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Unpredictable COVID

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The funny thing about COVID is that it’s very unpredictable. Of all of us, who’d get it first? You’d think me, right? I work outside the home, I go to restaurants with friends, etc. But no, it was the reclusive N who got it. At least it seems so since he had symptoms (very mild) quite a bit earlier. Then, of course, he gave it to me, and I had bad symptoms. Klara, though, never got it. We all got tested, and she was negative. Obviously, we didn’t isolate her, or anything. I’m thinking she probably had it before but since such little kids don’t manifest or transmit, nobody knew.

I attribute the fact that N got no symptoms to speak of and I got it much worse solely to weight. There should have been a weight-loss program for the past 18 months. That would have been the best way of fighting COVID. Maybe even pay people to lose weight. Instead, we did everything to make people fatter. And still many people don’t know there’s a connection between obesity and bad COVID outcomes.

20 responses to “Unpredictable COVID”

  1. ed Avatar
    ed

    I’ve been humbled by the unpredictability of COVID multiple times, I think we all have. I thought the vaccines would have put an end to it already but now we have the Delta variant and who knows what other variants are in the works.

    The weight loss aspect of COVID is so significant, it’s amazing to me it is not talked about more. It would not surprise me if they found that lowering your BMI to a healthy number has a better effect than vaccines and your overall health as a whole. Lockdowns and closing gyms certainly does not help with that.

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    1. random reader Avatar
      random reader

      Ed, you do realize that it is not the delta variant that is the problem – it just happened to be the dominant variant when the effectiveness of vaccines started to wane. The booster they claim helps with the delta variant is identical to the original vaccine, so there is nothing different in the vial in comparison to what people got before.

      I agree with you on the weight loss.

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      1. ed Avatar
        ed

        “The federal health agency has said nearly all recent Covid-19 cases and deaths are among the unvaccinated—a point of frustration among many doctors and nurses who spent months touting the safety and efficacy of vaccines. The percentage of vaccinated people who have contracted Covid-19, or breakthrough cases, is about 0.1%. ”
        https://www.wsj.com/articles/delta-variant-low-covid-19-vaccination-rates-push-u-s-hospitalizations-higher-11629318796

        Vaccines are still effective against Delta and keeping many people out of hospitals, which at the end of the day is the only thing that matters.

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        1. Pen Avatar
          Pen

          The reinfection rate is similarly low. Studies keep coming out about survivors’ immune responses being comparable to that of the vaccine; yet those in charge refuse to use those studies to guide policy. Instead, it’s all “this will better help us study vaccines!”

          Those of us who are unvaccinated, have already had COVID, and cannot be vaccinated due to health issues stemming from COVID, or who cannot be completely vaccinated due to severe adverse reactions to their first dose, are completely ignored. When I hear that the reinfection rate is comparable to or less than the breakthrough rate, but that “we don’t want to tell people who have had it that they can do the same things as vaccinated people do because that will encourage people to try to get infected,” that is harmful and problematic. Yes, the chances that a long-COVID patient will improve are about 30%. But there’s also a 10-20% chance that their long-COVID will become markedly worse (in long-term, not just for a few days). Does anyone care about the potential harm to these patients? Absolutely not, because they can’t “prove” that it wasn’t just that the long-COVID was always going to get worse in the first place. Regardless of the fact that molecular mimicry can cause an already over-reactive immune system to gasp over-react even more.

          So no, vaccines keeping people out of hospitals is not the only thing that matters. That one-dimensional kind of thinking–the kind of thinking that has been guiding the anger against all the unvaccinated as a group–can be actively harmful.

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          1. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            Part of the reason I seen no reason to be vaccinated is that I’ve already had it, and since my husband works directly with COVID patients in a hospital, and then comes home to me, we’ve been repeatedly exposed to it ever since. It’s not like we send him through the decon tent when he gets home from work. There is no conceivable way that A) the vaccine would give me better immunity than I already have, or that B) it would be lower-risk to me than having COVID. I’ve already had it. I know what it does to me.

            This does not count for anything, with the vaccine-pushers.

            The total, willful, ignorance of THE ACTUAL SCIENCE going on out there among the “follow the science” crowd is baffling. it’s not the science they care about. It’s the compliance.

            I want to re-do every one of those idiotic I FCKING LOVE SCIENCE bits on the internet, to read, more honestly: I FCKING LOVE COMPLIANCE.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              We had a meeting yesterday dedicated to the start of the academic year. A colleague thought it was a great occasion to go on a vicious rant denouncing “anti-vaxxers.” I always thought he was a wonderful person and it hurts to see him and so many people utterly lose their humanity over this.

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          2. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            Thank you, Pen. This is a powerful, important comment.

            All of these discussions – ah, the immunity, ah, the t-cells – folks, nobody cares. This isn’t about your health. Pfizer wants profit, governors want complete power, and busybodies want cheap moral superiority. Look what Pen is saying. I know similar stories. Nobody cares. A graduate student who is black is fighting forced vaccinations for a reason like this. And suddenly black lives don’t matter and her livelihood is being destroyed.

            I don’t understand how anybody can still be so naive we to think that it’s important whether these vaccines work or not. It’s not about that. It’s not.

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    2. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “weight loss aspect of COVID is so significant, it’s amazing to me it is not talked about more”

      Doesn’t exactly fit in with the fat acceptance movement fighting against “fat hatred” ….

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  2. ABC Avatar
    ABC

    I am very glad N. and you are okay!

    I have seen quite a few cases of reclusive people who don’t go out much getting COVID, so I am not super surprised. A friend’s father, who was very afraid of the disease and never ventured out of the house after Mar 2020, got it. So did one of my aunts, who ultimately died of covid. If anything, the people who are out and about are not the ones who get it first; it’s not implausible those people perhaps develop some form of mild immunity to small amounts of exposure.

