A new study found that more than a third of those who recovered from an infection had symptoms recur days or weeks later.
When the antiviral treatment Paxlovid came into wider use for Covid-19 infections earlier this year, doctors who prescribed it and patients who took it noticed that symptoms sometimes flared up again a few days after having gone away. Some people even tested negative before they experienced the rebound. But this puzzling phenomenon can occur whether you take Paxlovid or not, according to a new study. Researchers found that when patients received a placebo instead of treatment, a portion of them still experienced a rebound of their symptoms after they had initially improved.
To understand the natural variability in coronavirus symptoms, Dr. Smith and his team tracked 158 clinical trial participants who had tested positive for Covid from August to November 2020. Each person kept a daily diary and marked 13 different Covid symptoms as being absent, mild, moderate or severe. Among the 108 people whose symptoms had improved without antiviral treatment, and had completely disappeared for at least two consecutive days, 48 people (44 percent of those who recovered) noted that symptoms flared up again at various times during four weeks of follow-up.
Yes, there is plenty of evidence some people aren't able to clear the virus, or that remnants remain and trigger the immune system.
It's also becoming better at evading our immune system in general, so being full of antibodies from a vaccine or recent infection may not be enough to stop it and repeated infections within a short period of time are possible.
My 3-year old nephew got COVID twice this past summer within the span of 4 weeks. He has also been hospitalized twice in recent months with croup (he tested positive for COVID one of those times, too), and I read articles saying that Omicron can cause severe croup in young children. So I am not surprised at all when I hear about all of these schools having most people infected with COVID or flu or RSV at the same time, especially given how COVID depletes t-cells and the like.
The COVID response (or lack thereof) is just fucking insanity.
:this-is-fine: