That would be me. After 2+ years of successfully dodging it, covid finally got me -- not surprisingly, shortly after I stopped wearing my mask to teach. (Hey, what do you know, masking works!). I figure it's going to rip through the school anyhow (we've gotten rid of every covid precaution - no isolation, no quarantine, no reporting of positive testing, nothing) so I figured I might as well take my chances and just get it over with. In hindsight, maybe not my finest decision, LOL.

Anyhow, yeah, this feels pretty unpleasant, so I can't imagine how rough the initial variants were. I have a fever, chills, awful headache/sinus pressure, hacky cough, and so so much fatigue. Started feeling kind of ick on Sunday but tested negative on two different home tests Sunday and Monday so went into work on Monday figuring it was just allergies from the weather change. Monday night spiked a fever and got chills, tested positive at the minute clinic on Tuesday. They gave me Paxlovid which seemed to work pretty quickly - maybe I would have felt better anyway but it seemed to help within a few hours. It does definitely leave an absolutely disgusting constant taste in your mouth -- someone on the internet described it as grapefruit juice mixed with soap and I would say that is pretty accurate. But I'd rather taste that than feel like I was feeling yesterday so I'm just grateful there is something I can take that helps.

Anyhow, I don't know if there is anyone else here that has actually taken paxlovid so I'll keep you all posted on my progress if you want. My coworker (who I suspect I caught it from) has been on Paxlovid a few days longer than I have and says it's giving him pretty bad run-to-the-bathroom type stomach issues so I'm hoping to avoid that.

I hope you recover completely very soon. Please let us know how it goes. I have not, to the best of my knowledge, had covid yet, but I don't feel like I can count on avoiding it indefinitely.

Big Al

Well, dang. Sorry to hear it caught up with you. Hope you're better soon.

And yes, please keep us posted about your experience with Paxlovid.

Just got over it. Mild cold for the first week, total drainage the next week (Kleenex stock went up), declining residual drainage the next and now we're back to total normal.

I got the Paxlovid, but after reading up on it and evaluating our symptoms, decided not to take it. Sounded like the cure was worse than the disease. I know someone from the old forums who took it and had a rebound case.

Hope it's mild and passes quickly.

This stuff is SO contagious. One person at the funeral infected twenty others.

So sorry you have Covid, Lisa! I hope you feel better soon.

I’m hiding out, trying not to get Covid this week; I have to test negative on a proctored Covid test on Friday before I can go on to my teaching gigs for the next two weeks.

Sorry to hear that you’re sick.

Get well soon!

So sorry Lisa!! Hope you're better quickly!

Lisa, can you remind me what you teach, and what level (K-6, 7-12, post-secondary)?

Classes start today here. In the next three hours, I will see approx. 80 students. I will likely be the only one masked....

I work with a high school marching band and indoor drumline. It's very very part-time after school extracurricular type hours except for these two weeks of band camp when we put in like basically 10 hour days. I've done the last several years of band camp with a mask and it's been hot and miserable and I've done all of this past summer's weekly practices which have been 3 hours on Wednesday nights with a mask and this time when bandcamp started I was literally the only person there wearing a mask and I felt weird and I was hot and sweaty and I just decided what the heck. Clearly a bad decision LOL.

Hope you are better soon!!

You sound pretty stoic but it must be a real drag. Get well soon, Lisa! Seems giving up cautious behavior can come back to hit us. Thanks for the reminder - speaking as a fellow Pennsylvanian surrounded by the mostly unmasked - and lots of students.

Personally, I restrict my mask wearing to when I'm in a crowded indoor venue. Our synagogue is still masking and Zooming the Shabbat service (masking for those who want to attend the indoor service).

Since our rabbi, however hale and hearty he looks, is over sixty (come to think of it, the members are mostly seniors and seniorish too), we will probably continue to mask indefinitely.

I wonder if we'll ever have a congregational Seder again. It has taken a toll on our feeling of fellowship. Every once in a while I bump into a member I haven't seen since COID started and notice they look markedly older (I'm sure I do to them too.)

It is so difficult to predict... It seems like there are still so many different responses to getting sick with this!

Lisa, I get the whole thing of feeling weird being the only one masked.

Also< it’s one thing to be masked in a grocery store or something, it’s a quite another thing to be masked while trying to teach a big group in a noisy space…

I was, as anticipated, the only person masked in all of my classes.

Also it was super hot and three back-to-back classes was horrible.

I’ll do it again on Friday — masked of course.

Yay. -_-

But enough of me whining — Lisa, how are you feeling today?

P.s. I just noticed your first post was actually today. It feels like several days ago.

Let me try again.

Lisa, let us know how you’re feeling tomorrow.

Feel better soon. And thank you for the reminder to keep on using masks.