I picked up Covid early in the pandemic and put my newly acquired immunity to good use by joining the Covid medical team at my local hospital for the weeks that followed. There was a side-effect however: a sense of invincibility that has perhaps made me take less care to protect myself from respiratory viruses ever since.
My luck ran out recently while looking after a group of patients with upper respiratory infections. Not all respiratory viruses are equal: we may call them “colds”, but some varieties are considerably more unpleasant than others.
Using PCR, we can now tell the difference between 22 different bugs with pinpoint accuracy, in about an hour. Mine turned out to be parainfluenza type 1 (there are four serotypes, who knew?) – a nasty virus, more common in the USA and among children.
My bout ranked alongside my experience with Covid: the symptoms lasted over three weeks and included a secondary lower respiratory infection requiring antibiotics to clear.
There’s no vaccine as yet against parainfluenza, but there are vaccines against other important respiratory infections – pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, Covid-19, a newly-recommended adult top-up against whooping cough, and of course flu.
I shall be having all of these vaccines this winter and will take much greater care to protect myself when those around me have “colds”.
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