There hasn’t been much activity here on The Daily Dave recently because I am the newest member of — drumroll, please — the Covid Breakthrough Case Club.
Despite two vaccine shots and a booster, I tested positive for Covid on Wednesday afternoon. Here are the answers to the questions everyone is dying to ask me.1
- Aren’t you vaccinated? Yes indeed! Two shots and a booster.
- How bad is it? The symptoms aren’t that bad — I’d compare them to a mild flu. I have fatigue, aches, chills, and congestion. I can still smell and taste everything.
- Where did you catch it? I really have no idea, but I suspect it was at a hockey game on New Year’s Eve. I wore my mask everywhere except when I was sitting in my seat.
- Does the Complimentary Spouse have it? Nope, the lucky bastard.
- Is there a song stuck in Dave’s head right now? Dave wants to talk to Weird Al about writing a song called Livin’ la Vida Covid.
Negative, Negative, Positive
I started feeling symptoms on Tuesday evening and took an at-home test. It was negative. The symptoms got worse overnight — I barely slept — so I drove to a testing center at 7 a.m. the next morning. The line was long and it took about 45 minutes to get my test.2
I didn’t mind waiting in line at Al Lopez Park. The weather was pleasant and the park was beautiful. Some of the trees had lost their leaves. See? We do experience Autumn in Florida — but it comes in January and only lasts a few weeks.
I got my results about an hour after I got home: negative.
Since I still didn’t feel well, Britt encouraged me to go to the local MinuteClinic. With Covid ruled out, I suspected I had a sinus infection and the staff there could prescribe me antibiotics. After a quick examination, they suggested I take another Covid test. That one came up positive.
“Hold on,” I said. “What if the negative test this morning was correct and the positive test this morning was not?” The nurse practitioner said that was unlikely for two reasons. First, false negatives are more common than false positives. Second, because my symptoms appeared the previous day, it’s possible that there wasn’t enough of the virus in my system yet to trigger a positive result in the morning.
Science Is Real
When I started telling people about my Covid test results, my eminently wise friend Mike reminded me that I need to be careful about what it means to have a breakthrough case. The fact that I have Covid does not mean vaccines don’t work. Vaccines do more than protect against infection — they lessen the severity of symptoms if an infection does occur.3 Accordingly, instead of being in the hospital, I’m at home watching Golden Girls reruns, forcing Britt to wait on me hand and foot, and dealing with mild symptoms. All in all, that’s not too bad. The vaccine works. Without it, I’m sure things would be much worse. Science is real.
I’m sure I’ll be up and running in no time. Till then, you’ll find me cuddling with the doggos on the sofa.
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1 OK, so no one is dying to ask me any of these questions. Hyperbole, like science, is real.
2 Maybe it was closer to an hour. Can you really keep track of time when you’re listening to Madonna on your AirPods?
3 Don’t come for me unless you’re an infectious disease expert. Science, like hyperbole, is real.