a genetic disorder that causes a lot of baseline health problems, took a bit longer to recover and stayed tired for a long time, but that's also something that happens periodically anyway so ??? I wasn't really able to hole up and rest since I was spending my days running the household more than I probably should have. I kept hanging onto the idea that at worst my symptoms were mild-moderate, lots of coughing so bad I was straining muscles but it's not like my school friend the cross-country coach whose heart gave out or the facebook-friend adoptive parent whose liver left her hospitalized for weeks. I suspect in retrospect that my joints or connective tissue were loosened, because one morning as I went downstairs masked to get food ready for Mara and me, my body just dropped and I turned out to have sprained both ankles. After that I quarantined in the living room so I wouldn't have to use stairs. And while I was at the hospital getting those x-rays done they also went ahead and did another chest x-ray (they had a special Covid-positive waiting room so I didn't have to just sit in my car and wait to be called in like I had with my first chest x-ray because my doctor was concerned about how bad my cough was) but neither of those nor a third or maybe even fourth as I recovered showed pneumonia, which is what my doctors were worried about.

Very quickly, maybe while I was still sick but certainly immediately after, it became clear that my heart was racing and skipping beats. I started having trouble swallowing and my stomach would lurch and make horrible noises. My doctor took all of this seriously and suspected that my vagus nerve was acting up, which was one theory of long Covid at the time and possibly part of the story for me. I had an MRI of my brain (and they found nothing, before apo gets to make that joke) and wore a holter monitor to follow my heart for five days and I had to do an awful swallowing study where I had to drink barium, which is bad enough on its own, in different concentrations while I was x-rayed and even while strapped to a standing table that let them spin me upside down while I drank.

The swallow study showed reflux and that I had a hiatal hernia, which I guess often go together since the hernia is how the acid gets out of the stomach easily. When I got the endoscopy to check for damage is when it became clear that my swallowing problem wasn't a vagus nerve malfunction but was scar tissue because acid had been shooting up my throat for the past month or two and had created enough scarring to start to close my esophagus. That's what I have to get stretched every time I notice a problem, which so far has been every 9 months almost exactly. There's no way to fix or undo it more permanently.

Finding a GERD medicine that worked took a while because I'd gone from no problems to really very significant problems and the first-line treatments didn't do anything. It took a month or so for my insurance (Medicaid) to approve the stronger drug and then to allow me to take it twice a day rather than once. That plus diet changes plus always sleeping upright to some degree has helped keep the GERD manageable but it's still there no matter what I do and my stomach roaars and misbehaves a lot. (Partly this might be because I haven't fully fixed my diet. We're currently doing a restrictive low-FODMAP diet for Mara and my times I've cheated when they aren't home suggests I'm sensitive to onions and/or garlic and noooooooooo I don't want to give that up!!!)

My cardiologist told me that he expected me to recover in about a year, which is what he was seeing with most of his long Covid patients. My heart monitor had indeed shown tachycardia and arrhythmias plus my blood pressure had just gone wild. It was high, but it was mostly that the lower diastolic number that was the wild one, sometimes as high as or almost as high as the systolic on top. I did a heart stress test and ended up collapsing light-headed on the treadmill when my blood pressure went to 60/20 or something ridiculously low, but they didn't get good enough data on that because even though it happened while I had radioactive dye in my blood it's too hard for the machines to see through dense breast tissue like I had because "this is really a test for thin men" and so it's not entirely clear what was going wrong there. I started taking a beta blocker for my blood pressure and heart. The heart problems did improve over time but my diastolic blood pressure was slower to respond. I was told to lose weight too of course, but that's hard to do when you're exhausted and physically unstable. I had to change medications there too after I got very near full heat stroke the first time I went out for any length of time on the beta blocker, which apparently is a side effect because your body's ability to sweat and otherwise respond to heat is slowed by the medication. I take a stronger one now but in a tiny dose. Sure enough, by spring 2023 my blood pressure was usually measuring normal even on days I didn't take my medication.

