I just heard from my daughter. Her children (my grandkids) are staying at their (other) grandparents’ house. My granddaughter, the oldest of the two, was complaining of a headache and had a fever. So the grandparents took her to the Doc in a Box, who tested her for COVID.
You guessed it- she has COVID. Now at seven years old, she is unlikely to have much more than a mild illness from it. Any of you who have raised kids know that the little ones get mystery illnesses all of the time, and most of them come with a fever. You treat it with children’s Tylenol, fluids, and rest. What HAS changed is now my daughter can’t go to work, the kids can’t go to school, and my grandson is now going to get tested as well.
I just don’t understand what you gain by getting a COVID test. Whether it is COVID or some other illness, what you do to treat it is the same: Tylenol, fluids, rest, and maybe something for any other symptoms you have. How does knowing that it is COVID change anything? The only thing it changes is transforming you and the other members of your household into pariah for the next two weeks.
If your curiosity simply MUST be satisfied, take the at home test. At least with the at home test, no one else but you has to know if you have COVID.
In case you are keeping score, the members of my family who have had COVID:
- Daughter in law to be (vaccinated)
- Father in law (half vaccinated at the time)
- Mother in law (half vaccinated at the time)
- Daughter (not vaccinated)
- Mother (vaccinated)
- Brother (vaccinated)
- Granddaughter (not vaccinated)
In addition, I have eight other friends who have had it. Most of them caught it before the vaccines were available. Two of them had COVID after being vaccinated. Not one of them had a serious infection.
The most serious of them were my mother in law and father in law, both of whom were sick at home for a couple of weeks. Everyone else had symptoms best described as a cold.
Again, we need to be spending our resources finding out why a small percentage of the public is having serious problems with this infection. Why them? What is different about them?
7 Comments
rightwingterrorist · August 28, 2021 at 4:28 pm
If one does get the test, positive or negative, why tell anyone anyhow?
I’ve got 3 young ones that are currently out of school because some kid on campus got the kung flu. It’s a small enough district that k-12 all reside in the same area.
So, 1 kid tested positive using a questionable test at best, while spending time in a veritable biohazard factory, in which kids should be in so that they can develop a healthy and active immune system, and the local PTB send every one home so the entire place can be “deep cleaned.”
Fn morons.
O.K. kids. Guess what?
Time to muck out the stalls, clean the chicken coop and rabbit hutches.
After that you can go swimming in the pond.
-rightwingterrorist
Divemedic · August 28, 2021 at 8:06 pm
If you get tested in a health care facility and are positive for COVID, including being tested in a Dr office, that facility is required to notify the health department.
why · August 28, 2021 at 6:02 pm
As a matter of normal operating procedure, IF I get a needle stick at work, the source person is tested for a battery, and I am also. BUT the surgeons do NOT test themselves. If they ever pop positive for HCV (Hepatitis C), then they’re obligated to tell their patients the results also.
Basic rule in ED – don’t test for something you don’t want to be obligated to explore and treat.
Russell G. · August 29, 2021 at 6:42 am
True story. My grandfather died of the Spanish flu in a small west Texas farming town. His occupation on census reports was “farmhand.” The death certificate states “influenza”, and his death at a relatively young age was in the right timeframe for that pandemic. He lived with my grandmother, my father, and my aunt in a small house next another aunt (grandmother’s side) and her family. Typical situation for kin at the time in Texas. As far as I can tell from census reports and death certificates no other kin in that town was affected. Nor, was the extended “clan” up in Oklahoma.
My point here is that my grandfather was the only one affected clinically. The other family members and clan may have had it but they were apparently unaffected. Now, remember this was a time when they lived in environments chock full of bacteria, fungi, and virus. They had soap and maybe some iodine solution; not much else.
Your DNA codes everything. DNA from your ancestors follows down the line to you. My father (who was there in the Texas “death house”) never got the flu and never got flu shots. My mother (spawn of Irish farmers) never got the flu nor shots. I don’t usually get the flu that I know of. I have never got a flu shot, and I was in a teaching environment for a very very long time (read: filthy sick people). I may have had the WuFlu twice, but if so, it was similar to bad allergies. On the other hand, I have had a “name brand” cruise ship intestinal virus that I thought would kill me.
Immunological resistance to disease (Immunocompetence) is just as hereditary as intelligence (don’t go there; you’ll lose) and physical form. Talk to any animal breeder. And, natural selection works, regardless of whether people deny it or not. So, facts are facts. The medical community has to admit this sooner or later and face the fact that they can’t “cure” everything. Until the grand wizards of Science decide to re-engineer all of your DNA, things will not change. Some people will die more easily than others when it comes to infections and diseases. Some authors in the past have referred to this as “dead-end DNA”, because that’s just how it works in the grand scheme of things.
Don Curton · August 29, 2021 at 6:54 am
This comes up at work in a chemical plant too. Say we’re having an issue with the reactor, we suspect it may be “X”, so we want to change process conditions in the reactor to determine if it is “X”. This will reduce production, reduce quality, etc. so it comes at a cost financially to the company. And the question management asks, if it is truly “X”, then what do we do about it? And if we shrug our shoulders, or say continue doing what we’ve been doing, then we don’t do the test. There’s no financial benefit.
So same thing. If the end treatment is the same, why do the test? Kids get sick. We saw that with our kids and now with our grandkids too. Half the time they don’t even feel bad, just spray snot and vomit and runny poo everywhere and continue playing. Totally gross.
And that’s what struck me about all of 2020. We’ve never before mass tested a large chunk of our population, many who weren’t even showing symptoms. And with a faulty test method, but let’s ignore that. So what did all that data tell us? What do we compare it to? How is that data different from a normal flu year? We have no effing clue. Not one.
Boone · August 29, 2021 at 12:39 pm
Having recently played that game, where youngest child was sick, we were told by doctor to get a covid test. Tested negative for covid. Same practice then refused to see child in person for a subsequent visit, 48 hours later, giving reason that the first test may have been false negative. Got another covid test and another negative result. The illness resolved on its own approximately five days after onset. WHY get the test? It was not believed the first time and even after a second test, patient was never seen.
I had been in the same doctor’s office approximately a week before for an annual well visit, blood draw. In a candid moment, the phlebotomist stated that in general,
medicine was a “racket”. I am at the point of belief. I have a master’s degree and worked as a medical librarian in medical education. The doctor/educators and residents that I worked with 25 years ago bear no resemblance to the practice of medicine which I see today.
TexBob · August 29, 2021 at 2:34 pm
Alex Berenson got booted from Twatter because he said:
“It doesn’t stop infection.
Or transmission.
Think of it – at best – as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVACE OF ILLNESS.
And we want to mandate it?
Insanity.”
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