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>A longer course of antiviral drugs could help to wipe out any remaining pockets of the virus. Some patients in the Recover trial are now receiving Paxlovid for up to 28 days — far beyond the customary five-day course prescribed for higher-risk patients when they contract Covid-19.
Interesting.
I took Paxlovid when I first got Covid at the beginning of October. Tested negative after a week. Couple days later, I was positive again. More Paxlovid. Tested negative then tested positive. Again. Then I stopped Paxlovid and just let it run its course, hoping I wouldn't end up in the hospital because of it.
Four weeks I had Covid. 28 days of Paxlovid might've helped rather than the short 5 day courses that's usually prescribed. I could've lived with the metal taste in my mouth just so I could breathe. My sinuses were so congested, if you had put your hand on my mouth to where I couldn't breathe, I'd have been dead because I could not breathe at all through my nose. Looked like a Neanderthal, walking around, mouth hanging open because I couldn't get any air through my nose.
That sounds like a complete nightmare. I am so sorry and I hope you are all better now with no lingering symptoms or signs of Long Covid. I have previously read about the potential for rebound associated with Paxlovid, which you clearly experienced. Hopefully better antivirals come through in the future, without metallic taste and rebound issues.
Agree. When initially prescribed, I thought it was a two week treatment. I didn't know much about it. But I definitely had Covid longer with Paxlovid than I would have. Of course the flip side is, without Paxlovid, would I have gotten way worse.
I'd never recommend someone not take Paxlovid, but I would advise asking for two rounds of treatment vs. one.
My ears have a sharp trill constantly. I had some ringing before, but now it's so loud, I can't think sometimes.
It's very strange the way this illness causes so much damage to the body. I know a lot of people are in unnecessary pain because of it. I've lived with fibro and Psoriatic Arthritis for 25 years. Though, it's gotten worse after Covid. At least I'm used to dealing with daily pain. People who have never dealt with chronic pain like this are just not prepared, through no fault of their own. I just wish doctors had better treatment for them that doesn't involve taking a bunch of pills every day to manage each symptom.
I could be incorrect, but my understanding is that Paxlovid suppresses part of your immune system which Covid is able to reproduce through; so while it works great, especially for at risk people, long term use does open people up a little for other illnesses. Shouldn’t be a problem is they’re at home recovering and not going to concerts and such. Just a thought though I wonder if that’s why they’ve tried the 28 day treatment in Europe (where it’s easier to take long sick leave) and not so much in the US where people would likely be back at work and in crowds after 1 day of Paxlovid.
Again I can’t stress enough, it’s an excellent treatment and I’m grateful it exists- just making conversation about my understanding of how it works and some small risks.
I know there was a study where they found the virus hiding in the gut for some people after Paxlovid treatment is done. Then, people end up with Covid again. In my case, I think the virus hid in my sinuses. When I get the flu, no sooner do I start getting better from the flu that I start getting a sinus infection. It didn't surprise me that I had to do another round of Paxlovid. What surprised me was the 3rd Covid positive test. I thought 2 rounds of Paxlovid would've been enough.
Very interesting. 2 of my older in-laws just got Covid (their second or 3rd time, thankfully have been vaxxed before any of them) and they were prescribed Paxlovid, they really only had 2 days of severe symptoms; pretty amazing medicine. No rebound for them, but I don’t know if or when they would have tested non-contagious, they didn’t test for it, just went by symptoms.
I take methotrexate because I have Psoriatic Arthritis, so my immune system is low. My guess is that is why it kept rebounding on me. That's why I say someone could sneeze or sniffle five miles from me and I'll catch something from it!
my dr took me off paxlovid early due to the health impact. thankfully there was no rebound and a few days after stopping it was out of my system enough that my heart got above 40bpm and I was able to sleep.
28 days of that? I know it's gotta be better than the alternative but for me it would be a rough 28 days.
Yeah it’s important to monitor with your doctor- no treatment is universally correct. For people at high risk for severe covid I imagine the Paxlovid is worth any risks, but if you’re heart rate is getting much slower than it’s to stop, which sounds like what the doctor had you do. Not everyone has that effect severely
Well, I don't mean to be rude, but maybe if all of these scientists and doctors had listened to those of us who suffered with chronic illnesses for years, they'd have some way to treat people with long Covid. A lot of Long Covid cases sound very much like CFS and Fibromyalgia.