Then in August 2023 I got Covid again. My blood pressure immediately soared back out of the normal range. This also happened after I had an epidural steroid shot in my spine (no relation to Covid there at least!) a few weeks ago. So my best guess is that it's going to continue to be a problem every time I get sick for a while at least. I'm hoping with medication/diet/exercise/eventually not being so fat I can keep it normal when I'm healthy at least. In retrospect, I remember saying "wow, my reflux is WILD" several times during the weekend before I tested positive, so now I know to expect that as a symptom too. Both blood pressure and reflux symptoms responded to Paxlovid, so if I do get sick again I will definitely get that as soon as possible. Mara had gotten her second round of Covid in spring 2023 and we asked their pediatrician for Paxlovid and they were the first kid in the practice to get it, but the doctor thought it was a good idea given how many other problems there are. Specifically because Mara has lots of GI stuff going on anyway, I was worried about any increased problems there, but we've just seen the same old stuff. They also are now being treated for asthma, but again they had it as a baby and then were considered cleared. It may be Covid-related that it returned this fall, but we have a good regimen that seems to be keeping it under control.

In the timeframe in question, I've also had a breast reduction that has made everything so much easier and possibly set me up to be able to get successful heart imaging in the future should I ever need that plus sprained my ankle again and then had a surgery to deal with some of the shards of bone and cartilage in it as a follow-up to the surgery I'd had on it six or seven years ago after I'd lived with a seriously sprained ankle that refused to heal for over a year. In physical therapy, I learned to jog, but then got Covid and the infections that followed and didn't get to follow up with it much. Still, I've been able to make some tiny efforts and I get out for walks in nature when I can since that's enjoyable. I'm hoping to do more and do better.

I also had a series of concussions overlapping with some of this, most recently last spring. I'm sure some of my mental symptoms are related to that, but not all. I'm tired a lot. My memory is not as good as it was. I completely lost the ability to listen to more than one thing at a time. My loss of patience and increased grumpiness are probably concussion-related, same with decreased interest in things I used to enjoy. I find a lot of sorts of physical touch unpleasant now, which is a mix of psychological and physical pain and the annoying GERD symptoms.

So basically all of this is pretty minor in terms of how stories of long Covid go. My doctors never disbelieved me or thought I was making things up, though I sometimes worried about that myself and whether I was being an accurate reporter or maybe too dramatic. I was always afraid tests would show nothing was wrong with me, and yet they always showed that plenty was wrong. And the things that were wrong were clear and to some degree treatable, though they've also left me with chronic conditions. There is a long Covid clinic locally but I haven't been referred to it because my doctor and I agreed that having individual specialists was working fine to cover my symptoms, though I do plan to ask her for a referral to a clinic for concussions and TBI since I'm still having problems on that front. I'm scared about how all of this will work when Odile and I marry and I have to go onto her insurance where we have copays for everything and I'll be responsible for however much of the surgery I'll need every nine months. Having Medicaid has made this manageable, because it's meant I can get whatever treatment my doctors request and it doesn't cause financial problems for me. Not being able to work as much as I'd hoped certainly has done that, but I lost one part-time job with no benefits when the pandemic began and I'm self-employed for the other, so I wouldn't have had any sort of structural support anyway. I'd been hoping to make more inroads in freelance editing but turned down another ongoing journal job that would have been really interesting because I wasn't well enough to commit. This uncertainty is scary, but something I hope will improve with time. I'm definitely stronger and have more good days now than I used to, so maybe we're going in the right direction and nothing much else will go wrong. (The steroid shot mentioned above is because my scoliosis plus some arthritis/degenerative disc stuff caused compression of the nerves in my spine that made me unable to use my right arm and hand without excruciating pain for a month or so, but now that we know that the epidural works that will also potentially become part of my every-so-often-fix program. So it certainly feels like there's always some new horrid thing!) Anyway, that's what's been up with me minus anything I'm not remembering at the moment because it's all kind of a lot.

Oh Thorn. That's so scary and hard. I'm sorry you are going through so much.

Drinking 'til the room spins, but not in a good way.

Hugs to you, Thorn.

Ankles are assholes. Hope your recovery continues.

I think I've had Covid four times. But it may only be twice. I've absolutely unambiguously tested positive for multiple successive days and had associated symptoms twice. However, I had a mysterious flu like illness in March of 2020, just as COVID was sweeping through London, at a time when I was commuting daily on the tube. That illness left me short of breath and with respiratory symptoms for quite a while afterwards.

The final time, I flew back from the US after a conference, and there was a huge outbreak at the conference and both of the work colleagues I flew with came down with Covid. I tested positive once, and had cold symptoms for a few days, but subsequent tests were negative. I assume did have a mild case, I was fairly recently topped up with a booster vaccine at the time, but but it's possible the test was a false positive.

