Ctein on COVID (OT)

Ctein (it's pronounced "kuh-TINE" and it's his entire legal name) was a longtime regular columnist on TOP. After my update about COVID-19 the other day he offered to let me reproduce this recent column from his newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.

Ctein is the author, with John Sandford, of the sci-fi thriller Saturn Run. Recently he has collaborated with David Gerrold on a new sci-fi book called Ripple Effect which you can start reading for free. All the information you need is here.

Guest post by Ctein

Recently I've run across sufficiently valuable new information and products that I feel it's worth my time to write a column on a subject that we are all heartily sick of (I'm sorry, the bad jokes just won't stay suppressed). It's very likely that most of you know some of this information, but I'd be surprised if more than a handful of you know all of it.

Three questions:

"How can I reduce my chances of getting COVID?"

"How can I tell if I have COVID?"

"If I've gotten COVID, how can I tell when I'm no longer infectious?"

Before I get into it, I have two caveats:

The first is that some of the advice I'll be giving here does not correspond to what you are getting from your public/government health officials. That's not because any of us are wrong (okay, we might be, but not for this reason), but because our circumstances and goals are different. Public health is trying to minimize the overall societal risk by reducing the total number of cases without causing an unacceptable level of social disruption. That's not the same as minimizing personal risk. They also have to live in the world of the political, in contrast to the ideal, so they need to make recommendations that enough people will follow to produce the maximum feasible beneficial result.

In other words, they are trying for a kind of optimal "overall good enough," whereas I'll be talking about things aimed towards minimizing your individual risks.

The second caveat, sadly, relates to that aforementioned world of the political. Ever since our ex wannabe-dictator decided to wage war against rational, factual, scientific discourse, the world has been flooded with what is frankly antiscience and anti-sense bullshit. I do like being right—I've got two epidemiology/biomedical researchers on tap, and I read a whole bunch of primary medical journal articles (and rely on my expert friends to explain them to me when they're over my head). That means I really do want to know when I'm factually wrong! Please let me know if you find something in a primary source (a scientific journal article or an original research paper) that suggests that I am in error. I'd very much appreciate pointers to those, and I promise I will take it seriously. Please, though, no references to popular articles, newspapers, some other authority's pronouncements, etc. I want the source data, not someone's interpretation or opinion.

Now on to the purpose of this column:

"How can I reduce my chances of getting COVID?"

Taffix is an aerosol powder that you squirt up your nose, where it forms a gel coating inside the nostrils that traps viruses for up to five hours per dose. This isn't the first product to claim to do that, and my expert friends have been extremely skeptical of all of them, because none of them have provided studies that confirm that they actually work to reduce infection rates—it's all been supposition. This one has been tested, and although the studies were modest, the results were so striking that they made converts of my experts. They've been using Taffix, as have I. One of them even bought a multi-pack so they could distribute bottles to their friends.

Taffix is not a substitute for an N-95 mask; consider it a second barrier level that catches most of the viral particles that get through or around your mask. If I were to make a very crude guess, I would say it reduces the odds of getting infected by another factor of two or three. Obviously it's a whole lot less effective if you're talking or eating a lot, but seeing as there are no ill side effects and it's very cheap, it falls in the category of every little bit helps reduce your risk. Taffix has not been approved for distribution of the US, although it is in Europe and Israel (where it was developed). You can get it through eBay from distributors outside the US, who will happily ship here. Choose wisely—look for someone who has lots of positive feedback responses. You should be able to find Taffix for about $20 a bottle, including shipping. One bottle will last you two months, if you're using it every day for a full day (one dose is good for about five hours).

Taffix interferes with nasal-swab testing, so I'd strongly recommend that you do your testing (LAMP, PCR, or antigen) before you use Taffix on any particular day.

"How can I tell if I have COVID?"

Antigen tests are not reliable indicators of whether or not one has COVID; they are especially bad at detecting asymptomatic or very low grade infections, the kind you might not even notice. Even worse, in mild cases they're not likely to produce a positive result until you've been infectious for as much as two days. This is, as we technical folks would say, "sucky."

RNA amplification, your PCR laboratory test, can detect the disease quickly, early, and at very low levels of infection. PCR is strictly in-lab, but there is another amplification procedure, LAMP, that is nearly as good and is available in a do-it-yourself home test. Lucira (now part of Pfizer) has a home LAMP test that's very reliable but also very expensive. You'd know within 30 minutes whether or not you'd been infected, but you paid dearly.

