rsbob 

I still have a residual minor cough. Perhaps vacation time + COVID recovery (about 3.5 weeks) has knocked back endurance and overall strength. Seems a bit drastic after all my training this summer. Perhaps it is in my head.

One thing I have drastically changed this year which may have an effect is changing my pedaling style from mashing away at 72 RPM to an average of 82 RPM. Not using the same amount of effort which could mean muscle degradation, but also less recovery time. It’s a strange balance.

gorillimo

Got COVID in August. It wasn't too bad. The aftermath of long COVID has been awful! Super weak. Muscle pains. No energy. Afternoon bonk. Been in PT for a couple months to get strength back. Was having to carry a set of Channel locks to tighten the gas cap on a Prius. Didn't have the strength to do it by hand. Just about normalized now. PT, Meloxicam and Prednisone. Constant exercises. Patience. Gotten back on the bike. Felt great! Had to walk a few up hills. Oh well, I was riding!!

Biker395 

Infections appear to be on the rise again in my hood (LA County).

rsbob 

After two bouts of COVID, with symptoms no more than the common cold - probably because I am well vaccinated - I made a full recovery. Now that it is on the rise again, it’s time to catch it abroad one more time. (We N95 mask on planes and crowded transport but you just never know who is a carrier). Maybe will be lucky this time.

Biker395 

Lol … where are ya headed?

rsbob 

Not across the pond this time. Heading to Lareto, Meh-he-co. Was there pre-COVIDs and fell in love with how non-touristy (compared to the Mexican resort hot spots), laid-back it was. And for any evil doers reading, the house will be occupied, our faithful killer labradoodle guarding the bikes not withstanding.

One thing that came in muy handy on our last trip was travel insurance. Since we couldn’t finish the trip and had to fly home early, we got back $8K from the insurance company. In the day and age of COVID and uncertain weather events and interruptions - yes we had that happen too - insurance really came through.

Biker395 

Yep. Lots of reasons to buy travel insurance. When your parents are frail, you never know when you'll need to cancel a trip and stay home. And another reason ... Medicare (as well as many health insurance policies) do not cover medical care in foreign countries, most travel insurance does (up to $50K or so).

rsbob 

Boy is the parent concern a valid point. My mother is 91 and refused to have the batteries replaced in her pacemaker 4 months ago. I am always in ‘stand-by’.

BTinNYC 

I got the nu-flu again and was out for 9 days. Yesterday got back on the trainer and was surprised that my lungs felt good but my legs were weak, I expected the opposite. I got the bug about halfway through a 6 month training block and I just set the training plan to re-start from scratch. I'll see how long it takes to get back to 4 or 5 hr rides, but I'm guessing 6 weeks.

rsbob 

LAX was a zoo while there for a couple of 2 hour layovers. People coughing, hacking and blowing their nose with maybe 1 in 100 being masked. My wife and I kept moving away from sick people but were running out of places. Must be mask fatigue or a lot of dopey people flying Alaska.

The good news, no COVID contracted on this trip - but we were always masked during travel and at the airports. The bad news, the weather sucked and got food poisoning which laid me up for two days out of four there. We will not be returning to Loreto.

Still not feeling 100%. After my morning workout routine - half hour of squats, fee weights, ball balancing - core stuff, still feel tired and a bit shakey, even after 8 hours sleep. Think we will skip trips abroad for awhile. Oh and to top things off, our flight from LAX to SEA was cancelled because it was a Max. Overnighted and caught multiple flights to finally get home.

Biker395 

Yikes. That is a nightmare. Sorry about that!

Yea, masking at LAX is pretty much non-existent. Even when the LA county mask mandate was in place, it was ignored at LAX, and there was no enforcement whatever.

IMHO, it's smart to wear a mask at the airport and on the plane. My theory is that of all the places to catch something, that is the most likely, as people who have travel plans and get ill are likely to go forward with the plans, regardless of how they feel.

There is something else going around too. I managed to catch it January 5. Tested twice and negative for COVID. It felt like a mild cold, but oy, it did not want to go away.

Any idea where you got the food poisoning?

rsbob 

Glad your test was negative, but still have to deal with the nastiness of cold. Sorry.

The food poisoning was courtesy of a bowl of delicious tortilla soup, with cheese, at a little outdoor restaurant (with good Yelp ratings) off the main drag in Loreto. My wife suspects that the cheese was not properly refrigerated. She was enlisted in my Gatoraid/Poweraid and saltine shopper for the morning after. Can’t remember the restaurant’s name. The best food we has was at La Mision Hotel. Everything was delicious and not the standard fare served at every restaurant.