Annoyingly, the UK has stopped vaccinating except for older people, or people with compromised immune systems, so my last vaccination was in 2022.

I also had a series of concussions overlapping with some of this, most recently last spring.

Jesus. I mean, the whole thing is a lot, but this is the sentence that moved me to cut-and-paste. That's some run of terrible health issues. I'm so sorry.

Annoyingly, the UK has stopped vaccinating except for older people, or people with compromised immune systems, so my last vaccination was in 2022.

Why???

Yeah, Thorn, that's a lot to deal with. Many hugs. Hope you're able to maintain your coverage during the Great Unwinding and get as much of your he@thcare taken care of before you get married.

56 is a good question.

re: 56

Probably a mixture of ideology (Tories) and cost savings.

if you are over 65, or have any of a number of conditions that make you more at risk, or you work in any front-line health care setting, you can get vaccinated, but the general program of vaccinations and boosters for ordinary adults ended about 12 - 18 months ago.

Paxlovid is only available to some classes of patient, too.

How does not vaccinating save money?

Last night the bartender and the cook were complaining about hoops they had to jump through to get Paxlovid. But they both got it and they are under fifty.

re:60

Don't expect anything like sensible accounting.

Some budget or other will read £N for vaccines and staff to administer them, and they want to save £N from that specific budget, whether or not the overall impact on NHS budgets is likely to be positive, because they'll save elsewhere. Remember, it's government by press release, not by results.

Anyway, I think the often unstated reason for staffing issues in public-facing jobs is how often you get sick in those jobs paired with how absent health insurance is in those jobs.

Wishing you and your family good health and quick recovery, Thorn. That is so much.

55: That started in summer 2018 I think, violence as part of the mental illness kids were dealing with. During that first bad summer, the hospital wanted me to wear a helmet and biteproof kevlar arm covers, but I refused to do it because I wasn't going to turn our home into whatever that would be. I'm not sure how much it would have helped anyway. I've had maybe half a dozen concussions? I didn't get all of them officially diagnosed, because typically I'd spend the night in the psych ER with the child in question and then not have the energy or availability to get myself checked out. There were other injuries along the way but those were the most severe. Odile ended up with some leg injuries twice, but typically I was the only target. I don't know if it would have helped anything to try to get residential treatment earlier. I didn't think it would help Nia, so I did what i could to keep her home until we absolutely couldn't anymore, by which point she was considered so severe that no place would accept her. While we she was on the waiting look for the place she ended up was the final attack when both of us were injured and we had to bring in police. Because of all of that, the place rejected her and we had to leave her in the short-term hospital for five months while jumping through hoops to get the state to take custody to force a place to accept her. So that was a whole other set of things to deal with that took an incredible amount of work and anguish. We're making progress and all healing now, but it's still rough.

In some ways, we'd been in lockdown as a family for years before 2020. Between the mental and physical health problems kids had, I couldn't hire a babysitter or make plans without having them fall through most of the time. I basically lost the few friends I'd been able to keep after the breakup. Everything fell on me to impossible degrees, all of which made being in a new relationship difficult too. I took on total household management in 2020 when Odile moved in, doing all the grocery shopping and most of the cooking and so on. Even as official restrictions eased, we've kept our lives smaller than most people we know to try to avoid infection, though I know other people are much stricter still. The children's hospital has gone back to encouraging masking, but the adult one hasn't. I let the kids make their own choices at this point. I know everyone is just trying to get through.

65: that all sounds incredibly taxing -- I know you've mentioned much of that on the blog before, but that is a lot to deal with.

I had COVID for the first time in December, and remained positive a maddeningly long time (which is different from "long COVID") - I tested positive on December 6, and then every day thereafter until Jan 2, 27 days consecutively. Got Paxlovid right at the start, had massive rebound and a very long slow fadeout to testing negative. Missed visiting family for Christmas or NYE; was totally isolated in the bedroom for the first 18 days.

(I already kind of had refux before, have not yet noticed if it's worse, though.

What's really weird now is that I have a public-health friend who is cautiously on board with the idea in some places to treat it like other viruses and use "24 hours fever free" as the threshold for going back into the world unmasked. I never had a fever but was testing strongly positive for like 19 of those 27 days, and it seems pretty likely that I would have been infectious., so this seems nuts to me.

