Meghan McCain is opening up about her experience with omicron and the lingering physical and mental effects of the virus. “What I experienced wasn’t mild, it wasn’t easy, and I am still fearful of the unknown long-term side effects,” she wrote in a new column for The Daily Mail.
The omicron variant is now responsible for nearly every COVID infection. But while it’s driven a record number of cases and hospitalizations, omicron is generally understood to be less severe than delta or previous variants of the coronavirus. New research published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested this can indeed be the case, though perhaps to a lesser extent than we’d hope, as reported by CNN. CDC researchers analyzed COVID outcomes from the first winter surge, the peak of delta variant infections, and the current peak of the omicron wave and found patients with omicron infections were 5% less likely to be hospitalized or die than patients infected with the delta variant.
This does not mean omicron should be taken lightly or that it can’t make you very sick, as was McCain’s experience. She shared that both she and her husband experienced debilitating symptoms and felt “more sick than the ‘mild omicron’ headlines and Twitter streams suggested.” Both tested positive despite being fully vaccinated. (McCain did not share whether or not she had gotten the booster, which research suggests provides superior protection against omicron.) “I knew that I was tempting fate when I reposted a meme on my Instagram Stories joking about dodging golf balls at a driving range. That’s how I felt—having gone nearly two years into the pandemic without catching COVID,” she wrote. “I think there is a feeling of invincibility after somehow dodging the virus for so long.”
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So many people have gotten infected with COVID since the omicron variant emerged that many have started, understandably, to wonder: Is everyone going to get omicron? For the record, it’s true that many people will. “Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody,” Anthony Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said earlier this month, as SELF reported. That’s why it’s so important to be vaccinated and boosted. As Dr. Fauci explained, fully vaccinated individuals are “very likely, with some exceptions” to avoid the most serious cases which result in hospitalizations and death.
But as McCain shared, there’s often still a stigma associated with a positive test, even when you’ve done everything “right.” “With the bright pink, pregnancy-like test line staring back at me from my white countertop, I—to my surprise—became overcome with feelings of fear and shame,” she wrote. “My husband and I are both fully vaccinated. And Dr. Fauci told the country months ago that it wasn’t a matter of if, but when everyone would eventually catch the omicron variant, so I don’t know why I was so surprised that we had finally tested positive.”
Source: SELF
