Staying Safe from the Flu, Covid, Infections, and all that other Stuff
by Steve McGill
In early November, the nurse at the school where I teach brought in an outside pharmacist to administer vaccines. I signed up for a flu shot and a Covid booster, as the nurse and the pharmacist said that taking both at the same time would not be problematic. I hesitated, as, when the Covid vaccine first became available a few years ago, I’d been told that I shouldn’t get it until at least a few weeks after getting the flu shot. But when I asked, I was assured that that rule no longer applied. The pharmacist said I’d feel mild symptoms over the weekend (it was a Friday) but that I should be fine by Monday. I wasn’t fine by Monday. I had to call in sick on Monday. I was down for the count for the entire weekend. Though I returned to work on Tuesday, I was feeling under the weather for the rest of the week.
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Fast forward to December 17th, a Sunday, the day after I had attended an all-day indoor meet at the JDL facility in Winston Salem, NC. Holiday break had begun and I was looking forward to getting in some good sessions with some of my athletes in my private coaching, and I also planned to get back into my own exercise routine of walking a few miles every morning. But as I was driving to the train station in Charlotte to pick up my wife who was returning from visiting her sister, I started to feel heavy and sluggish and a bit stuffed up in the nasal passages. That feeling worsened as the day went on, and by the time I woke up the next morning, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus. Both of my nostrils were clogged, I felt an intense pressure all through my nose and ears and around my eyes. I was like, this must be the new Covid, extra-strength version. My wife later explained to me that I had a sinus infection, as she has had plenty of them before. I had never had one before, so I didn’t know what was going on.
Long story short, I lay in bed for a whole week, blowing my nose incessantly. When my daughter and her boyfriend came to visit on Christmas Eve, I mustered the strength to hang out downstairs with the family, but felt utterly exhausted by the time my daughter and her boyfriend left two days later. By the end of the second week of my two weeks off, I felt good enough to go to practice. But basically, I was sick for the whole two weeks. What a garbage holiday season for Steve!
The fact that I got sick wasn’t what bothered me. It was the fact that I had gotten so sick and that I had stayed sick for so long. I was wondering if it had something to do with getting older, with not taking care of myself, etc. But when I returned to school, there were several students out with the flu or Covid or a cold. So it wasn’t just me. I also noticed that coughing and nose-blowing and sneezing had become very common in the classroom and in the hallways. It seemed like everybody in the world was sick. Which got me thinking that, since the end of the pandemic period, when many people were wearing masks in public and many of us were significantly reducing the amount of time we spent in public, these other illnesses — sinus infections, flus, colds, etc. had become more virulent and more debilitating than before the good old days of 2019 and earlier, when catching a cold did not set off any alarm bells.
My wife agreed with my theory, saying simply, “People aren’t wearing masks anymore.” So I decided to do a little research to see if my theory held true.
What I found did in fact confirm my thoughts, but I unfortunately didn’t find much beyond the obvious regarding prevention of these flu-like illnesses. In a New York Times article by columnist Knvul Sheikh that was published on December 15, 2023, Sheikh writes, “These days, the background music of my life is a chorus of coughing and sneezing. At work, colleagues complain of scratchy throats…. At home, my daughter returns from day care with a backpack full of construction paper crafts and, more often than not, a runny nose.” In an NBC News article published June 11, 2023, columnist Katie Camero asserts that the pandemic changed everything. “Once upon a time,” she writes, “say 2019, scratchy throats and runny noses were expected realities of the common cold…. But the pandemic, for better or for worse, has fundamentally shifted how we think about respiratory illnesses and the hundreds of viruses that cause them.”
Indeed, every cough or sneeze or runny nose or tightness in the chest could potentially mean a Covid diagnosis and/or an extended, lingering illness, and maybe five days of quarantining oneself. So we’re all a little bit paranoid when we’re out in public, and rightfully so. In an article on the website of the World Economic Forum, columnist Stephen Hall points out that all the masking and isolation during the pandemic weakened people’s immune systems. That would explain why these common illnesses have grown more severe and longer-lasting. “During pandemic-related lockdowns,” Hall writes, “it wasn’t just the spread of Covid-19 being halted. Inevitably, other infections also waned, as school children stayed at home, offices closed their doors and face masks became a normal public sight. Now with societies opened up again, infections are on the rise.”
The website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers the following suggestions for preventing flu and Covid-like illnesses, most of which is common sense: stay away from people who are sick, stay home when sick, cover your mouth and nose when sneezing or coughing, wash your hands often, don’t touch your face with your hands, eat healthily, get regular exercise, avoid stressors as much as possible.
Because the indoor season takes place at the height of the flu/Covid season, the setting of indoor meets obviously lends itself to a greater risk of catching one of these illnesses. Though I have no direct proof, I’m convinced that I caught my sinus infection at the indoor meet in December, as I began feeling symptoms the day after. Most indoor meets feature a whole lot of people in a very crowded space. So it’s not really possible to avoid people who might be sick. Masking might be plausible while not competing or warming up, but it becomes rather implausible while competing or warming up. Therefore, the best advice I can give is to follow the basic guidelines as outlined by the CDC, and when going home after a meet, take a shower immediately. The best any of us can do is reduce the chances of catching something, but eliminating the chances entirely cannot be done.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/well/covid-winter-sick-cold.html
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/02/other-infections-rising-since-covid-pandemic/
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/actions-prevent-flu.htm
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