...and some not-so-good personal news...

Hot on my announcement that I've been asked to join the board of directors of Doctors For America, I have some less pleasant personal news to report as well: After dodging it for nearly 2 1/2 years and obsessively tracking cases & fatalities connected to it for most of that time, I finally tested positive for COVID-19 myself a few days ago.

I actually started feeling slightly off about two weeks ago, but I also happened to get my 4th vaccination shot (or 2nd booster, if you prefer) right around the same time, so for the first few days I just assumed I was having stronger-than-usual side effects from the shot.

By last Wednesday, it was clearly something more serious, but a home-based COVID test came back negative so I figured it was just a really nasty head cold + seasonal allergies. By Friday my wife was also experiencing symptoms and she ended up having a miserable Mother's Day weekend...while I was starting to recover.

On Monday both of us went in for formal PCR tests, and I tested positive even though I had mostly recovered by then...but surprisingly, and similarly to my home test, she tested negative even though she was still very symptomatic. I've since been told that this is actually a fairly common thing with the latest Omicron variant--testing negative while symptomatic, then testing positive a few days later. Huh.

In any event, all three of us (my wife, myself and our high schooler son, who's also been hit with it) are currently isolating at home for the next few days, so he gets the week off from school.

Thankfully, all three of us are triple-vaccinated (4x in my case), which is likely why at least two of us aren't in the hospital or dead right now (my wife has asthma & other respiratory issues, as well as already having Long COVID from the start of the pandemic, and I'm overweight, so we're both considered high risk).

Get vaccinated.

Get boosted.

Wear a mask (indoors in public).