Lowtide offers excellent suggestions. I will add one: from personal experience, I have found that an inhaler can help when you have a persistent cough if it is bronchospasmatic (mild, not severe) in nature. A pediatric nurse practitioner that I know said she prescribes them in such cases. Irritated or swollen bronchi can cause a cough that seems to come from higher in your chest, not a deep rumbly cough and you are NOT coughing up anything. (unproductive is the term) This sort of cough just tires you out and doesn't help your body. You might run the option by your health provider. Albuterol is one short acting inhaler that might reduce the coughing and also allow better rest and sleep. Just a thought..
Thr viruses that have been going around all year have been nasty little *****
My parents and I caught the flu in February this year despite having the flu vaccine and all came down with secondary infections. I had a throat infection and required antibiotics, and my parents had both chest infection and a sinus infection that required antibiotics. We were ill for nearly 6 weeks from the secondary infections and tested negative for covid.
Then come October, and we all caught covid and tested positive for the first time in 2 and a half years, and then less than a month later we caught flu again, and my dad got a secondary chest infection again - and we knew it was flu because we tested negative for covid and got it from my nephew who attends nursery and he got a very serious sinus infection and was in hospital and tested positive for Influenza A. Thankfully, my nephew is over it now, but he had to have IV antibiotics injections in his legs.
We have all had our covid booster jabs in November, so I'm hoping that this plus the covid anitbodies when we caught covid will give us some more protection.
Anyway, such is life.
Long Covid. First study indications show thousands have died from Long Covid and that many more likely have but haven't been reported as such.
30% of those who had Covid appear to have Long Covid as well.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/health/long-covid-deaths/index.html
Yes, I Think anti virus face masks are still necessary for preventing the spread of COVID-19. While vaccine rollout has begun and cases may be decreasing in certain areas, it is important to continue following guidelines set by health officials and to use face masks in public settings and when around individuals outside of your household. Wearing a mask helps to protect yourself and others from the virus and is a simple but effective measure to take. I found top quality face mask at ViroMask and will recommend you all to also try their quality.
@joshphillips Thank you for that advice. I agreed with you completely, and I also want to welcome you to our forum.
I have not stopped wearing masks in stores and at a party I attended where only a few people were wearing masks. I am glad I did because I didn't have to worry over every little symptom after that.
The group pressure to confirm and go maskless is immense. But I ignore it because I know I'm doing the right thing for myself and my family by wearing one. It didn't prevent me from getting an awful cold after Thanksgiving that took steroids to get over it. But I got it because I had stopped washing my hands after shopping. Covid is mainly passed around via breathing it in the air, so I got sloppy about my hands.
Good news!
A test that detects covid AND other pathogens?
Yep!!
Caltech researchers have developed a new at-home test for COVID-19 that is more than twice as sensitive as current state-of-the-art antigen tests. While the test was developed for COVID-19, the technology can be used as a platform for designing tests to detect other pathogens as well
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-sensitive-rapid-at-home-covid-.html
@lovendures I read the FDA has approved one that detects covid and influenza now.
We have used antigen tests for years in veterinary medicine - like for heartworm,lyme, ehrlichia, and anaplasmosis combo snap test and parvo tests etc. Glad they have been carrying the technology on over to the human side!
Some good news, even if it won't be available for a little while:
https://scitechdaily.com/game-changer-nasal-spray-a-universal-shield-against-all-covid-19-variants/
@billy-mike Thank you for posting this for people. I just ordered!
I just want to mention that I'm hearing a lot about people who have Covid-like symptoms but test negative and are also testing negative for the flu. I'm reading reports of people not testing Covid positive until at least day 5 of symptoms (one lady tested finally positive on day 12- her whole family had Covid and she had symptoms at the same time, which was why she kept testing). Also, some people are testing negative on a nasal swab but positive on a throat swab because the virus doesn't always colonize the nose.
