Post by Nadica (She/Her) on Jun 14, 2024 8:52:08 GMT
typingmonkeys.substack.com/p/what-to-do-if-you-get-covid
What to do if you get COVID: Practical tips to protect yourself from the long tail of risk - Published Jan 15, 2024
That moment you’ve been dreading has arrived (perhaps not for the first time). You or someone in your household woke up with a sore throat maybe, or a nagging cough, and you did the swab. Double red line. Dammit.
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What to do now? “Pax and relax”? Sit it out and hope for the best? Go about your normal business (as an increasingly alarming number of “experts” seem to be advising)? Is it really all down to a matter of good luck, good genes and good health? Not really. The available science says that there are differences in outcomes for people based on the choices they make after they get COVID, provided they move quickly.
In this post, we will share with you the things that we would do in that situation. As scientists who have been thinking a lot about SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) since the beginning of the pandemic, we have used our own research and academic backgrounds to inform our thinking on how to prepare ourselves and our loved ones to avoid the worst-case scenarios. Our thinking is guided by a simple heuristic — the longer the infection and the higher the viral load, the greater the risk of bad outcomes, the greater the risk of passing the disease on to others, and the greater the chance of contribution to further variant evolution. Although we bring up a lot of different things that can be done, it’s important to note that it’s not all or nothing. The more you can implement, the better your chances.
It goes without saying that this is not medical advice (neither of us is a medical professional). It’s an invitation for you to click on the hyperlinks, learn about the risks, weigh your options, and make a plan for yourself. Hopefully, in walking you through the thinking that we use in our daily lives, it inspires you to dry-run the scenario in your own mind, and lay out your own game plan, if you haven’t already!
What to do if you get COVID: Practical tips to protect yourself from the long tail of risk - Published Jan 15, 2024
That moment you’ve been dreading has arrived (perhaps not for the first time). You or someone in your household woke up with a sore throat maybe, or a nagging cough, and you did the swab. Double red line. Dammit.
Thanks for reading Monkeys on Typewriters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.
What to do now? “Pax and relax”? Sit it out and hope for the best? Go about your normal business (as an increasingly alarming number of “experts” seem to be advising)? Is it really all down to a matter of good luck, good genes and good health? Not really. The available science says that there are differences in outcomes for people based on the choices they make after they get COVID, provided they move quickly.
In this post, we will share with you the things that we would do in that situation. As scientists who have been thinking a lot about SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID) since the beginning of the pandemic, we have used our own research and academic backgrounds to inform our thinking on how to prepare ourselves and our loved ones to avoid the worst-case scenarios. Our thinking is guided by a simple heuristic — the longer the infection and the higher the viral load, the greater the risk of bad outcomes, the greater the risk of passing the disease on to others, and the greater the chance of contribution to further variant evolution. Although we bring up a lot of different things that can be done, it’s important to note that it’s not all or nothing. The more you can implement, the better your chances.
It goes without saying that this is not medical advice (neither of us is a medical professional). It’s an invitation for you to click on the hyperlinks, learn about the risks, weigh your options, and make a plan for yourself. Hopefully, in walking you through the thinking that we use in our daily lives, it inspires you to dry-run the scenario in your own mind, and lay out your own game plan, if you haven’t already!