That was worth it to me—I just got back from a week's trip to Minneapolis, and I immediately took a LAMP test, so that I could confirm that I hadn't gotten infected on the trip. If it had come up positive, Paula and I would've been able to quickly quarantine from each other so she faced minimal risk. Great...but $75 a pop is outside most people's budgets, including ours for routine use.

There's a new test on the market called Metrix from Aptitude Medical Systems and it's only $25! AMS has been making home blood glucose tests for some years, so they are not new to this business. Like the Lucira test, Metrix produces results within 30 minutes, but it's about six times more sensitive than Lucira. You can also use it with either a nasal or throat swab (Lucira doesn't work with a throat swab—yup, I tried). You can even just spit in the reaction chamber, if you can't tolerate swabs.

At $25 a test, Metrix runs a bit more than twice the price of a two-test antigen kit, but it is sufficiently sensitive that you can test two people at the same time and still have a high degree of confidence in the results. Paula and I have reason to do that frequently, at which point it's hardly any more expensive than antigen testing.

It's important to keep in mind is that a PCR/LAMP test will tell you if you've contracted COVID, but it is not useful for telling you when you've gotten over your infection. Viral RNA can circulate in the body for a considerable length of time after the infection has been vanquished. In the first year of the pandemic there were reports of mysterious cases where people continued to (PCR) test positive for weeks, sometimes months, after they otherwise were entirely disease-free. Now we know why! (That's the opposite of long COVID, where symptoms last for months even though tests say you're clear of infection.)

Which takes me to my last topic:

"If I've gotten COVID, how can I tell when I'm no longer infectious?"

Unfortunately, there is no really clean and convenient answer to this one, although the safety protocols have become considerably less onerous over the past couple of years. Other than just waiting it out for an ungodly length of time, the only test we have is the antigen test. Antigen tests produce a lot of false negatives, to they're not not very trustworthy, especially when you consider mild cases. Nonetheless, it does correlate with infectiousness, so it's not entirely useless.

Consequently, once you've contracted COVID, a single negative antigen test does not assure you that it's now safe to expose yourself to other people. Two tests a day apart, a commonly quoted protocol, is not a very good indicator—really it isn't, no matter what you read on the web! The closest we have to a gold standard (well, more like bronze or pot metal), is three tests separated by 48-hour intervals. Yes, five days is a long time, but it's better than how things used to be, that's all I can say. If you come up negative on all three, the odds are good that you're no longer infectious and you are not going to relapse. It's not even close to perfect, but "good" is as good as it gets for now.

Erring on the side of caution
Lest you think I'm simply being paranoid and overly fussy, here's a not-so-fun coincidence for you!

A couple of weeks back, while I was mapping out this column in my head, one of my sweeties came down with COVID. We were supposed to have a date last Friday. She finally tested negative early last week; in fact, she tested negative twice...but there wasn't enough time between the second test and Friday evening to run the third. Regretfully, I told her we had to cancel the date out of caution. The next day, Saturday, her third test came up positive—the so-called "rebound" infection.

I am well aware of that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," but that doesn't mean it's entirely ignorable!

I do expect that COVID will eventually catch up with me, being endemic, but that does not mean I hold with the people who say, "It's inevitable that I'm going to get it sooner or later, so why try?"

Death is also inevitable (or so it is rumored—I am continuing to do research and I'll report back when I have definitive conclusions) but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to put it off just a bit longer.

Your mileage may differ. It probably does.

Still, to quote the police sergeant on an ancient TV show, "Let's be careful out there."

Ctein

Featured Comments from:

Comments

[Vince]

The Metrix test looks interesting, but according to their web site it also requires a Metrix reader device, which is $50. It's a one time fee that lasts 1000+ tests (again, according to their web site), but with just a few tests, it ups the per test price by a significant percent.

[JBG]

Is this a repost from the 2020 archive?

[ctein]

Dear Vince,

If you only need a very few tests, I'd say you're better off paying for a lab PCR test when you need one.

If you buy directly from Aptitude Medical Systems, a starter kit with two tests and the reader costs $85:

https://shop.aptitudemedical.com/products/metrix-covid-19-test-reader-mini-bundle

If you buy a dozen tests ($300), they throw in the reader for free:

https://shop.aptitudemedical.com/products/metrix-covid-19-test-reader-bundle

You can pay for either in four interest-free installments.