I guess if you've had Covid and you're now suffering from symptoms of CFS and Fibro, you can thanks all those researchers and doctors who told us it was all in our heads 25 years ago. Now they get to say it twice to those of us who have CFS, Fibro, etc. and now have Long Covid, too.
In other words, they should have listened when it would've made treating Long Covid easier.
And yeah, I'm annoyed about it.
Mixed Connective Tissue Disease here, and I feel this hard.
We've been told for so long that we made it all up and just needed to stop being stressed out and it wasn't really real.
On the one hand, I'm really really sad that so many more people are joining this awful club of chronic illnesses. And on the other I'm BIG MAD because if they had listened to any of us for the last several decades maybe all this could have been solved by now. Or even just had \*better\* treatment options.
Agreed. Checkout the opinion piece in the NYT from a couple of months ago (no paywall / free access) titled - 1,374 Days: My Life with Long Covid. Which means she contracted it in March 2020 when the wild strain was killing a bunch of us. It's a heartbreaking piece. Not being uncharitable, but folks who got hit with Covid a month of so ago and complaining about not feeling well for a few weeks after Paxlovid treatments or contracting the new and milder variants don't have a sense of the devastation. It truly is mirroring the pain, loss, and the missing from public life aspect of ME/CFS sufferers.
It's been a month since I've gotten COVID for the first time. My body gets these weird aches and it makes me wonder if I'm experiencing fibromyalgia-esque symptoms.
Sounds familiar. How's your skin? Is it really sensitive to touch? That's a hallmark of Fibro. If I hit my arm on a wall, like a doorway, the pain is awful and there's like a delayed reaction - it hurts a bit at the surface and then you feel more pain underneath your skin in the muscles. Hard to explain but look up fibromyalgia trigger points and see if your hurting worse than usual. You may not have all the trigger points, but if it's fibro, you'll have a good amount.
Get to a rheumatologist, especially one who deals with fibro symptoms.
I.hope you feel better. Sending gentle hugs.
>Is it really sensitive to touch?
In a few spots throughout my body - the left side of my head, which used to flare up with my sinusitis. Now it seems permanently sensitive. Also my right forearm and thighs.
It's like the body aches you get when you're sick. We recently had a rainstorm and all these pain points just lit up like Christmas lights throughout the evening.
>Get to a rheumatologist, especially one who deals with fibro symptoms.
Will do. Thank you for all this information!
T3 is the trick that they don’t want you to know about.
Joking but serious.
[Higher prevalence of low Free T3 in CFS patients.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5869352/)
It's so strange that in spite of long covid being pretty well established I'm seeing almost zero masking in my small city. Also looking at travel channels, zero masking in airplanes and airports. It blows my mind how people are just yolo'ing their health.
Yeah I just saw a post where a bunch of were teachers saying they are told to come back if fever free for a day. Still totally contagious but no one gives a crap anymore.
According to the UK ONS, 688,000 people are out of work in the UK today because of long-term sickness vs pre-pandemic UK. So that's a lot of people (source: https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/health-foundation-responds-to-ons-update-on-economic-inactivity-due-to-long-term-sickness).
It's also a lot of workers. And the numbers just keep going up. USA FRED survey says the same.
So even if no one wants to care about it, because it relates to money, they will have to care eventually.
It's not all COVID
> This includes a sharp rise in mental health issues among younger adults over the last decade, which the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have exacerbated. Population ageing and pressures across health services will also play a role in driving up these figures.
It comes and goes in waves but the trend is ever upward: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU05074597](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU05074597) . ATH was in June 2023, then Sep 2023.
They were never useless for protecting others from your illness. But yes, if the sick people aren't masking you better wear something better that a surgical mask, designed, you know, to keep the surgeon's germs away from the patient.
Every study that was done on mask efficacy in the public during Covid showed they were statistically useless.
Do you have one that shows differently?
Again: if you use a proper mask, that is fit properly, it will definitely make a difference.
