Baby's Day Out and Night Blacked Out:P

I keep messing up on the medical math here.  On Friday, I referred to that being "day six" of the COVID Count (uh uh uh) when it was actually five. This piece summarizes the latest in the ever-changing COVID rules on the subject, beginning with how to count:

The CDC states that isolation for those who have COVID is counted in days, but it depends on if you are exhibiting systems or not.

If you have no symptoms:

    Day 0 is the day you were tested (not the day you received your positive test result)
    Day 1 is the first full day following the day you were tested
    If you develop symptoms within 10 days of when you were tested, the clock restarts at day 0 on the day of symptom onset

If you have symptoms:

    Day 0 of isolation is the day of symptom onset, regardless of when you tested positive
    Day 1 is the first full day after the day your symptoms started

Right. So for me, at least, Day 0 was a week ago today, Day 5 was Friday just past, and we are now on Day 7.  Earlier, I would now be only halfway through a two-week quarantine, but they've now changed that:

If you test positive for COVID-19, the guidance states that you should stay home for at least five days and isolate from others in your home. You are likely the most infectious during these first five days.

When you end isolation, you should still avoid being around people who are most at-risk until at least day 11.

After you have ended isolation, you'll also need to wear a mask through day 10, per the guidelines. The CDC also notes, however, that if you have access to antigen tests, "you should consider using them."

"With two sequential negative tests 48 hours apart, you may remove your mask sooner than day 10," the guidance states, adding that if your antigen test results are positive, "you may still be infectious."

Those who continue to test positive shouldn't stop following other precautions.

"You should continue wearing a mask and wait at least 48 hours before taking another test," the CDC  recommends. "Continue taking antigen tests at least 48 hours apart until you have two sequential negative results. This may mean you need to continue wearing a mask and testing beyond day 10."

If your symptoms worsen or return after you end isolation, you'll need to restart your isolation at day 0, per the guidelines.

The symptoms haven't worsened, they're just hanging on- and that appears not to be the least bit unusual for this dreaded beast. The one account I read that sounded closest to my own situation came from longtime WaitWait panelist and overall racounteur Charlie Pierce:

I have just had my second negative COVID test in a week. This came after I spent a week in the Paxlovid hoosegow. So now I’m a part of history. I would point out that I was fully vaxxed and boosted months before I came up positive. I wore masks only where I thought they were necessary (public transportation, air travel, the U.S. Capitol), and I noticed that often I was one of the few who were masked. I also had to listen to elected meatheads talk about how wearing a mask was tantamount to being tossed in a Ugandan prison under Idi Amin. I left the mask on to troll them, and so they wouldn’t notice how hard it was for me to stifle a laugh.

I caught the damn thing anyway.

Luckily, my symptoms were very mild: one night of GI complications, followed by the mother of all head colds and some exhaustion that I wouldn’t wish on Matt Gaetz. The exhaustion is the only symptom that’s hanging on. It could be a lot worse. And, let me tell you, Pax Mouth is an adult portion. If you need to go on the regime, when you go pick up your prescription, buy as many peppermint Lifesavers as you can fit in your trunk and take it as a given that your mouth is going to be a Superfund site for a week or so.

The "Pax" he refers to there is an antiviral he apparently got put on called Paxlovid, which has potty mouth among its many undesired side effects.  I haven't taken the stuff, but I've wound up with Bad Taste In My Mouth anyway. I wouldn't say it's as bad as the "grapefruit juice mixed with soap" combo referenced in the Atlantic piece, and it's much preferable to losing my sense of taste completely (which has NOT happened, fortunately), but it's still not fun.

GI complications? Check, but fortunately in check since my earlier earth science experiments.  Cold symptoms, yes but they are down; but the exhaustion remains, and that's what worries me the most. It's especially since Eleanor hasn't had that particular symptom, and she's out working in the yard, two to four hours at a time, while I'm still barely able to sit in front of a computer and write. I keep reminding myself that we are different, our bodies react differently, and I shouldn't feel pressure to race back into activity until my immune system does what it needs to do.  We're also getting on each others' nerves more than usual, which is also not surprising, since we're not usually in such close quarters as constantly for as long. There's also an element of increased cognitive impairment for me, be it not hearing as well or just not able to pay as much attention.

So it helped that when yesterday really DID hit Day Six on the count-up, I was able to leave the building a few times. I'd done so a few times previously, but all limited as much as possible to my office after-hours or to dropoffs and drive-throughs.  I started yesterday with our first Wegmans run since we were both diagnosed; then headed back out a second time out to get mail from the office; and finally made a run to an ATM and for pizza last night.  It wasn't a lot of socializing, but it helped lift my spirits some.

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Yesterday presented a distraction I usually don't get: the chance to see the Mets on an actual television set.

Almost all of their telecasts are on a New York based channel called SNY (Sportsnet New York), but we don't get SNY games through our limited access to cable. We cut our cord and turned in our set-top box a few years ago because it was costing us close to $100 a month for 300 channels we never watched. At the time, they offered a limited 10-channel internet version for $10 per month with CNN, ESPN and a few other channels, but Spectrum won't include SNY or its evil Bronx cousin among the 10.   Plus, that $10 per month is up to $35 and I'm probably going to get rid of it.

But there are streaming options!,other fans say. There are! The obvious one would be the MLB dot TV app; for about $100 a year, you can stream the home broadcasts of your favorite team or even other teams! Except we can't, though, since they monopolistically black out all games that an over-air or cable company offers in your zip code.   We also can't get Yankee, Cleveland or Pittsburgh games because we're also deemed too close to their "markets," and these restrictions apply whether you want your own team's feed or its opponent's, and whether they're home or away. Even the "free game of the day" on the app gets blacked out.

All the other streaming choices, from Hulu to Fubo to Youtube, do  allow you to get the SNY feed, but only if you sign up for similar-to-cable  bundles of multichannel crap at $60 a month and up.  You can't just buy SNY a la carte from any of them.

So I rely on the WCBS-AM audio feed, and only get to watch the Mets if they're on the Sunday night ESPN game or the Friday night Apples and, rare as a Keith Hernandez Philly appearance, what used to be called the "Game of the Week" on Fox.

Thanks to a friend's very helpful Game Preview (which previewed the game, or in this case games), I knew the second game of yesterday's Mets-Phillies doubleheader was a Foxcast.  We were watching other things until around 8, but after Eleanor turned in,  I checked that the game was a 1-1 tie, found the local Fox affiliate's channel where the tv app is hiding it, muted the sound, so I could put our team's radio broadcast on my phone,....

And watched my first 10 seconds of live Mets baseball with my own eyeballs since July 9th. 

In those clicks of horror, some Phillie dropped a foul-NO-FAIR! ball fucking ONTO THE CHALK, which rolled into a Citizens Bank night deposit along the left field line,  which then allowed Nick Somebody and Karl Ludwig Klaus von Schwarber to score the go-ahead and insurance runs that would be all a pitcher named Falter would need.

I turned it off before it got any worse, so I never did even hear who Murdoch hired to replace their longtime baseball announcer Joe Buck after he left them for a streaming gig. Probably it was Tucker Carlson and sideline reporter Laura Ingraham, going on about the Great Replacement of superstar Mets players with socialist brown people.

Fuck that. As I said, I haven't lost my sense of taste:P