Thorn, it's really great to hear from you at such length, as hard as all the subject matter is. Hugs to you. When are the nuptials planned for?

Thorn, so sorry, I can't imagine that kind of buildup of health and familial issues, but I'm glad you seem to have made it to a stabler place and that you have been able to maintain your partnership with Odile, which seems sustaining. Beaming good thoughts.

Hugs to you Thorn.

59: I think I read somewhere they won't even vaccinate young children/babies 6 months-5 years. Babies are actually at risk which is why they are now encouraging pregnant people to time their update in the 3rd trimester.

They don't recommend universal flu vaccines either.

I heard the U.K. was thinking about vaccinating kids against chicken pox.

Did Wakefield fuck things up that much there?

It's not just that the government isn't vaccinating. It's that if you're a healthy, pre-retirement age adult who's not a carer, you can't get a vaccine for love or money (unless you lie to the NHS). There's no privately-available vaccine provision. I'm hoping I'll have a chance to get topped up on my next trip to the US.

71: The chickenpox vaccine been recommended by a government agency, but it's going to be a while before that goes anywhere. That vaccine we can get privately; our little guy* has his first dose, and will get the second in a few weeks. £150 out of pocket total. Worth it.

72: The government has urged people/children to get the MMR vaccine, since measles cases are up 30-fold in Europe this year. In general, which rich countries vaccinate chickenpox is all over the map and does not line up well with national stereotypes.

* I suppose in the tradition of theming children's pseuds after their parents, he'd be (Strath)Clyde.

I don't think I can mail you a vaccine.

Everything I hear about the UK lately seems just unbelievably dystopian. It's wild.

I'll stop doing the ! thing for Thorn, but I remain thrilled to see her every time.

Do they vaccinate kids for HPV in the UK?

JFC, Thorn. I sure hope 2024 gives you a break.

73: here, in MA, anyway if you get varicella young enough it's in a combined shot with MMR.

But you can pay privately to get a flu shot right?

71: My cousin does human rights law (documents atrocities crimes) and was in Afghanistan in 2021. He spent the summer at Middlebury doing their French immersion program. I saw him and my Aunt in Boston when he was on his way up there. He was supposed to be fully vaccinated when he went but had received a partial exemption with one shot and a test. He literally landed, went through customs, got in an Uber and said, "Driver, take me to CVS."

No "please"?

This is the same as flu shot has always been in the UK? Or the flu shot you're allowed to get privately?

81: I believe that you can get the flu shot privately.

https://www.boots.com/online/pharmacy-services/winter-flu-jab-services

Boots says that if you aren't eligible on the NHS, you can get the flu shot for £20.

81: you can get a flu shot privately in the UK. And HPV is part of the free childhood vaccination schedule - you get it at about 12.

Interesting, I wonder why then you can't get covid shots privately? Is it still only authorized on some kind of emergency basis?

Its authorised for high risk patients on the NHS - the elderly and vulnerable. TIIRC the original licence only permitted vaccine sales to the NHS - that may change this year.

It is past forty comments, so I'll ask about yesterday's primary.

Isn't is obvious that Nikki Haley is staying in the race because there's a pretty good likelihood that Trump will drop dead or have a stroke or go to jail or be unable to be the candidate? And then she'll accurately be able to say that she was in second place so it should be her? That makes perfect sense to me and has about as good chances of becoming president as anything does. Why are people going on and on about whatever could be keeping her in the race?

86 seems very likely to be true.

Yep. Or he stops being intelligible at all.

I agree with 86, but only the "dead" part. A Trump in jail or having suffered a stroke still is the nominee.

I'm so sorry you've been going through such a tough time, Thorn. Sending hugs.

my times I've cheated when they aren't home suggests I'm sensitive to onions and/or garlic and noooooooooo I don't want to give that up!!!)

At the risk of focusing on the smallest detail, I've found this too. I can handle some cooked onions/garlic but raw onions are definitely out. I've also cut out all citrus, tomatoes, many other fruits, all chocolate, many other things. I was already lactose-intolerant, but was basically fine if I took lactose pills, but then dairy started being more of a problem so I cut that to almost nothing.*

That said, my experience has been milder than many, especially in light of yours. I had symptoms that seemed consistent (to my perception, if not to my then-GP's assessment**) with a hiatal hernia when I first started having symptoms at all, but after four months of diet change most of those pains subsided and the endoscopy didn't show a hernia. I've slowly re-introduced the occasional food on my "banned" list, and have failed to keep away from coffee entirely, but keep having to cut back again. I sleep with a pillow that elevates my upper body and generally don't wake up anymore feeling like my internal organs are on fire, which is a plus.

