Thread by @SMImmunology

I am an immunologist who teaches about #COVID19 immunology at @SchulichMedDent , generally healthy with no co-morbidities and had 3 mRNA vaccines. Got #Omicron and still ended up in the hospital. Here is my COVID anecdote.

It started mild for me with only some headache and head pressure, and minor fatigue. My wife had her symptoms before me. She had a sore throat, fatigue, cough, and some lower limb pains. My 5-year-old had no symptoms.

We got exposed by a friend who came to our house asymptomatic with a negative antigen test. Do not completely rely on rapid antigen tests. These are useful tools with a lot of flaws, especially with Omicron. My wife was symptomatic for 3 days before she tested + on RATs

I never tested + on RATs and only tested + on a PCR test. So in my anecdotal experience, the RATs are not very reliable. My headaches got worse and started to feel more tired but I kept working (from home) as I felt able to do so. After 5 days, I crashed and had to be taken...

...to the hospital with fluctuating blood pressure, severe dehydration, vertigo, dizziness, a terrible headache, and abdominal pain. I had no cough or sore throat.

They ran some tests and I was lymphopenic. It was surreal as I tell students COVID can wipe your white blood cells (mostly transiently). My WBC counts recovered after a few days but then I became anemic with low RBC, hem, etc.

They sent me home that night so I didn't stay overnight. I started having these ungodly COVID fatigues that you can only describe to someone who got COVID and has experienced these. These lasted for about a week. I still feel them sometimes.

It is true that most people's experience with omicron can be described as a mild infection but for others, this can be life-altering. At this point in the pandemic, it is not good enough to say our vaccines prevent death. We need better vaccines to prevent mild/moderate disease.

The virus is changing from the Wuhan strain and now we need variant-specific vaccines. Perhaps a similar strategy to what we have in place for flu. Having said that at every step of the way, the care providers told how massively vaccines changed the patient outcomes.

We also need better therapies. As a healthy person, I was not eligible to get PAXLOVID but it probably costed the system way more so far to care for me. This is a specific problem in the Canadian health care system. We need better therapeutics for COVID.

We also need a system to help COVID patients access these therapies faster as most anti-viral drugs are only effective in the first few days of the infection. We need barriers to be removed for better access to therapeutics.

I want to thank all the amazing health care providers who looked after me. From the EMT team to the ER nurses and physicians, and my family doctor who offered to see me in the parking lot because they could not allow a COVID patient in the building.

Also, I want to thank many of my colleagues at @LHSCCanada who were directly or indirectly involved in my care. For us to move to endemicity, we need to have better vaccines and better therapies for COVID. This virus is not going anywhere and you don't know how it will impact you