I suspect the reader will last until the contacts wear out. It's just electronics reading out data from the one-time test units.

pax / Ctein

[Benjamin Marks]

No specific reaction to the above, other than, "Gosh, I love science." A tip of the cap to Ctein, and a hearty round of applause for the falsifiable hypothesis, wheresoever it may lead.

[Ian Seward]

The Cochrane report, some 200 pages revealed that surgical masks or N95 did nothing significant to help. Depressing but that's what the science says.

"https://www.cochrane.org/CD006207/ARI_do-physical-measures-such- hand-washing-or-wearing-masks-stop-or-slow-down-spread-respiratory- viruses"

Abstract:
What did we want to find out?
We wanted to find out whether physical measures stop or slow the spread of respiratory viruses from well-controlled studies in which one intervention is compared to another, known as randomised controlled trials.

What did we do?
We searched for randomised controlled studies that looked at physical measures to stop people acquiring a respiratory virus infection.

We were interested in how many people in the studies caught a respiratory virus infection, and whether the physical measures had any unwanted effects.

What did we find?
We identified 78 relevant studies. They took place in low-, middle-, and high-income countries worldwide: in hospitals, schools, homes, offices, childcare centres, and communities during non-epidemic influenza periods, the global H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, epidemic influenza seasons up to 2016, and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identified five ongoing, unpublished studies; two of them evaluate masks in COVID-19. Five trials were funded by government and pharmaceutical companies, and nine trials were funded by pharmaceutical companies.

No studies looked at face shields, gowns and gloves, or screening people when they entered a country.

We assessed the effects of:

· medical or surgical masks;

· N95/P2 respirators (close-fitting masks that filter the air breathed in, more commonly used by healthcare workers than the general public); and

· hand hygiene (hand-washing and using hand sanitiser).

We obtained the following results:

Medical or surgical masks

Ten studies took place in the community, and two studies in healthcare workers. Compared with wearing no mask in the community studies only, wearing a mask may make little to no difference in how many people caught a flu-like illness/COVID-like illness (9 studies; 276,917 people); and probably makes little or no difference in how many people have flu/COVID confirmed by a laboratory test (6 studies; 13,919 people). Unwanted effects were rarely reported; discomfort was mentioned.

N95/P2 respirators

Four studies were in healthcare workers, and one small study was in the community. Compared with wearing medical or surgical masks, wearing N95/P2 respirators probably makes little to no difference in how many people have confirmed flu (5 studies; 8407 people); and may make little to no difference in how many people catch a flu-like illness (5 studies; 8407 people), or respiratory illness (3 studies; 7799 people). Unwanted effects were not well-reported; discomfort was mentioned.

Hand hygiene

Following a hand hygiene programme may reduce the number of people who catch a respiratory or flu-like illness, or have confirmed flu, compared with people not following such a programme (19 studies; 71,210 people), although this effect was not confirmed as statistically significant reduction when ILI and laboratory-confirmed ILI were analysed separately. Few studies measured unwanted effects; skin irritation in people using hand sanitiser was mentioned.

[Sean]

The political scientist Raymond Wolfinger is often misquoted. He actually said: “The plural of anecdote is data.”

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/12/25/data/?amp=1

[robert e]

Thanks very much to Ctein, and to Mike, for sharing this useful information. I'll be passing it on. I had not heard of the newer tests.

Thanks to Vince for pointing out that the Metrix test requires a $50 reader. That makes the initial cost the same as a single LAMP test. Obviously, if it's worth it for one LAMP test, it's worth it for a supposedly much better test. But then subsequent Metrix tests cost $25, and can test two people at a time, according to Ctein. Not bad for the better test. And I presume the reader and its cost can be shared, say in a workplace, clinic, school, etc.

Even for individuals, anyone who needs a reliable home test most likely will need it more than once. It doesn't look like COVID is going away soon.

[Chris Bertram]

FWIW, I was advised by a public health professional that babies with COVID will continue to test positive on antigen tests for weeks after they have ceased to pose a risk to others. Obviously, that's an important thing to know if, for example, you need to travel with a baby, since babies can't wear masks.

[Kirk]

That was an odd read. But with all the nods to believing in science and objective data there's not a single word about vaccines and the importance, at least for the older amongst us (which I am one), getting all the updated boosters offered.