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  3. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    “I attribute the fact that … I got it much worse solely to weight.”

    I’m glad to hear you’re over the worst, but there are obviously other factors beyond weight (though there is a clear and strong correlation).
    A few months ago a colleague (early-mid 60s, a bit short and very slender and seemingly healthy – I was very surprised when I learned her age a couple years ago) got it at the same time as her husband and adult son. They got over the symptoms (mostly coughing) in about a week and she didn’t and then she got worse and ended up in the hospital where she died.
    I don’t know of any conditions she had or if she was vaccinated.
    Any really widespread virus seems to have a random factor (probably related to mutations) that make predicting just who and who won’t be strongly affected difficult.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Absolutely. There’s previous history of coronaviruses that one might have gotten. It’s underlying conditions you might not know about. It’s the strength of the immune system. I generally get sick more often than N. And he never once caught any of the common colds I get several times a year. He has one for every 5-6 that I get but they never coincide.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        OTOH, just for a contrary datapoint: I’m about twenty pounds over weight (gained ten with each kid: working on losing it, but it’s agonizingly slow). When I got it, it was a basic 5-day cough and cold with fever. I was fairly miserable, but not as sick as the last time I had the flu (that bastard knocked me off my feet for a week! I was crawling to get to the bathroom to puke). I am fat and struggle to keep my blood sugar under control, and statistically, should not be in the “totally fine, no big deal” group.

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Very, very sorry for your colleague. :-(((

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    3. ed Avatar
      ed

      This really sucks, sorry to hear about your colleague.

      ” Any really widespread virus seems to have a random factor (probably related to mutations) that make predicting just who and who won’t be strongly affected difficult.”

      This is why I think not getting vaccinated is really not a smart strategy here. Sure, you might be lucky and get no symptoms like most people, but what if you happen to be one of the few that for whatever reason gets very sick? Why wouldn’t you try to increase your odds of fighting off the virus? In the end, it all boils down to odds and probabilities.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        It’s not luck if you’re talking about 98% of the population.

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  4. Margaret W. Avatar
    Margaret W.

    I am glad your are all healthy and have survived the dreaded plague of doom. While everyone argues about who has the best survival rate depending on body shape or size, there is always some unlucky chap who was perfectly healthy and develops pneumonia and dies of “Covid”. Somehow, my obese mother who has asthma and COPD and is the most unhealthy person I know, survived Covid. Though she really enjoys the drama of telling everyone how “she nearly died.”

    I currently have “Covid”. I got it at the hospital after I contracted Ehrlichia–a tick born illness that destroys white blood cells. It appeared in the form of a sore throat and fever 7 days after I was discharged. I went back to the hospital because my fever spiked and I was still on antibiotics. The hospital said, “Ah ha! You tested positive for Covid! We see your white blood cells are still low but otherwise, you’re fine. Go home and rest.” I developed a cough and sinus pain and drainage. I have been taking zinc and multi-vitamins and eating tons of fresh fruit and vegetables. I’m recovering. But knowing my white blood cell count was low was scary. You need those buggers to kill viruses!

    I think many of us forget that God holds the power of life and death in His hands. While it is wise to live a healthy lifestyle and do everything we can to remain healthy, there is really only so much we can do. Nobody gets out of this world alive. Nobody. I really wonder if God has allowed Covid just to remind people how little control over their lives they really have. Whether it’s Covid or cancer or some other horrible auto-immune disorder–there is no vaccine for death. So yes, lose weight. But more importantly, Seek the face of God through Jesus Christ. Find joy and peace and hope for life after death.

    So while the majority of the world is arguing about whether to vax or not, or whether they will get the delta variant (which no one even knows if that’s real), I’m over here trusting God to let me live or die in His perfect timing. I don’t trust the media–not even the WSJ. It’s all propaganda. It seems lately, the only place to find real truth is in the bible. And at this point, I don’t even care how crazy that makes me sound. The term “conspiracy theorist” is starting to grow on me.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I’m so glad you are getting better!!

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  5. GSW Avatar
    GSW

    “And at this point, I don’t even care how crazy that makes me sound.”

    It wasn’t that long ago that seeing the world through a religious paradigm would have been a quite conventional opinion.

    Christianity teaches humility as the go-to response in the face of adversity.

    But the Enlightenment replaced God with a human-centric paradigm; teaching that “science” could control and tame both our social and physical environments.

    In the middle ages, if the weather was bad, you prayed for relief in the full knowledge that God’s answer couldn’t be “controlled.”

    Today, “science” claims to be both the cause and the cure for global warming/climate change. Humans caused “it” by misusing science and other, wiser, humans, informed by “science,” can fix “it” through their control of state action.

    In this regard, the story of King Cnut never gets old.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great#The_story_of_Cnut_and_the_waves

    “I really wonder if God has allowed Covid just to remind people how little control over their lives they really have.”

    According to the Bible, this wouldn’t be the first time that God has sent humanity a brisk reminder.

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  6. Stille (@aperfectbalance) Avatar
    Stille (@aperfectbalance)

    I’m glad you, N and Klara are well 🙂

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  7. Maria Avatar
    Maria

    Corona is funny in many ways. My husband has the perfect BMI, he is a runner, and hardly ever gets sick. Covid gave him a really hard time. I gained some weight in 2020 and got out of shape but Covid was like a minor cold for me. And I’m the one who catches every sickness that flies around and sometimes I get really sick from random viruses.

    I think it might depend on how much help one provides for the immune system early on. My husband got sick first. The moment he tested positive for Covid I started taking Zinc, Vitamin C, and Vitamin D and made sure to sleep as much as I could. Could have been the reason I had an easier time with it.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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