*A relative who also has GERD asked me what changes I made to my diet and my answer was basically: "Make a list of the foods you enjoy and stop eating them."

**I might have stuck with the same doctor, who I saw only once as I had just moved to that area, but then I moved again to another city. I felt like he (and others in Kaiser except for the doctor who did the actual endoscopy) just had a script that said "if it sounds like GERD, tell them to come back in 8 weeks after diet changes and send them on their way."

Switching topics ...

86: I also think Haley is in a better position to oppose Trump than the herd of weak Republican men pretending they're strong that Trump keeps in his stables and allows to run around in a corral from time to time. She's not the strongest opponent, but the fact that she once resigned from his administration at least shows she's probably not just trying to be in the next one, and Trump may have a harder time with women who stand up to him than with men because in his brand of dominance politics women are assumed to be weak and weak men are attacked as being like women, and women who don't fit into that categorization seem to drive him the most insane.

88: you think that would matter?

Well, it's going to be decided by March, given the primary calendar. The chance of Trump being dead or incapacitated within the next 60 days is very small. He's currently in good physical health for his age. (Mental is different.) After March he's locked in as nominee. Only death will give Haley a chance.
I still think she's following the right strategy but it isn't likely to succeed.

Sometimes the best possible strategy is still low-percentage.

88 - I dunno about all the "Trump is senile" stuff. It all reads like wishful thinking to me. The guy has always said bizarre shit. I think the guy looks and sounds pretty good.

OK - the business about Haley being responsible for Capitol security is pretty far out there. But the rest of the stuff in the link in 88 is just Trump being Trump.

Mixing up Orban for Erdoğan isn't that weird. If Biden did it, I wouldn't blink. Referring to the current president as Barack Obama really is the sort of thing that has always passed for sarcasm in Trump's brain. Trump is making the Trumpian case that Obama is the power behind the throne.

And that's all Milbank has. The numerous other examples are all plainly things that Trump could have said in 2016. As I probably first said in 2016: If Trump were to go senile, how would we know?

95.last: I think we'd know because I don't think he's terribly compliant with his handlers. Reagan could be covered for because he was used to going compliantly where he was sent and performing on cue even if he wasn't sure what was going on. I think if Trump started really losing it, he'd start not just saying arguably nuts stuff, but actually doing visibly erratic stuff: refusing to show up for scheduled things and so on.

I'm thinking primarily of the increasing slurring and degrading syntax, and wondering if that change is accelerating. I agree Milbank is overincluding.

I think Trump is going to reach into his Depends, grab a turd, smear it on a Fox reporter during a live interview, and win the Republican primary.

To be clear, I'm not sure that he is really losing it or just as weird as he's ever been, but I think if he does, there's a point at which his actions will make it undeniable. Things like attacking the Sec Service agent on Jan 6 -- if he starts doing things like that publicly rather than privately, it'll be obvious.

||

The wheels grinding against "contextual" reading education & back toward phonics, slow & fine.

|>

68: We're aiming for the end of October for our sixth anniversary. We went about 10 days ago to make our rings, which was both lots of fun and really romantic. I was going to say it's by far the most either of us has spent on jewelry except I don't want to know what some of her watches have cost, so I'll just say it was pricey but absolutely worth that to have something so special. She did a 3 mm half-round and I had a 1.5 mm square pieces of metal (white gold/palladium in both cases since that's the most silvery thing they offer) and then we took each other's instructions to hammer, bend, solder, smoothe, etc. until we both could bring home our finished rings. So that's something and about as romantic and optimistic as I'm able to get.

Slightly toward100: Today was my monthly school council meeting at Selah's school. Test scores are going up, which is exciting, and I was able to announce that I asked friends in the other place to contribute to the upcoming field trip her grade will be taking to a place that will let them fly in a wind tunnel because my friends including many of you came through with enough money to cover the whole class trip, so now no one will have to come up with the $25 it was going to cost. Tomorrow morning Odile will leave early to pick up two little boys who haven't been making it to the school while their mom is in the hospital and take them to the school where she teaches so they don't miss any more days. I appreciate having someone who shares my values and is willing to put in work for the kids in our community. Right now she's playing Super Mario Wonder with Selah to help her wind down after a long day and I feel lucky, especially because there's no way I'd be able to play competently even before I had blood pressure problems.