Masks and tests are all good and well but the statistical data from millions and millions of vaccinations points definitively to the lowering of the possibility/probability of death provided by vaccines and that would seem to be at the top of the decision tree for someone who really, really looked with objective intent at the data.

Concentric lines of defense are good. Adding vaccines is even better.

[Robert]

Probably should be pointed out that there were concerns about what the Cochrane Review mask study (which was published in January of 2023) actually demonstrated.

In March of 2023, Karla Soares-Weiser, Editor-in-Chief of the Cochrane Library wrote:

“Many commentators have claimed that a recently-updated Cochrane Review shows that 'masks don't work', which is an inaccurate and misleading interpretation. 

It would be accurate to say that the review examined whether interventions to promote mask wearing help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses, and that the results were inconclusive. Given the limitations in the primary evidence, the review is not able to address the question of whether mask-wearing itself reduces people's risk of contracting or spreading respiratory viruses.”

https://www.cochrane.org/news/statement-physical-interventions-interrupt-or-reduce-spread-respiratory-viruses-review

Also, probably happier not reading about Covid on a site dedicated to a discussion on photography.

[Rick in CO]

The Cochrane Review may suggest that wearing a mask makes little difference if people touch virus-contaminated surfaces and then touch body entry points, ie. eyes, nose. Frequent hand washing and/or disinfection wipes/gels may provide additional protection from infection than mask wearing alone.
As pointed out, up-to-date vaccination is the best protection against a serious infection. However, immunosuppressed individuals and those with increased susceptibility to bronchial infections (such as pneumonia) or other related co-morbidities need to take additional precautions.
Covid and the Flu have re-written our own personal rules of travel. Have a mask available to wear and wipes or gel handy if someone around you in a confined space (airplane, bus, cruise ship) has a "wet" cough or is repeatedly sneezing. Wipe down the airplane armrests, table, monitor and don't touch the in-flight magazines or info card - there are numerous warnings that the airline cleaning crew takes away the trash but does not disinfect anything. In public places try not to touch door knobs (anything openable with your elbow is better) and don't touch stairway railings! If you do, pull out the wipes/gel. It may sound like a lot to consider, but with practice becomes second nature.
Being both vaccinated and taking some basic precautions might make your travels, and photography, more enjoyable and productive.

[ctein]

Dear JBG,

Why in the world would you think that?! Color me thoroughly confused.

~~~~~~~~

Dear Sean,

Oh wonderful! Thank you, I learned something. It is a GOOD day!

~~~~~~~~

Dear Kirk,

My opening sentence reads, "Recently I've run across sufficiently valuable new information and products that I feel it's worth my time to write a column..."

It's that word, "new," y'see...

Plus, there's nobody reading this who hasn't heard of vaccines... and if they don't think they work nothing I could say at this point would change their mind. I am not THAT influential (they said, ever so modestly [grin]).

(please excuse any word-salad. Apple Dictate's fault)
pax / Ctein
==========================================
-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com
==========================================

[ctein]

Dear Robert,

Oh, please believe me – I really do sympathize and empathize. It is so depressing!