This is just a reminder that Covid is still out there. And free Covid tests are still available to be mailed directly to your homes:
https://special.usps.com/testkits
How Covid affected the worlds life expectancy
https://apple.news/ABH6rKlxqRFCdIl9MXoOAbg
Global life expectancy fell by 1.6 years during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Australia was one of the few countries where people were still expected to live longer.
It found almost every country in the world experienced sharp dips in life expectancy in 2020 and 2021, reversing the long-standing trend of people living longer.
Australia and New Zealand were among only 32 countries and territories, out of 204 studied, to record an increase in life expectancy across the first two years of the pandemic.
Globally, life expectancy dropped from 73.3 years in 2019 before the pandemic, to 71.7 in 2021.
For women, life expectancy fell from 76 years to 74.8 years. For men, life expectancy dropped from 70.8 years to 69 years.
Australians fared much better than the global average. Their life expectancy was 83.4 years in 2021, up slightly from 83.2 in 2019. Women were expected to live until 85.6 years old, and men until they were 81.2 years old.
In the United States, where more than 1 million people are thought to have died due to COVID-19, life expectancy fell from 79.1 years in 2019 to 77.1 years in 2021.
The University of Washington study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, updates estimates in the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021, and drew on the expertise of more than 11,000 collaborators across more than 160 countries and territories.
Regards to all
Matildagirl
@matildagirl Thank you for this information. Did they or anyone speculate about why Australians did better than other countries?
Hi Jeanne,
It was surprising in a way, how law abiding we actually were, that we just followed the recommendations, we were in lockdown, we wore masks, we worked from home, socially distanced, used sanitizers, the government supported people who couldn’t work from home like hospitality workers, the homeless were housed in motels. As soon as vaccines were available the government started the vaccination process for free, people got vaccinated. We knew we were all in the same boat so we got on with it.
Each states premier really rose to the occasion, shut borders to prevent their states population from outbreaks. Western Australia shut their borders and they lived normal lives and were the last state to open up similar to how NZ handled Covid, borders closed, isolation until there was no Covid then normal lives.
Poor old Victoria was hit hard and had much longer lockdowns than the rest of us.
Eventually we had to open up to the world like everyone did and it still is here but now everyone just seems to accept it’s here to stay, be sensible, isolate if you catch it, get on with life, keep your vaccinations up to date, though this bit seems to be waning.
Hope that helps
Regards
Matildagirl
Hi Jeanne,
thinking more about that time, masks were mandatory, if you caught Covid you had to isolate for 14 days, that was mandatory. People coming in from overseas were required to isolate for 14 days in their hotel room, they weren’t allowed out of the rooms in that time, their meals were left for them outside the door. A lot of people found that hard to handle. This was paid by the government, the side effect was the large hotels were able to keep functioning and keep staff on. This was the same thing New Zealand did and eventually we were able to resume going to each others countries because we didn’t have the virus without having to isolate. There were a couple of shutdowns with this as there would be an outbreak when it snuck in. Once the world started opening up and we had to as well, the cases rose again, but not as severe as originally as we had a very high percentage of vaccinated people by then, I think it was in the 90s percentage wise.
I guess it was quite draconian in a lot of ways, but it saved a lot of lives and we knew that it was with the best intentions to try and keep us safe. Eventually there was push back and restrictions were relaxed. We basically ignore it now, there was an increase over the last Xmas summer period because of a new variation going around the world again. I caught it over New Year, stayed at home for 10 days, it wasn’t required to isolate but I thought that was sensible, gave it to my husband but not anyone else as far as I know.
It seems a long time ago now, 2020,21 we had to stay at home but we’re allowed out to exercise, I would go for a walk and run into friends and neighbours doing the same thing, we would all stand a distance away from each other and have a chat, walk a bit further have another chat, go home and my event of the day would be to do some housework, watch tv, read a book, cook dinner, go to the supermarket, masked and buy food. It was a weird time.
Regards
Matildagirl