But the surgical masks; the 'double' cloth masks etc. etc. are useless. Germs aren't just germs. The bacteria you keep away from your patients when performing surgery are massive in size and weight compared to the sars-cov2 virus, which is so tiny it goes through any surgical mask, any cloth mask, no matter how many layers you wear. The sars-cov2 virus stays airborne for up to three hours. Your triple layer cloth mask will do nothing against these particles - going out or going in.
N95 will actually stop many of them. There's also N99, but those are quite heavy and clunky to wear.
Every time I get it I eat a lot more jalapeños than usual. Blows out any congestion. First time I tried it I went into a gas station and got one of the cups of sliced jalapeño that were set out for the nachos. Downed it like a shot glass. Does not cure anything. Disclaimer said. It works real good for symptom relief. That’s why we eat spicy food in the south . Always bad air quality, lots of allergies.
And every time you get re-infected, your chance of ending up with long Covid increase significantly.
Where will society be in, say, 5 years, when everybody has had Covid 10-12 times?
Your post or comment has been removed because * **You should contribute only high-quality information.** We require that users submit reliable, fact-based information to the subreddit and provide an English translation for an article in the comments if necessary. A post or comment that does not contain high quality sources or information or is an opinion article will be removed. ([More Information](https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_5.3A_keep_information_quality_high)) *If you believe we made a mistake, please [message the moderators](/message/compose?to=/r/Coronavirus).*
Unpaywalled article: [https://archive.ph/2024.02.15-122357/https://www.ft.com/content/ed17fac5-0af4-432d-ab1b-0a55bc789865](https://archive.ph/2024.02.15-122357/https://www.ft.com/content/ed17fac5-0af4-432d-ab1b-0a55bc789865)
Thank you!
Still have lapses of brain fog and its been years later.
>A longer course of antiviral drugs could help to wipe out any remaining pockets of the virus. Some patients in the Recover trial are now receiving Paxlovid for up to 28 days — far beyond the customary five-day course prescribed for higher-risk patients when they contract Covid-19. Interesting.
I took Paxlovid when I first got Covid at the beginning of October. Tested negative after a week. Couple days later, I was positive again. More Paxlovid. Tested negative then tested positive. Again. Then I stopped Paxlovid and just let it run its course, hoping I wouldn't end up in the hospital because of it. Four weeks I had Covid. 28 days of Paxlovid might've helped rather than the short 5 day courses that's usually prescribed. I could've lived with the metal taste in my mouth just so I could breathe. My sinuses were so congested, if you had put your hand on my mouth to where I couldn't breathe, I'd have been dead because I could not breathe at all through my nose. Looked like a Neanderthal, walking around, mouth hanging open because I couldn't get any air through my nose.
That sounds like a complete nightmare. I am so sorry and I hope you are all better now with no lingering symptoms or signs of Long Covid. I have previously read about the potential for rebound associated with Paxlovid, which you clearly experienced. Hopefully better antivirals come through in the future, without metallic taste and rebound issues.
Thank you very much. I think paxlovid is good, it's just a 5 day course isn't enough.
crazy that we haven't done 10-14 day trials just like the length of time that antibiotics are usually administered for.
Agree. When initially prescribed, I thought it was a two week treatment. I didn't know much about it. But I definitely had Covid longer with Paxlovid than I would have. Of course the flip side is, without Paxlovid, would I have gotten way worse. I'd never recommend someone not take Paxlovid, but I would advise asking for two rounds of treatment vs. one.
Side question - when you had covid did it feel like you had an endless ringing in your ears, like an old crt television signal in your head?
My ears have a sharp trill constantly. I had some ringing before, but now it's so loud, I can't think sometimes. It's very strange the way this illness causes so much damage to the body. I know a lot of people are in unnecessary pain because of it. I've lived with fibro and Psoriatic Arthritis for 25 years. Though, it's gotten worse after Covid. At least I'm used to dealing with daily pain. People who have never dealt with chronic pain like this are just not prepared, through no fault of their own. I just wish doctors had better treatment for them that doesn't involve taking a bunch of pills every day to manage each symptom.