It bears mentioning, though, that this site is dedicated to whatever Mike feels like writing about, and he's persistently stated that that is predominantly but not exclusively photography.

~~~~~~

Dear Ian,

I want to start off by emphasizing that that is a very competent study done by very careful researchers, and that's reflected in their conclusions. I don't think you paid enough attention to those. To quote:

>>"The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions. There were additional RCTs during the pandemic related to physical interventions but a relative paucity given the importance of the question of masking and its relative effectiveness and the concomitant measures of mask adherence which would be highly relevant to the measurement of effectiveness, especially in the elderly and in young children.

>>"The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect.

>>"We are uncertain whether wearing masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses based on the studies we assessed."<<

That is scientist–speak for, "Oh, ferfuksake, we really don't know the answer, and we would really like more data!"

As has been noted elsewhere, some of the studies they threw into their meta-analysis didn't apply to the real world efficacy of masks. The ones that looked at mandates, rather than actual compliance, for example. Studies, of which there are many, which compared rates of compliance with rates of hospitalization/death (the only reliable measure, as "confirmed case" numbers don't match the real world number of cases at all), showed strong correlation between more mask use and fewer hospitalizations/deaths.

It's possible that those were due to masks making people more cautious in their behavior, rather than any direct physical effect. But nobody cares, not really—if carrying a lucky rabbit's foot (not so lucky for the rabbit — old joke!) reduced the incidence of Covid, it would be a legitimate prophylactic!

The healthcare professional studies were very relevant to the conditions they investigated, and they were generally of high quality, but they didn't resemble the real world. Those poor medicos were practically bathing in coronavirus! Given its virulence and infectiousness, masks could've been filtering out 99.9% of the virii and still leave them exposed to infection-inducing doses.

Think of it as if you were wearing a mask that filtered out 99% of the smoke in the air. Works really well when you've got one of those nasty "forest fire" days where the air is unhealthy. But if you walked into a burning building that was completely opaque with smoke, you'd be in trouble.

(please excuse any word-salad. Apple Dictate's fault)
pax / Ctein
==========================================
-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com
==========================================

[Eric Rose]

Really??!! An article on COVID. Now there is two minutes of my life I won't get back.

[Kirk]

New data about vaccines can induce people who do understand the value of vaccines to stay current on CDC recommendations. New data about testing for infection? Not as effective for most people engaged in decision-making about re-entering non-quarantined life.

I'm not sure of the wisdom of anecdotal appraisals of a nasal spray culminating in a tacit recommendation of a product that's not approved for distribution in our country. It's a fraught topic. Lack of double blind tests with multiple, large test groups and placebo groups (the scientific gold standard) make most of the information provided observational at best.

Finally, when mentioning experts I think it would be appropriate to name them and list their credentials.

[Kye Wood]

What about injecting bleach?... ... Still too soon?

[Scott Tomlinson]

"Let's be careful out there" was the quote from the old police sergeant. After he died (both IRL and in-show universe), his replacement finished his morning roll call with a different sentiment: "Let's do it to them before they do it to us!"

[Andrew Kochanowski]

I can even do snooker tables and weird keyboards, but paranoid musings on Covid in 2024, I'm out.

[Wait, you wouldn't mind more posts on weird keyboards?! Dude, stay! You might be the only one.... --Mike]

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Eric -- third word on the page was "COVID". Any time you spent after that was your own choice!

[Bob Rosinsky]

By far the weirdest posting on TOP.

[ctein]

Dear Kye,

Hey, if it was good enough for our wannabe-dictator... [ROFL]

Kids, do NOT try that at home!

~~~~~~

Dear Bob, Eric and Andrew,

No one is forcing you to read every column. Move along, move along, nothing to see here [smile].

pax / Ctein

[louis mccullagh]

Why a post on a medical matter from an unqualified person? Do please let us know the thinking.
I found the replies by ctein ...unsettling.

[ctein]

Dear Kirk,

Improved testing and information on testing won't affect how much risk you are at going into the outside world, but it affects how much risk you put other people at. For many people, that will play into their decision-making, both in terms of who they are comfortable engaging with and who is comfortable engaging with them.

Regarding Taffix, my apologies! I should've written more clearly. It's not my pet epidemiologists who tested it, it's outside field testing. IOW, not anecdotal at all.

As I said, it was modest testing and not well-controlled, but when even a week study produces a statistically significant 2/3 reduction in cases of Covid, that's major. Even if better-controlled studies ultimately wind up raising or lowering that number.

There are a whole bunch of nasal antiviral prophylactic sprays on the market. By and large they work in vitro; they aren't frauds, and they are safe to use. But there's a huge difference between laboratories tests that suggest it should reduce infections and testing in the field to see if it really does. So far, Taffix is the only one on which there is that kind of real-world data.

The reason it isn't approved in the US has nothing to do with either its safety nor efficacy, but with international regulations on importing medical devices (sufficiently messy stuff that I will not claim to begin to understand it). For me, being approved in the EU is good enough, and I don't mind having to buy from an international source. I can understand other people who might be reluctant.

I have no intention of naming my experts nor listing their credentials. It would NOT be appropriate. These are personal relationships—one of them is one of my partners, and the other one is her ex. They are not part of the public discourse, and they have a right to maintain their privacy.

(please excuse any word-salad. Apple Dictate's fault)
pax / Ctein
==========================================
-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com
==========================================

[Joel Becker]

Thank you, Ctein, for a well-thought-out and comprehensive article on the reality of living in the current COVID-19 climate. Disregard those captured by the political ("paranoid" this was not; it was spot on). I know you will :-)

My partner and I always mask in enclosed public spaces. We ask our friends to test before any gathering at our house, allowing us the peace of mind to hold mask-free gatherings. We can eat, drink, talk, and generally enjoy each other's company with reduced fear of spreading infection. This protocol catches at least one case of COVID every other month, a friend who didn't know they were infected and would have attended otherwise.

