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After at least twenty years of no cold or flu, the cold from hell came and busted me in the chops. It hit harder and lasted longer than any of the few hundreds of colds I'd had as a girl in my late teens and early twenties.
The doctor had assured me back then — when I'd complained that there were only ever a few days, two weeks at most, between my colds — that there are a ridiculous number of cold viruses to get through before you are immune to them all... that I was getting all mine over with early and should be glad.
I must've missed one.
Holy Mother of God, this one was THE queen of all colds. I went from 130 pounds to six or seven hunnert pounds overnight, and from Insomnia Central to Sleeping Beauty. It was a very weird cold.
The weirdest part of it was that I could barely relieve myself of a drop of snot through the whole thing. It was in there for sure, but it was determined to squeeze my brain out my ears or something.
Finally, after about five days of dreaded illness and increasing dopiness, the levee broke, and all at once, over the space of maybe two hours, approximately a quart of snot blobs left my face for my box of Kleenex... handfuls at a time.
It grossed out anyone I told, but I told everyone of the miraculous and transcendental exit of the cold from hell. It was just so damn amazing, and the relief, the flooding back in of health and wellbeing chasing out that quart of satanic snot was as amazing.
Actually, it was SO glorious I still feel it as I recount it to you nearly a quarter of a century later. Twenty or thirty exhalations of a handful of snot each time, horrific and fascinating, and no one to whom I might show it off. It was vexing to contemplate as it was exhilarating to experience. Gravity lost its hold over me,
T cell reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 epitopes is also detected in non-exposed individualsand my Olympian T cells are raring to go.
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Importantly, we detected SARS-CoV-2−reactive CD4+ T cells in ∼40-60% of unexposed individuals, suggesting cross-reactive T cell recognition between circulating ‘common cold’ coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.
pipe up any time....