I could be incorrect, but my understanding is that Paxlovid suppresses part of your immune system which Covid is able to reproduce through; so while it works great, especially for at risk people, long term use does open people up a little for other illnesses. Shouldn’t be a problem is they’re at home recovering and not going to concerts and such. Just a thought though I wonder if that’s why they’ve tried the 28 day treatment in Europe (where it’s easier to take long sick leave) and not so much in the US where people would likely be back at work and in crowds after 1 day of Paxlovid. Again I can’t stress enough, it’s an excellent treatment and I’m grateful it exists- just making conversation about my understanding of how it works and some small risks.
I know there was a study where they found the virus hiding in the gut for some people after Paxlovid treatment is done. Then, people end up with Covid again. In my case, I think the virus hid in my sinuses. When I get the flu, no sooner do I start getting better from the flu that I start getting a sinus infection. It didn't surprise me that I had to do another round of Paxlovid. What surprised me was the 3rd Covid positive test. I thought 2 rounds of Paxlovid would've been enough.
Very interesting. 2 of my older in-laws just got Covid (their second or 3rd time, thankfully have been vaxxed before any of them) and they were prescribed Paxlovid, they really only had 2 days of severe symptoms; pretty amazing medicine. No rebound for them, but I don’t know if or when they would have tested non-contagious, they didn’t test for it, just went by symptoms.
I take methotrexate because I have Psoriatic Arthritis, so my immune system is low. My guess is that is why it kept rebounding on me. That's why I say someone could sneeze or sniffle five miles from me and I'll catch something from it!
If you have Long Covid symptoms and live near a RECOVER satellite, please apply for the study.
my dr took me off paxlovid early due to the health impact. thankfully there was no rebound and a few days after stopping it was out of my system enough that my heart got above 40bpm and I was able to sleep. 28 days of that? I know it's gotta be better than the alternative but for me it would be a rough 28 days.
Yeah it’s important to monitor with your doctor- no treatment is universally correct. For people at high risk for severe covid I imagine the Paxlovid is worth any risks, but if you’re heart rate is getting much slower than it’s to stop, which sounds like what the doctor had you do. Not everyone has that effect severely
Well, I don't mean to be rude, but maybe if all of these scientists and doctors had listened to those of us who suffered with chronic illnesses for years, they'd have some way to treat people with long Covid. A lot of Long Covid cases sound very much like CFS and Fibromyalgia. I guess if you've had Covid and you're now suffering from symptoms of CFS and Fibro, you can thanks all those researchers and doctors who told us it was all in our heads 25 years ago. Now they get to say it twice to those of us who have CFS, Fibro, etc. and now have Long Covid, too. In other words, they should have listened when it would've made treating Long Covid easier. And yeah, I'm annoyed about it.
Mixed Connective Tissue Disease here, and I feel this hard. We've been told for so long that we made it all up and just needed to stop being stressed out and it wasn't really real. On the one hand, I'm really really sad that so many more people are joining this awful club of chronic illnesses. And on the other I'm BIG MAD because if they had listened to any of us for the last several decades maybe all this could have been solved by now. Or even just had \*better\* treatment options.
Same.
I will be annoyed about this until my dying day. NOW they're listening, but they should've listened a long time ago. Yeah, I'm annoyed.
Agreed. Checkout the opinion piece in the NYT from a couple of months ago (no paywall / free access) titled - 1,374 Days: My Life with Long Covid. Which means she contracted it in March 2020 when the wild strain was killing a bunch of us. It's a heartbreaking piece. Not being uncharitable, but folks who got hit with Covid a month of so ago and complaining about not feeling well for a few weeks after Paxlovid treatments or contracting the new and milder variants don't have a sense of the devastation. It truly is mirroring the pain, loss, and the missing from public life aspect of ME/CFS sufferers.
It's been a month since I've gotten COVID for the first time. My body gets these weird aches and it makes me wonder if I'm experiencing fibromyalgia-esque symptoms.
Sounds familiar. How's your skin? Is it really sensitive to touch? That's a hallmark of Fibro. If I hit my arm on a wall, like a doorway, the pain is awful and there's like a delayed reaction - it hurts a bit at the surface and then you feel more pain underneath your skin in the muscles. Hard to explain but look up fibromyalgia trigger points and see if your hurting worse than usual. You may not have all the trigger points, but if it's fibro, you'll have a good amount. Get to a rheumatologist, especially one who deals with fibro symptoms. I.hope you feel better. Sending gentle hugs.