101: That's so great.

If Trump were to go senile, how would we know?

If I intended this as a joke and not an attempt to spur a serious discussion of this question, how would we know?

We went about 10 days ago to make our rings, which was both lots of fun and really romantic.

That sounds lovely.

I think Trump's obvious decompensation will cost him votes. I just don't see how it could cost him the nomination.

Trump has tweeted out a threat to Haley donors. He obviously knows she can damage him. Which is not the same thing as beat him in a primary.

Thorn,

It's hard to read what you wrote, but I'm thankful you wrote it, and it's necessary for me/us to read it. I'm sorry that you have to go thru this, and hope that in the future we'll figure out how to treat your symptoms (at least) and maybe the root causes of your symptoms. I know a lot of people treat covid like it's all in the past, or just a cold/flu, but I sure don't, and if enough of us did likewise, maybe we could prevent more people from having your experience. And if more of us took it seriously, maybe our medical establishment could figure out how to cure you. Sigh. Ugh.

chill @ 47: everything you write is reasonable. My friend figured he was over the bug, whatever-it-was; that's why he had lunch with his friend. And heck, maybe what his friend got isn't due to my friend. Who knows. He's been to the doctor twice, and they basically say "wait it out". No actual diagnosis (which bug?) It is what it is. He remains ill (cough, a little weakness) as of this writing. Sigh. BTW, his parents got it (probably from him), and recovered in mere days. So who knows what's going on. Again, *sigh*.

chill @ 47: this friend is the one who, in Jan/Feb 2020, was refusing to enter coffeeshops, and would tell me about covid every time we met (ha, outdoors), warning me that I needed to prepare (stock up on staples), etc. I chalk it up to his warnings, that I entered isolation early, and agreed with my sister to get my mom into isolation with her early. It isn't going too far to suggest that he might have saved my mother's life with his incessant warnings. He's a careful guy.

I agree that Haley is staying in longer because of possibility of Trump implosion serious enough to actually torpedo him. And it is more likely to come after nom wrapped up. But it comes at a cost of near-certain humiliation inflicted by the deranged R voters of her home state.

But in the end she is actually just on a dearh watch. Which probably also explains ultra-asshole Dean Phillips and his coterie of "centrist" billionaires from sub-helll. I love how he's been expressing "surprise " at the support he's gotten from his R colleagues compared to Ds. Just a total dick.

101: <3

On Trump unhingededness, I wonder if he is currently capable of the kind of respite he showed at the very end of 2016 race when he toned it down for a few days (I think Kellyanne Conway* had a lot to do with that) and let the MSM finish their "but her emails" debasement aided by upright citizen James Comey**.

*I do think Trump in his narcissistic does have a the underlying smarts to take good advice on important matters at key moments. See also yielding to Manafort's advice/manipulation on Pence vs. his own prediction for Christie--a pretty sure loser in November. (He no longer needs the religious cover now that nihilistic evangelic community is all in on the cult of personality.

**I think Comey's summer actions were more egregious and impactful (and if course set the stage for the denouement just before the election.

111 is bad math.

112: Yeah, he seemed to be ready to lose in October, was surprised he didn't. (This caught the misprognosticating mood of many of us.) Then four years of the most ego-boosting job known to man probably reduced his executive function still further.

114: I think the difference from 2016 has to do with Trump and not with Trump. In 2016 the media allowed him to portray himself as this dark horse populist / insult comic instead of the ordinary reactionary GOP religious rightist tax cut deliverer he governed as (regardless of his own lack of religious faith). They liked the story and the clicks and page views it brought and had no idea he could actually for real win. Now we know what a Trump presidency actually his having gone through four years of it.

The other is that Trump has visibly cognitively declined since his presidency. I don't think that's possible to deny in recent speeches and videos - we're at Reagan in 1992 levels of decline here.

115.1 Yes, and they thought that if he did win, there'd be guardrails, he'd pivot, and all the wise old men would guide him. There was a lot more of that than there would be in a second term, but a lot less than the pundits were wishcasting. This is why I say that Trump can win this time, but it has to be on depressed Dem turnout, not on wishful thinking about either issues or presidentiality.