I'm trying to figure out what's going on with me health-wise. I got shots late March/April and a couple of weeks ago at least 2 of the people who work at the day care my 2 year old goes to tested positive for rona, so she's been at home with me. Around the same time her day care shut down I started feeling a little weird in the back of my throat, then sort of a head cold + massive stomach problems last Saturday, taste and smell went away for a day (could only smell coffee if I stuck my nose in a bag of it), and throughout the week the head stuff decreased and it felt like more of something going on in the back of my throat and my voice went away completely for a day or so. No fever, not a ton of coughing and nose drainage, and I took a test at CVS which came back negative. Late last week/this weekend I could cough up a little olive green/yellow stuff and my voice has been slowly coming back (and less green/yellow coming up in the morning).

The entire time I've been taking Mucinex, Airborne, and tylenol/advil when I had a headache

I've been told that I probably had the newer version of covid but the test was a false negative due to the fact that I was vaccinated and am somehow less contagious. Does that make any sense or were they completely off base?

The Fife said:

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I've been told that I probably had the newer version of covid but the test was a false negative due to the fact that I was vaccinated and am somehow less contagious.

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The stomach issues and loss of taste/smell after being around your covid positive kid is a sure indication you had/have the rona.

You probably have much less of a viral load because you were vaccinated and yes, maybe (?) that's why you got a false negative. False negatives happen a small % of the time regardless of vaccination status.

Was it the binaxNow test kit?

Did you take the second test?
Are you sure it was negative? The insert made it seem like the lowest positive would be pretty easy to miss.

GI issues was the first symptom we experienced when we had Covid in March 2020, so I would not assume the Delta strain (though it could be). Exhaustion, dry cough came on the next few days, and we never ran fevers. We felt better by about day 4, but I lost my sense of smell (my spouse didn't) on day 7. It took about a month to return.

Seems plausible but perhaps you should have taken a PCR test. Due to PCR's ability to detect smaller amounts of virus, it would have come back positive if you had any COVID in your system. I think the rapid tests are not really as reliable unless you are carrying a high viral load.

Rapid antigen swabs have been horribly unreliable, at least in my personal experience.

Wouldn't rapid tests detect any kind of corona virus, which were present before covid? Or is that BS?

Duncan Idaho said:

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Was it the binaxNow test kit?

Did you take the second test?
Are you sure it was negative? The insert made it seem like the lowest positive would be pretty easy to miss.

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I'm not sure which test it was - it was in the drive through at a CVS where you shove a long q tip up your nose and move it around for a few seconds on each side, break it in half, put it in a little vial and put it in the speciman pickup box where they take all of them the next day. I feel like maybe if there was a throat swab since I never had nasal congestion it may have worked better,

My 2 year old was never sick, it was a couple of the people who work there. She's had a cough for a couple of weeks but has been otherwise fine. No clue if it's allergies or what, but she tested negative with a 15 minute test at her pediatrician anyway.

Any clue on how to get my voice to fully come back? This weekend I started having ginger tea a couple of times a day and it seems to help a little.

Actually not sure, perhaps that's the case. All I know is that when you go and get a rapid test you are getting less reliable results that the PCR which is the gold standard. If you really want to be sure if you have COVID, the PCR test is the way to go.

The Fife said:

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Duncan Idaho said:

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Was it the binaxNow test kit?

Did you take the second test?
Are you sure it was negative? The insert made it seem like the lowest positive would be pretty easy to miss.

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I'm not sure which test it was - it was in the drive through at a CVS where you shove a long q tip up your nose and move it around for a few seconds on each side, break it in half, put it in a little vial and put it in the speciman pickup box where they take all of them the next day. I feel like maybe if there was a throat swab since I never had nasal congestion it may have worked better,

My 2 year old was never sick, it was a couple of the people who work there. She's had a cough for a couple of weeks but has been otherwise fine. No clue if it's allergies or what, but she tested negative with a 15 minute test at her pediatrician anyway.

Any clue on how to get my voice to fully come back? This weekend I started having ginger tea a couple of times a day and it seems to help a little.

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You can see on the report form which test you took.

The binaxNow test is the self test that you take at home.

So it doesn't sound like it was that one.

It says Quest SARS-COV-2 RNA, QL NAAT, RT PCR/TMA

followed by a giant paragraph about how a not detected result might not mean you don't have it. Maybe I didn't shove the q tip up high enough like the person who tested me before surgery did. That one made my eyes water!

I'm a homebody anyway so it's not like anyone else is catching whatever I have. My voice is continuing to slowly recover; there's actual volume to it now so I can speak on webex meetings.

Yep, it seems like you took the PCR which is the most sensitive and accurate test. Based on the results you weren't carrying COVID. Perhaps it was something else non-COVID that got to you.

I guess since covid, no one ever gets colds anymore. This couldn't be a cold. It must be covid.

I'm told it's still going around among one more worker and some kids+parents from day care. The common factor with all of them who tested positive has been diahrea. Like drank the water in Mexico bad, and also headache. I definitely had both, the former much worse than the later.

If I had to choose between this and norovirus making its rounds at home I'll take this. Sitting on the floor of the shower for an hour (me) or hosing off bedsheets on the sidewalk at 2AM (kids) and watching them like a hawk while keeping it from spreading is worse.

My roommate is a doctor in Louisiana and he says this wave has had diarrhea - like bad, for ten days - with almost all covid patients. So much so they were worried they had some other infection or problem going on so they checked samples for all kinds of things. They can't sequence so they don't know if its delta (assuming it is) but he says that is different than before.

Ten days is about right. This is the Montezuma's variant.

KidDoc said:

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False negative test you have COVID but likely going to be very mild due to vaccine.

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And it's No Co-pay Thursday to boot!