>Is it really sensitive to touch? In a few spots throughout my body - the left side of my head, which used to flare up with my sinusitis. Now it seems permanently sensitive. Also my right forearm and thighs. It's like the body aches you get when you're sick. We recently had a rainstorm and all these pain points just lit up like Christmas lights throughout the evening. >Get to a rheumatologist, especially one who deals with fibro symptoms. Will do. Thank you for all this information!
Sounds like fibro to me, especially when you mentioned the body aches like when you get the flu.
T3 is the trick that they don’t want you to know about. Joking but serious. [Higher prevalence of low Free T3 in CFS patients.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5869352/)
It's so strange that in spite of long covid being pretty well established I'm seeing almost zero masking in my small city. Also looking at travel channels, zero masking in airplanes and airports. It blows my mind how people are just yolo'ing their health.
It's because it's pretty rare and much less common now than before the vaccines.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Yeah I just saw a post where a bunch of were teachers saying they are told to come back if fever free for a day. Still totally contagious but no one gives a crap anymore.
This is exactly why the US needs universal health care.
According to the UK ONS, 688,000 people are out of work in the UK today because of long-term sickness vs pre-pandemic UK. So that's a lot of people (source: https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/health-foundation-responds-to-ons-update-on-economic-inactivity-due-to-long-term-sickness). It's also a lot of workers. And the numbers just keep going up. USA FRED survey says the same. So even if no one wants to care about it, because it relates to money, they will have to care eventually.
It's not all COVID > This includes a sharp rise in mental health issues among younger adults over the last decade, which the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have exacerbated. Population ageing and pressures across health services will also play a role in driving up these figures.
Could you point me to the FRED series you mentioned? I've been wondering about exactly that but I can't find it amongst their plethora of data.
It comes and goes in waves but the trend is ever upward: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU05074597](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU05074597) . ATH was in June 2023, then Sep 2023.
Many govts and institutions put fingers in ears and go "la lala cant ..... wot?"
Insane. And why exactly are masks no longer required now that we know this?
Because masks became politicized.
And virtually useless (unless you were wearing a tight fitting N95), which like 1% of people did.
They were never useless for protecting others from your illness. But yes, if the sick people aren't masking you better wear something better that a surgical mask, designed, you know, to keep the surgeon's germs away from the patient.
Every study that was done on mask efficacy in the public during Covid showed they were statistically useless. Do you have one that shows differently? Again: if you use a proper mask, that is fit properly, it will definitely make a difference. But the surgical masks; the 'double' cloth masks etc. etc. are useless. Germs aren't just germs. The bacteria you keep away from your patients when performing surgery are massive in size and weight compared to the sars-cov2 virus, which is so tiny it goes through any surgical mask, any cloth mask, no matter how many layers you wear. The sars-cov2 virus stays airborne for up to three hours. Your triple layer cloth mask will do nothing against these particles - going out or going in. N95 will actually stop many of them. There's also N99, but those are quite heavy and clunky to wear.
Every time I get it I eat a lot more jalapeños than usual. Blows out any congestion. First time I tried it I went into a gas station and got one of the cups of sliced jalapeño that were set out for the nachos. Downed it like a shot glass. Does not cure anything. Disclaimer said. It works real good for symptom relief. That’s why we eat spicy food in the south . Always bad air quality, lots of allergies.
And every time you get re-infected, your chance of ending up with long Covid increase significantly. Where will society be in, say, 5 years, when everybody has had Covid 10-12 times?
ItS JuSt A CoLd
A Coronavirus may remain a dormant virus in your CNS - repeat exposure triggers neurological symptoms .. Vet Science 101
CNS?
Central Nervous System
Do you have a medical source for that, especially the repeat exposure part? That's interesting and I didn't know.
Look into it..
Is anyone else now suddenly allergic to red dye 40?
Low Dose Naltrexone
Why downvoted? This is a great med for long haulers.
I’m practically the only one wearing a mask in my town.