Mark Lane: Remember COVID? A reminder: It’s still around

As a public service, let me remind you that COVID is still a thing.

Not the business-closing, school-canceling, scary thing we saw four years ago, but it’s still around. And its numbers are increasing this summer because of its latest variants.

I say this from experience, having just gotten over a case myself. I was traveling on vacation in California, moving through crowded airports, packed public transit, bustling bars, busy restaurants, sitting in Lyft cars and hiking through parks and vineyards when it hit me.

I could have picked up the virus anywhere. The time between infection and symptoms can be anywhere between two and 14 days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A big range that makes pinpointing your exposure impossible. Still, I blame the airports because nobody likes airports.

Yes, COVID and age are a thing

This is my second round with the disease. I had it two years ago. So despite being vaccinated, boosted and having had experience with it, I still caught COVID again. Immunities, both natural and from vaccines, only last so long.

Visiting with family out of state, I also saw firsthand the effects of age on COVID suffering. We all had it at the same time. The baby brushed it off in two days; her mom was OK in three days; her grandmother was OK in four days, and I felt it for a week. Truth to tell, I’m still just a little slowed down. People over 65 are particularly vulnerable.

It all started as just a little sniff. The kind of sniffle I ignored because I’d been in the great outdoors, around the kinds of unfamiliar plant life that my sinuses often object to. Thought nothing of it. But after two days of minor sniffing, the symptoms came down hard. The home-testing kit displayed the dreaded twin bars. I had to camp out in a hotel room for a couple of days until I could rejoin society.

Endorsement: I can attest to Paxlovid’s ability to turn things around. That medicine is a combination of two antiviral drugs that you take over five days. It can make your tongue feel like you’ve eaten a flashlight battery, but that goes away.

This happened during a national uptick in COVID infections. Like most viruses, COVID keeps evolving, and there are several new and improved variants out there doing their work. These feature small changes that make them more likely to get past your immunities from past encounters.

The new top variants are called FLiRT, so-called because of the names of the amino acids involved. These are subvariants of the omicron variant. Let’s just call that one COVID classic since it’s been around since the fall of 2021.

More: Hearing more people cough? The COVID summer surge may be coming back in Florida

More: COVID numbers are creeping back up nationwide, but not so much in Florida

Expect regular seasonal spikes

A new vaccine should be available in the fall, just in time for my natural immunity to start fizzling out. I see more travel in my future, so expect to see me at the local pharmacy with my sleeve rolled up.

Looking back, this round felt different from COVID classic: lighter fever, more digestive upset, and shorter duration. It brought home to me that COVID will continue to be with us with regular seasonal spikes and valleys like the flu. This fall’s vaccine rollout will not be the last.

This new bout made me appreciate how much COVID has already affected my life. The virus kicked me out of the newsroom and into a new career phase as a work-from-homer. And after that grim pre-vaccine year of shelter-from-home isolation, I now embrace travel even more because I feel the need to make up for lost time.

And it brought home the unpleasant truth that I’m at an age where my immune system, a so-far excellent system that has allowed me to walk unharmed amidst clouds of questionable microbes in all kinds of places, now needs a little more help than in the past.

Next time, I’ll wear a mask at the airport. Don’t let that bug you.

Mark Lane is a News-Journal columnist. His email is mlanewrites@gmail.com.ReplyForward

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Mark Lane: COVID's new variant, FLiRT, is surging this summer