BlazingPedals

Masks aren't expected to protect you; they're to limit the size of the infection plume in case you're the carrier. IOW, the masks are to potentially protect others. That's one of the many misconceptions pushed by certain political factions, which they could then point to and claim didn't work. Your best protection on a plane is to thoroughly wipe down your armrests, trays, etc, with antiseptic, and sanitize your hands after touching any communal spots like the overhead bins. Well, and don't let anyone breathe directly on you.

ehcoplex 

This is not entirely accurate information. A well-fitting/fit-tested N/KN95 mask provides a degree (imperfect, but real) of protection for the wearer and those around you if you happen to be infected). N/KN 95 masks are specifically designed to protect the wearer. Baggy blues/'surgical' masks are a different story... Also, airborne transmission is by far the most common means of becoming infected with Covid. Disinfecting surfaces is a wise idea to avoid a lot of pathogens, but CoV transmission via surfaces is rare.

It's expensive for airlines to heat fresh air brought into the cabin from outside, so they do it as little as possible, which means the air in the cabin is largely being constantly recirculated. Yeah, a good idea not to let someone breathe directly on you, but in an airplane cabin you're pretty much breathing in what everyone in the plane is breathing out anyway, and a well-fitted N/KN95 mask is an important, if not infallible, piece of protection.

choddo

The recirculated air is quite well filtered though. All my 3 or 4 (mild in every case) bouts have been caught in hotels, meeting rooms and bars, not on the flights.
I sometimes wear masks on planes still and not even N95s. But don’t fly that much any more.

Biker395 

Don't count on it. Check out the link below.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7588538/

Honestly, I don't rely on information from anywhere else except studies like this one. I've seen info and suggestions from what would otherwise be considered reliable sources that I know to be at odds with this kind of information. That includes reliable sources that minimize the risk and those that exaggerate it.

rsbob 

According to the USDA site, “N95 respirators are intended for use in a healthcare setting. Specifically, single-use, disposable respiratory protective devices used and worn by healthcare personnel during procedures to protect both the patient and healthcare personnel from the transfer of microorganisms, body fluids, and particulate material”. We use the surgical grade masks. I consider the USDA a-political and a valid source as well as the two physicians in our family. Believe what you want to believe - we will continue to wear masks while we travel.

rsbob 

An antidote. We flew to Norway the year before last and were N95 masked on the two flights to Oslo. No one in Norway wore masks but we wore ours anyway on the train to downtown. We were in Oslo for a week and felt fine. We boarded a small commuter plane to fly up above the arctic circle. We said “screw the masks” since no one was ever seen and the infection rates were 1 per 100,000 which was incredibly low. We got on the plane and a teenager behind us started coughing like he wanted to spit out a lung. We fished out our masks immediately but it was already too late. Two days later we both had COVID. The rest of the trip was pretty much a bust not being able to go into restaurants and having to stay masked in tight public areas. We learned a hard lesson.

choddo

Bizarrely I actually read that study when it was published. Honestly I think it backs up what I said. The fact only people close to the carrier caught it suggests the air filtration system protected the rest of the passengers

Of course, we now have a variant which is many times more contagious than 2020’s. And a decent chance of a lot more than one person on the flight being infected. But we also have naturally acquired immune response plus vaccines.

choddo

Oh yeah, as per that study, the recirculation filtering (which is probably less effective or even absent on smaller planes) can’t help you there. I always try to stay well away from anyone like that. What an idiot. Does my head in. A woman working in the coffee shop I was in yesterday was like that. Kind of counting on my infection from November to be my saviour on this occasion because she wasn’t even cleaning her hands between snot rag sessions. I did my best to forget I’d seen (and heard) her.

There is something else going around though so maybe she has that and I will get it!

Biker395 

Look closer. There were people in the rear of economy class who got infected too.

Did you see that the index case had a cough, sneezing, and a fever while on the plane?

That is why I mask on planes. Even otherwise responsible people would be tempted to fly in those circumstances. Masks are not 100% effective, but better than nothing.

choddo

Errr… fhey were sitting next to him on the shuttle bus

Yeah I think people don’t even think twice now. They just go about like normal. I stayed largely in one room in November. My wife still caught it. Luckily she also had very few symptoms.