UCSF Dr. Wachter on COVID Watch after wife shows positive during travel

Dr. Bob Wahater of UCSF Medical School, one of our local pandemic fortune-tellers, may soon deal with his own COVID-19 seizures for the first time. -Free until now.

Dr. Wachter talks to SFist Early in the pandemic, dating back to July 2020, about his optimism that San Francisco intends to escape the major and deadly waves of the virus that struck other major cities that year. He was right to be optimistic. San Franciscan is generally well obscured, and he was pleased that he was obedient to the pandemic social distancing rules, especially in his first year. At that time, thousands of people had already died in New York City, while a total of 53 people died in New York City, and we felt blessed.

Fast-forwarding for almost two years, Wachter maintained his generally equal and informative presence on Twitter and analyzed the latest statistics and research as his story and advice on COVID changed many times. last week, He was tweeting about increased attention and remasking In the apparent surge of incidents in the area.

San Francisco continues to be a city with very low COVID mortality — as of December It was the safest metropolis in the country The per capita mortality rate is before Omicron. And now we’re staying there, still below three digits, about 99 per 100,000 city dwellers, compared to 124 per 100,000 in Seattle and 480 per 100,000 in New York City. A person is dead.

This is due to the high uptake of vaccines and boosters, and the fact that after the vaccines were readily available, really widespread infections did not begin here to the delta and omicron waves.

Both Dr. Wachter and his wife have been double boosted after the first two-shot vaccination, but as we have learned, this does not completely prevent the infection and is almost always severe. It only prevents infection and hospitalization.

And you won’t know that, as Wachter I will tell you in a Twitter thread, His wife tested positive on Sunday after traveling to a writing conference (she was a writer and went there to teach). And, despite his own continued attention, the closest person in his life may have finally exposed him to the virus. Similar to his fully transparent mode, which was talking about his son’s Omicron wave infection last winter, Wachter sees a series of events and what he sees as a possible infection of his own, and he and his wife Two older friends who were talking about it visited Palm Springs before the positive test was done.

His wife, Katie HuffnerLike him, 64, he returned from a meeting on Friday when he was one of five instructors and 45 students. The two met at SFO and flew to Palm Springs to visit a friend over the weekend. He says Huffner was “sealed” during the flight because he had no mask, wore an N95 mask, and put a hoodie on his face to protect himself.

She took precautions before making this visit, negative on SFO, and negative again on Saturday morning. “When I ate with them, I only ate outdoors,” says Wachter, because her friends are older and more susceptible to severe illness. When they were alone, Wachter says he and his wife were unmasked and shared a bed on both Friday and Saturday.

But then Huffner began to feel sick and tested positive for COVID on Sunday. Deciding not to put anyone at risk on the return plane, where most people would be unmasked, they chose to rent a car and return to the Bay Area.

Wachter was still negative as of Monday, but his own chances of getting infected are about 50%, the average incidence of home contact with Omicron is about 35%, and bed sharing is probably that. Is further enhanced.

Wachter says his wife feels “clumsy” and is angry that she may have exposed her friends after attending a writing workshop, but “this level of Covid risk is Over the years I have told her what the world will be like. The choices we teach in this course are what we need to learn to live with. “(He has an outdoor-only diet and his wife We estimate a 5-10% chance of exposing a friend after one night watching a movie sitting 20 feet away with the N95 on.)

Hafner is launching Paxlovid today, and Wachter chooses not to do so unless he tests positive. Between this antiviral and the vaccine, Wachter says there shouldn’t be much to worry about either.

“If I get positive in the next few days, my odds will be just as good,” he writes. “So getting Covid is still bad, but there’s a lot to thank.”

I hope he stays negative and his wife gets this done! But if he gets sick, it’s tempting to hear how this local expert evaluates his own experience with Omicron.

Related: Dr. Bob Wachter of the University of California, San Francisco says he’s masked again, and one in thirty San Franciscos has a COVID and doesn’t know it.