So I felt ill and tested positive for Covid on May 28. And felt pretty wretched - well, mostly fatigue, actually -- for most of the week that followed. But on the morning of May 29 I started on Paxlovid -- six pills a day for five days, and by the end of the week I felt much better. Wonders of modern science! -- and I only make a couple of jokes about whether this is where Bill Gates would get his microchips into me.
The theory of Paxlovid, as I understand it, is that if taken early in your Covid infection, it prevents Covid cells (are they cells?) from spreading and reproducing, so the disease burns out over the five days. By June 4 I had a covid test that had only the very faintest positive line, and I assumed that would be the end of it for me.
Except it turns out there is a thing called "Paxlovid rebound" where in a small proportion of cases, some covid cells survive the five days of bombardment and start to reproduce again. So on June 8, I felt a bit dodgy, tested positive again, and was pretty much wiped out once more until yesterday.
I hope this has been the end of it. But don't let anyone tell you Covid is over. In the last two weeks, I never imagined oxygen tents or intubation or felt in lethal danger, as I would have if this was June 2020 instead of June 2023. But the first two weeks of June have been pretty much a write-off for me and for my unfortunate spouse, who tried to isolate from me but got it anyway, so that we went through it more or less together.
Covid is historic, but I'm here to say it's not "history" in the sense of being in the past.
