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As a person who is on the tail end of COVID infection, this describes my current symptoms.
I never tested myself because I just thought it was a cold, but that describes my symptoms too. Started with sore throat which wasn't too bad and went away. Then the next day congestion and exhaustion, with just a little bit of sneezing.
These symptoms lasted nearly a month after my covid infection.
Same for me as well
Do the old covid tests still work? Ive had this cold several times this year and always covid negative.
The answer is yes they are still as effective, dont let anyone here convince you otherwise. The base protein has not mutated and that is what is being checked when you do this chromatography style test.
They have a much higher false negative rate now than they used to. Thats probably due to changes in the virus itself and lower viral load as people have higher levels of immunity now. However if you test positive you can still be pretty certain you have covid.
Yes, also recognition that some people may have symptoms and test negative or feel fine and test positive. That’s also why there is no recommendation to test again. If someone pops a positive recommendations say to stay home for 5 days then mask for 5 more. There is no benefit to additional testing because of natural variation in antibody production and function.
Mind the expiration dates.
I simply had the worst sore throat I’ve ever had. No congestion. Then I lost my sense of smell for about 6 months. That was awful. Very grateful it came back.
So is there any real way to say if this is because of widespread vaccination or because the virus itself has lost some lethality genes
Not a scientist, but I'd guess mostly B, maybe helped along with some of A.
The goal of a virus is to replicate, and it does that better when it's less lethal
Just a very small correction- as with all biology, natural selection will drive a virus to replicate more effectively, that’s it. This does NOT mean a virus will automatically become less lethal over time. That’s an older hypothesis that scientists found was not in line with observation.
The newer hypothesis is known as “virulence-transmission trade-off”. The oversimplification of the idea is that if a mutation increases both transmission and virulence, it will also tend to be selected for. COVID is inconsistent with both hypotheses in certain ways though, so really predicting its virulence in the short or long term has proven difficult. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10066022/
The old idea isn't wrong per se, lower lethality is a good survival trait. It just has to be weighed against the value of transmission, which would intuitively have a much higher value. In covid, the lethality rate is even less inpactful because it is contagious for a relatively long period before the host would suffer severe illness. But low lethality is still a good thing, and in such a widespread disease one would still expect that trait to become more pronounced eventually. That doesn't mean it necessarily would, statistically likely doesn't mean certain, especially if a particular mutation gave it a substantial bump to both traits it may never be selected out for example. But the current trend seems to be a result of this likelihood.
Lethality is only a significant limiter when the population decreases enough that the virus has significant oroblems finding bodies as hosts. The human population is global with freedom to move globally. Lethality was never a limiter for covid, and won't be without much higher Lethality rates.
Doubly so when it can cross species'. Covid could kill every person on the planet, not care two shits about it, and just hop over to deer, dogs, cats, rodents, etc.
I know it effects deer, so I'd suspect the rest of the ungulates. I wouldn't be surprised if it can effect a large swath of mammelia.
The “old idea” is actually baked into one of the parameters of the new model. It’s why I said the old hypothesis “was not in line with observation” rather than being “wrong”. It predicted some trends correctly, but failed to predict many others. Like all science, it needed to update as we gathered more info.
The “new” hypothesis also isn’t perfectly predictive of viral evolution, but it’s more accurate with the observed spread of other diseases. Like all models, it’ll get replaced eventually by something more powerful. Likely sooner rather than later specifically because COVID put a spotlight on a lot of holes in the idea.
Viruses don’t have goals. You are anthropomorphizing them. What viruses do is mutate. If mutations have more fitness, they will spread more effectively. That says nothing about mortality nor morbidity. With this disease it spreads in the early stage, which long before the person who has caught it either dies, recovers, gets long COVID, etc.
It's not anthropomorphizing, it's abstraction and it's incredibly common in evolutionary science to speak in this manner.
It helps that it already killed millions of the more susceptible early on before immunity started.
Not sure how statistically significant this is in the overall numbers, though.
Scheduled next boost for next week.
I finally caught it earlier this year. Thanks to vax, it was similar to a cold / flu. Was mostly better after a few days.
Medical science is awesome. I couldn't be happier about how it turned out. What a relief.
That was the basic progression when I had it a few months ago if you add fever and chills.
Huh, I have exactly that. Dunno if covid though of just some flu