The Famulare family COVID saga continues. Up today: rebound 🤬
x.com/famulare_mike/status/1895616959083053369
With my wife Marisa's consent, here is our estimated nose/throat viral load history relative to peak since I first tested positive on day 2 of my symptoms. We're both experiencing rebound!
Here's the same with log10-y. So yeah, we've both rebounded. I took paxlovid days 3-7 (and have been on metformin since day 2). My load crashed by day 7 and went negative days 9 and 10. Marisa hasn't had any treatments, and never went negative, but 10-fold rebound regardless.
BTW I described how to turn rapid test color into a quantitative assay here x.com/famulare_mike/status/1894899637217304636, and here's the code and data github.com/famulare/famulare.github.io/tree/master/assets/2025-02-26-My-First-COVID-Infection.
First, it's annoying! We're very ready to be done. We're tired of not having Marisa's parents visit. Of masking around our toddler (who hasn't caught it yet, as far as tests and symptoms say). Of runny noses. Of being tired. And Marisa, who has had it worse, is tired of coughing!
But, because at least it's fascinating, I've been doing a lot of rapid tests on interesting samples on myself. So let's get into some interesting stuff.
I tested on day 11 after testing negative twice because I noticed my nose was running just a little bit more and I was a bit more tired than the day before, and I was curious about rebound. Sure enough, I got a very faint positive.
That night, I was visited by GI distress! This is not a big surprise as we know COVID is shed in stool and can settle in the gut for the long haul, especially in someone like me who takes a B-cell-depleting therapy for MS and can't make new antibodies.
That said, I've tried three different approaches to get a fecal rapid test, but all have been negative. But I can't be sure if the virus isn't there or the tests don't work with that medium...
- first try: sample probably too acidic: got weird transient positives on flu B and rsv but always covid-neg
- second: swab of solids, one minute in buffer, covid-negative
- third, swab of toilet water + solids, 5 minutes in buffer, covid-negative
@SolidEvidence thoughts?
So anyway, stool sampling with rapid tests has been a letdown, but mask, hepa, nose, and throat sampling have been interesting! Here's a panel of days I tested samples from sites other than combined nose-throat. Y-axis is est. viral load relative to nose-throat day 2 (peak).
First up, masks. tl;dr: mask and nose viral load tell different stories over time! And I'm very likely a lot less infectious via the air now than at the start.
As discussed here, on day 2, I was able to pull virus off a mask worn for an hour x.com/famulare_mike/status/1893095652462338263. In front of the mouth was highest viral load, with a very little but non-zero positive away from the mouth. (Wasn't negative like I originally said.)
Overnight from day 2 to day 3, I was able to pull virus off a mask put inside my bedside hepa filter, showing that SARS-CoV-2 was travelling on fine aerosols. You see that quantified here, as the day 3 hepa measurement. x.com/famulare_mike/status/1893370704663568511
On day 8, my nose-throat viral load dropped by a factor of 1000, give or take, and my mask sample was negative, despite wearing it for 11 hours. So good, nose way down, aerosol negative.
x.com/famulare_mike/status/1895616959083053369
But, on day 12, my nose/throat sample is hot a hell again! Dammit, how infectious am I???
I wore a clean mask for 4.25 hours, through work, talking, singning Moo Baa Fa La La to my daughter, etc. Tested the mask. It was barely positive--at the limit of detection but it's there.
But quantitatively, while my nose swab viral load on day 12 was about ~1/2 of the value on day 2 (so basically the same), the mask viral load is at least 500x lower! Overnight hepa was negative. This is great! There was very likely zero SARS-CoV-2 in my lungs last night.
Even more interestingly, I tested nose and throat independently, instead of with a combined swab. Nose is strongly positive, almost exactly the same test-line-contrast-adjusted level as the nose-throad swab earlier that day. And the throat-only swab was negative.
Throat-only negative. Mask barely barely positive. Nose hot as hell. So?
It's very likely I've got no infectious breath, no infectious spit, but very infectious snot. My only symptoms right now are fading GI, and one stuffy nostril.
NOW I STILL BETTER KEEP WASHING MY HANDS 😂
So anyway, there's what I hope is a fascinating look into a single infection history, so far. I'm disappointed the stool tests are negative, but, as my symptoms calm down, I hope it's because there's very little virus there. I also really hope my wife and I clear this thing soon.
Until then, I'll let you know if anything else interesting comes up. Thanks for reading along!
You can read the unrolled version of this thread here: typefully.com/famulare_mike/by5EIud
Mike Famulare
@famulare_mike
Like polio, Twitter lingers on. Learning to be a father, husband, and person. Systems epidemiologist, see Google Scholar. All tweets mine alone, not my employer
