Doctor who tweeted COVID for 2-years has son who finally got COVID
https://twitter.com/Bob_Wachter/status/1479913165039095810
My son, who lives in SF, is generally healthy but overweight, placing him in a moderately high-risk group. He’s been quite careful since March 2020, & has received 3 Modernas. He used to wear a 2-ply cloth mask; since Omi, he’s switched to an KN95 (with my “encouragement”).
He works in downtown SF in customer service, so he has a lot of people contact. I’ve worried that he’d get it from work, or from the bus. But that’s not how it happened. Instead, one of the few friends he sometimes sees in person – another fully vaxxed young person who has also been quite careful, came over Monday night to watch a movie. She felt fine, as did he.
Wednesday am (~36 hours later), he woke up & felt awful. Sore throat, dry cough, muscle aches, chills. No taste/smell abnormalities.
There are 4 main treatment options for a symptomatic outpatient:
1. monoclonal antibodies. But the only one that works against Omicron, (I’m assuming he has Omicron, because it’s now dominant in the U.S. and because the lightning-fast incubation is an Omicron tell) Sotrovimab, is in exceptionally short supply – last wk, UCSF had none in stock. So that’s out.
2. My fave, the Pfizer pill Paxlovid, which ⬇the chance of hospitalization by ~90%, is also hard to find. Only use it in severely immuno-suppressed folks.
3. Remdesivir, an IV drug that we’ve long used in hospital, but recently shown to ⬇hospital & death rates by 87% in hi-risk outpatients.
4. Merck’s Molnupiravir. Like Paxlovid, it's a 5-day pill. It’s less effective (~30% benefit) than Paxlovid, but more available.
All that precaution with 2 shots + booster, N95 and all that still couldn't keep him safe. I guess one has to gauge do they get it now or get it eventually?
When will they admit that vaccines only half-work (death resistance)? This particular vaccine is more a resistance than a prevention. Since there are new variants popping up every year, treat it like the flu vaccine by modifying it to deal with new strains of the virus.