Is That Sniffle a Cold? Or Is It COVID? Sarah Maslin Nir - New York Times
go to original December 20, 2021

A positive result from a Covid-19 rapid antigen test (Octavio Jones/Reuters)

The symptoms of the common cold are typically a stuffy head, the sniffles and body aches.

Now, this season, there’s a new one: panic.

As the latest coronavirus variant races through recently reopened offices, holiday parties and family gatherings, signs of an ailment that was once an annoying winter perennial — eased with bed rest and chicken soup — now set minds racing. In New York City, the slightest sniffle has people canceling holiday plans and packing coronavirus testing centers, where in recent days lines have stretched for blocks.

Is it a cold? Or is it COVTD?

With new information that the highly contagious Omicron variant can penetrate two vaccine shots and a booster, it has become emotionally upending to feel under the weather, New Yorkers say.

“Having other ailments in the middle of a pandemic feels almost like an insult,” said Tal Lavin, a 32-year-old author from Manhattan, who has taken three at-home coronavirus tests — all negative — since she came down with an apparent cold last week. “I have thought so much about this disease for the past two years that any potential brush with it feels a bit monumental.”

Many cannot shed overwhelming anxiety in the face of Covid, a pathogen that has killed nearly 800,000 Americans — even when tests and retests have shown that they actually have a more mundane illness.

Despite receiving negative tests, some people keep burning through at-home coronavirus swabs just to stay calm. Others with in-the-clear test results and drippy noses say they are still secluding or masking even at home until the sneezing stops — just in case.

The worry is particularly intense because last year, many people had fewer colds and flus: Behavior changes and measures put in place to quell the coronavirus also reduced the transmission of other bugs. This season, as Zoom social hours and virtual school have been replaced with in-person parties and classrooms, the flu and other bugs are slinking back, according to public health officials.

When vaccination began last winter, there was a bullish belief in the vaccines’ near-total protection that has since given way to a grim new understanding: Wily strains of coronavirus can still break through, though vaccination greatly reduces serious illness.

And now, the virus is newly resurgent.

Read the rest at The New York Times

Related: You Tested Positive for COVID. Now What? (The New York Times)