As the very fortunate recipient of a LAMP tester[^1] from my employer, I know the peace of mind from having quality testing at hand. Since the end of major restrictions, my LAMP test kits are no longer subsidized. At ~$50/test, we hoard those tests for specific occasions when the timeline and accuracy requirements necessitate a LAMP result. I'm going to look into the Metrix setup because it sounds like it is half the price. Thank you for that.

Since we no longer have subsidized LAMP tests, we buy our rapid antigen tests in bulk. We've generally been able to buy antigen tests for about $5/test[^2], sometimes as low as $4/test. It's also not cheap as a one-time purchase, but the costs of ending up with Long COVID or worse are far greater.

Like you, Ctein, we have been lucky so far. While we also know that it's probably inevitable, we want to keep it as far in the future as we can. And we also know that the studies on repeat infection show higher liklihood of Long COVID, so even if we eventually contract the disease, we want to do so as few times as possible.

----
[^1]: https://cuehealth.com/covid-19-category
[^2]: https://cliawaived.com/flowflex-covid-19-antigen-home-test-50-test-pack.html

[Bob Villa]

An expert is the first idiot, because he knows nothing outside of his field of study. Usually medically trained people do not study common sense.

[ctein]

Dear Louis,

1) How do you know I'm unqualified? I needed to get so good at the epidemiology in the first year that I got to the point of being able to *quantitatively* calculate the risk of infection from a given activity during 2020.

2) Regardless of (1), what information did you find inaccurate in my posts? I would really like to know.

~~~~~~

Dear Bob,

Oh, yes!

Well... not that they know NOTHING, but their expertise in one area makes them prone to overrate their abilities in others. Best known example: Pons and Fleischmann's claims of cold fusion. They were great electrochemists, but incompetent at running physics experiments. They're not alone, sad to say.

At it happens, my pet epidemiology/biomedical people are huge polymaths... which means they know better than to step outside their areas of expertise. It's kinda "The more you know, the more you know what you don't know." Fortunately for me, they've been on Covid since Day 1. One of them was devising mass testing protocols back in Year 1, how to use clever maths to radically reduce the number of tests you needed to fully screen a large population, back when tests were in scarce supply.

(please excuse any word-salad. Apple Dictate's fault)
pax / Ctein
==========================================
-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com
==========================================

[ctein]

An addendum, because life is filled with irony...

Several days after I'd sent Mike this column, I was expecting to leave for a two week vacation in Minneapolis. After packing and checking in online I ran a Metrix test, a routine precaution so that I didn't become a "Covid Ctein" (more alliterative than "Typhoid Mary").

I included Paula in the run because, why not, when two can test as cheaply as one?

Half an hour later the red (positive for Covid) light came on. Huh.

I started a solo test because it was most likely I'd contracted Covid, seeing as I have far more contact with the outside world than Paula. After another half an hour the green light came on. I was infection–free.

Double huh.

A third test, this time Paula—maybe the first was one of those rare false positives (it happens like 0.1% of the time).

Red. It was Paula, not I, who had Covid!

I didn't dare go to MN, too much chance I'd gotten infected by her (statistically, less than 1 in 3, but still...). Paula and I started the isolation procedures we'd planned.

Friday morning I took another Metrix test. This time, red. C'est la vie (or c'est le Covid dix-neuf, I suppose)!

We're both on Paxlovid. Paula has almost unnoticeable symptoms (on Day 7-9) and I'm entirely asymptomatic (on Day 4-6). Were it not for Metrix, we'd not have known we were sick... and I'd have been carrying an infection to my friends and partners to Minneapolis.

For the heck of it we've both taken several antigen tests. They all come up negative, demonstrating how it is not a reliable indicator in very mild cases.

How often is it that you get to be your own after-publication anecdote?!

If it weren’t for for the honor of it all...

[Rick in CO]

Bob: You have a jaundiced view of physicians and scientists. I have personally known, and also met casually, scientists and physicians who were Nobel Laureates, and others in the field who were very informed and accomplished amateur artists, historians, musicians and even photographers. Scientists are people, with all of the virtues and faults of anyone else, who basically pursue a logic based on the what is known about a subject and how to apply that knowledge (which, by the way, is a paraphrase of the definition of "common sense").