By:
In: COVID, Sex

After eleven days of rebound COVID, I finally tested negative. I can’t complain. I never got very sick. There was no fever or coughing. I had a stuffy nose most nights that could have been my allergies. The only definite COVID symptom is that I’ve lost most of my sense of taste and smell. I also tire easily. A summer cold is more unpleasant.

My rebound COVID wasn’t unusual. It’s almost always without serious symptoms. I believe that our vaccinations and prompt use of Paxlovid spared us from getting very sick. Of course, it would have been much better if we avoided catching it at all. I’m grateful that we made it through. We are certainly going to wear masks in public going forward. No one knows how long immunity lasts. The only way to stop this disease is to prevent its spread.

I’m hoping we’ll be able to try out our new massage table soon. I think we both need another day or two before we go for it. I am curious how Mrs. Lion will decide to christen it. My imagination isn’t too active right now. I will just wait and see.

During the time I’ve been infected, I’ve kept writing. I hope my new book is better than the last one.

By:
In: COVID, Chastity hardware

Mrs. Lion tested negative for COVID on Thursday night. She still feels tired and achy. I was still positive. I feel like I have a mild cold with a stuffy nose and am sort of tired. If it doesn’t get any worse, I’ll be happy. I’m fully functional, just a bit slower than usual.

Despite asking readers to avoid getting political about my post yesterday (“Answering Some COVID Questions“), one Republican with poor reading skills posted a long diatribe. I just don’t understand why a discussion of medical information can inflame some people. For the record, I don’t care if you get vaccinated or not. I do care that if you get sick, vaccinated or not, you isolate yourself until you are no longer positive for COVID. The tests are free. Use them.

We’re isolating. It isn’t very different from what we usually do. I’m glad that Mrs. Lion is better. I’m going to be reviewing the Holy Trainer v5 as soon as I have more energy. I wore it for a while before I got sick, and it was amazingly comfortable.

I’ve been following my rules faithfully. It’s been 30 days since my last spanking. I know I’m due for a “just because” spanking as soon as I get better. The new massage table is still in its shipping box. We’ll use it when we both feel better.

Everything is on hold here. It has to be. Politics aside, we are very lucky so far. I’m grateful to medical science.

By:
In: COVID

Since we both got COVID and then rebound COVID, I have been doing some research on the subject. Here’s what I learned (references omitted because I’m not feeling well enough to provide them)

I’m fully vaccinated and boosted, or I had COVID before. Why am I sick now? The omicron variants have been shown to work around COVID immunities. That means there is no way to be immunized against it. That’s why Mrs. Lion and I were infected.

If this is true, why bother to be vaccinated? Good question. Even though the current vaccine and boosters don’t provide full immunity, they offer significant protection from severe disease and hospitalization. We didn’t get very sick at all.

You took Paxlovid to knock out the disease. We did. Paxlovid combines two antiviral drugs that prevent COVID from infecting new cells. We both felt fine and tested negative four days after starting it.

Didn’t you get rebound COVID? We did. About a week after testing negative, we both felt under the weather. A home test revealed that we were infected. The symptoms are mild (like a mild cold).

What does that say about Paxlovid? A recent study showed that the drug is effective, but there are a couple of issues that probably cause rebound infections. The first is that the drug isn’t given long enough. The study suggests that if Paxlovid is taken longer, it would probably stop rebound infections. Another possible reason is that some people may metabolize the drug too quickly.

Why not take paxlovid longer? This is the hardest thing for me to accept. According to Pfizer, the purpose of Paxlovid is to prevent severe disease and hospitalization. So far, no patient with rebound COVID has required hospitalization. The CDC advises not to give any further medication for rebound COVID. Our doctors told us that, and we confirmed by reading the CDC notices.

What the hell? I always thought that the idea of immunization and medication was to either prevent or cure a disease. Medical science doesn’t agree. Immunization is considered effective if it prevents severe illness and death. The COVID vaccines and boosters reduce hospitalization by over 90%. They also reduce the death rate to near zero. No, it doesn’t stop all infections. It stops a lot and reduces the severity of the rest.

Paxlovid is similar. It made us feel better and test negative in just a few days. We were shocked when we got sick and tested positive a week later. Mrs. Lion does feel tired and stuffy, but she feels well enough to go to work (she works from home). I have the same symptoms and am well enough to work on my book. We don’t have fevers and agree that we aren’t very sick.

The biggest risk we pose is infecting others. We’re self-isolating. That’s not a big deal for us. We don’t particularly like to go out. Not too bad when you consider that COVID has killed over a million Americans.

SECURITY note to fellow bloggers

We have been attacked using a vulnerability exposed by WordPress supporting a function that has been long deprecated. Our site didn’t go down because we are on a powerful cloud server. However, when I looked at our activity for the last 24 hours I found over 400,000 calls to xmlrpc.php. This is a program that WordPress used to facilitate communication with the outside world. They replaced this functionality years ago, but left xmlrpc in place for backward compatibility.

It’s easy to protect yourself. If you have a WordPress blog, you can add the “Disable XML-RPC” plugin. When you activate it, xmlrpc.php is disabled and the hackers can’t get to it. We did it with no issues on our site.

By:
In: COVID

As you probably read, Lion has COVID too. I don’t know who gave it to me, but I most certainly gave it to Lion. It wasn’t intentional, of course. I spent a day or two feeling like garbage, but that may be because I was still doing quite a bit between the sale of the truck and camper and keeping the house running. Yesterday wasn’t so bad until I had to get Lion’s antiviral drugs. I just took it easy for the rest of the day and I’m feeling less sick every day.

Lion was certain he was dying last night. He’s always certain he’s dying when he has a cold or the flu. I’m not sure if COVID or the antiviral made him feel worse. Today, he’s still tired but he’s not dying. I told him to stay in bed, but he ventured into his office for a little while this morning. Once I do a few things, I’m heading back to lie down. There’s no reason either of us has to be up and about. Of course, we’ll need to pee and get food and drinks from time to time, but we should relax for the most part.

Every time I look at the backyard, I am reminded that the truck and camper are gone. I can’t tell you how relieved I am. We are no longer under pressure to pay for the camper, and we saved more because we don’t have to insure them. And, this is my bonus, I don’t have to drive them anymore. I didn’t mind driving the truck. It wasn’t my favorite, but it was okay. I didn’t even mind towing the camper. It was parking it in our narrow little driveway that annoyed me. Anyway, it’s nice not to worry about that anymore.

I haven’t heard about Lion being horny for a few days. It makes perfect sense. He shouldn’t be if he’s sick, but you never know with him. He’s a lot better today. For all I know, he’ll be looking for love tonight. He has a punishment waiting for him for leaving the shower door open. I was willing to overlook it, but he said I could just postpone it until we feel better. He “helpfully” moved the magnet over on the whiteboard. I’m still willing to forget it. The truth is, he’ll probably do something else before I punish him for the shower door. If that happens, I won’t add five minutes. It will be like the shower door never happened. As if, oh I don’t know, I overlooked it to begin with, which is what I wanted to do in the first place. Sometimes Lion can be stubborn. I think he forgets I can be stubborn too.