(1) Interesting ethical COVID-related dillema:
1. After a few days sick I got tested on April the 7th. The symptoms were dry cough, fever, shortness of breath (severe). Through auscultation, it was not pneumonia "yet".
1. After a few days sick I got tested on April the 7th. The symptoms were dry cough, fever, shortness of breath (severe). Through auscultation, it was not pneumonia "yet".
(2) It took 5 days to get the test back and I got worse: clearly pneumonia by the sound of it.. Much worse. The test came back negative. Talking to the physician, we decided for a course of levofloxacin:
(3) this is the third pneumonia episode I have in the past 8 months in the time I developed adult-onset-asthma in Oklahoma, after the attack on June the 3rd 2017. So we'll rule out a bacterial pneumonia the way we can. They still thought it could be a false negative.
(4) Yesterday was the day-before-the-last day of levofloxacin and I wasn't really better. It wasn't bacterial. So we went for the strongest course of prednisone I had up to now: 40mg/day.
(5) On the first day it was great. Today, I had a bad fever, went to be shivering at 2PM, woke up 3 hours later.
(6) As my physician friends point out, it now is much more likely a false negative.
(7) Should I be tested again? For my own sake, no: I already survived this shit. What about for public statistics sake? Shouldn't I add my case to the case load.
(8) Good question, isn't it? Because all through the United States and worse, other places of the world, the population is being undertested.
(9) Here is my take: ethically, it would be correct. However also ethically, considering the shortage of test kits and the murderous manner by which the federal administration is handling this pandemic, no.
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* went to bed
