COVID hits home

Editor’s Note: The author, Dr. Richard Sternberg, a retired Bassett Hospital orthopedic surgeon, is providing his professional perspective during the COVID-19 threat. Also a village trustee, he lives in Cooperstown.

Until now, COVID did not hit too close to home for me. My cousin’s father-in-law died of it in late 2020 as did that gentleman’s sister, but nobody very close to me had.

This past week, my elder daughter came down with COVID. She said it was like a bad flu but she’s getting better now. She had been fully vaccinated and boosted. She had been working from home, but with proper masking had gone out to her gym, shopping, and visiting her mother, who is a primary care physician. I’m still anxious because I’m aware of the long-term sequela. It’s now clear that one can contract COVID multiple times despite vaccination status. Nevertheless, I’m very glad she’s fully vaccinated because with the severity of her symptoms, I hesitate to think how bad things would’ve been if she weren’t.

Queen Elizabeth has COVID. You would think that extraordinary precautions had been taken to prevent this. She is still working at the age of 95, considered super-elderly, and, I suspect, she needs help with many activities of daily living. She meets with her ministers frequently. There is a photograph of her meeting with one of her generals and one of her admirals just two days before it was announced that she was sick. They were not wearing masks.

Additionally, her son, Prince Charles, and his wife, Camilla, both have been COVID-positive in the past 10 days. The announcement also indicated various members and staff of the royal household were positive. Reports so far say her symptoms are relatively mild. She was first vaccinated over a year ago and presumably had a full series and subsequent boosters.

I hope her doctors have placed her on Paxlovid and prescribed other supportive treatments, and that she now goes into quarantine.

I read an intriguing article out of SUNY Stony Brook that shows that the anti-inflammatory drug, famatodine (Pepcid), in high doses, in adults with mild to moderate cases, causes early resolution of symptoms. There have been other articles about this, but those were anecdotal reports. This was a prospective, double-blind study which adds credence to the result.

Over-the-counter famotidine is usually 20 mg, two to three times daily for heartburn. The therapeutic dosage for COVID is 80 mg, three times daily. The study showed short-term use of the drug at high doses did not cause complications.

Famatodine blocks the inflammatory pathway that is the cause for most of the symptoms in COVID. I would suggest, before running out and buying a supply, that you discuss this with your healthcare provider. (The article can be found at medscape.com.)

Finally, I read two articles which appear to have contradictory implications. Both are studies done by the CDC. This helps to explain why people are still very confused about what are the best things to do. One showed that the immunity from having COVID lasted longer than the immunity from vaccination, though at one month after either vaccination or infection there were more antibodies from being vaccinated. Additionally, the doctors involved clearly noted the percentage of their patients with symptomatic COVID that went on to hospitalization or death was about 10 times greater in the unvaccinated than the  vaccinated.

Bottom line, get vaccinated. I personally would still wear an N-95 mask when in public indoors and try and maintain spacing especially since I have some risk factors and I have surgery in the near future, but it’s clear for a large percentage of people there can be a return back to some level of normalcy.