Is it Omicron variant or a cold?

My husband got sick on January 6, 2022. He is 71 years old. He has been triple-vaccinated. His health is good. He does not leave the house a whole lot. We are unaware of any possible exposures to COVID-19, but we worry. 

This has been quite a roller coaster over the last 12 days.

On the first day, he developed congestion. In the next three days, he developed a cough which got deeper and deeper. He started spending the entire day in bed.  No fevers, as far as we could tell.   On day five, we tested for COVID19 with a rapid test from the drugstore. It was negative. On day six, he developed a rattling sound in his chest. The cough was quite deep and woke him up at night. I did another rapid test. Still negative. Just in case, he got an antibiotic.

For the next few days, he kept the deep cough and the sound of rattling in his chest. On day eight, he reported a new symptom:  he could not smell. I even did a smell test which I haven’t done since my medical school days. He could not smell the pungent odor of vanilla extract. Loss of sense of smell is a hallmark of COVID19. I got nervous and called a nearby Urgent Care for an appointment, to get him a PCR test. The next available appointment was for two days away.

By day 10, he said he feels better. The cough is gone. The rattling is gone. He has energy. He goes to Walgreens, which is a major achievement for him to leave the house. He says his sense of smell comes back at times. He decides it was from nasal congestion. He looks good so I cancel the appointment with Urgent Care.

But on day 11, he says he really has lost his sense of smell. We spend the day Googling articles online about the risk of this having been COVID – despite the two negative rapid tests – given congestion, cough, and loss of smell. Apparently, Omicron is less inclined to cause loss of smell, we discover. Although one report says that 12% of mild COVID cases result in a loss of the sense of smell, which can persist for 4 weeks or longer.

On day 12, he feels fine but he still can’t smell. We have decided that, after 12 days, even if he did have COVID, he is no longer infectious. We will finally have the kids and grandkids over for dinner tonight. This is all an exercise in probabilities. How sensitive is the rapid COVID test? No one knows. What are the risks of COVID, based on his symptoms? It’s a little murky. I would have liked a calculator online that could have crunched the probabilities and could have spat out “70% risk of COVID” or something. 

I feel like I am riding the wave of risks and probabilities. I feel like we are all going to catch COVID19 within a month or two. I feel like the rapid test is not sensitive enough and the PCR test is basically unavailable. If it takes three to five days to come back, a person is either better or in the hospital by then.  I feel that the number of unreported COVID cases is up to 10  times higher than the reported ones. I suspect that Omicron has outsmarted us and is running rampant.