As I write this, both my wife and I have COVID. My wife came down with COVID symptoms approximately two weeks ago. My symptoms started approximately a week ago. Our diagnoses were confirmed at a local clinic.

Both my wife and I are unvaccinated. This is because we believed that we would inevitably catch COVID, and we wanted to prepare in the best way possible for that eventuality rather than rely upon an endless series of COVID "vaccines" with limited effectiveness and unknown side effects. Also, we wanted to live the remainder of our lives not in fear of catching COVID, but with natural immunity to that disease.

The purpose of this article is to discuss — from a layperson's perspective — how we prepared for COVID and what we could have done better in that regard.

It is widely recognized that early treatment is key with COVID. What this means is that everyone needs to know ASAP whether he has it. Unfortunately, we could have done much better in that regard. When my wife started having COVID-like symptoms, we looked for COVID testing sites but found that they were far away; overloaded; or using the PCR test, which takes three to five days (at least at our local testing sites) for a result.

After some searching on the internet, we discovered that there also are home COVID tests, but these test kits may not be easy to find. I went to two local drug stores and was told at both of them that they were sold out. The pharmacist at one of these stores said they sold out within one hour of receiving the test kits. After some additional searching, we found a Walgreens about an hour's drive from our home that still had two test kits called BinaxNOW. We quickly bought those test kits online and went to the store to pick them up.

BinaxNOW is relatively cheap (a test package costs about $35 and has two tests), quick (results in 15 minutes), and accurate (compared to PCR, Abbott's BinaxNOW Test correctly gave a positive test result 84.6% of the time and correctly gave a negative test result 98.5% of the time). Also, it is comfortable to use because it requires only a shallow nostril swab, as opposed to a brain swab. There's a card you place your swab into, and, like a pregnancy test, a single line means that the test is negative, while two lines indicate a positive result.

Once we received a positive result, we immediately went to the clinic to confirm. We thought we could do this by using a COVID testing station set up outside one of the clinics, but we subsequently learned that the outside line was only for the PCR tests and that the results from those PCR tests were not being reported for three to five days due to the heavy demand. On the other hand, we were told that if we were willing to pay to be seen by a doctor, we could be tested using the rapid test and receive a result in 15–20 minutes. We chose that.

The physicians at the clinic did absolutely nothing for us other than confirm the results of our home tests. They did not recommend any medications or course of action. When I specifically asked for a prescription for the Regeneron autoantibodies, a treatment that I am entitled to receive under the federal and Regeneron guidelines (over 65 and immunosuppressed), I was told they do not write prescriptions for anything having to do with COVID. I called my primary care doctor and my rheumatologist and received essentially the same response.

Another area we could have done much better in is lining up a place to receive the Regeneron infusion. The states vary dramatically in how well they are distributing this new drug. In the State of Washington, neither my primary care physician nor any of the clinic physicians we saw would prescribe the Regeneron autoantibodies. Instead, they all said the only way to obtain this treatment is to go to the emergency room of a local hospital that has this drug (not all hospitals have it) and then wait in line to see an emergency room doctor. After many hours of phone calls, we learned that there were only a few emergency rooms close to us that had this drug, that the wait times were long, and there was no guarantee that the emergency room doctor would actually prescribe this drug for us.

This inefficient and bureaucratic distribution system is no doubt one of the reasons why the monoclonal antibody treatments in Washington State have largely gone unused even while hospitals in Washington fill up with COVID patients.

Other states distribute the Regeneron infusion much better than the State of Washington. For example, my sister is a nurse in Nevada who recently had COVID. She told me her primary physician wrote a prescription for the Regeneron infusion, and she received it the next day at an infusion center set up in a tent outside a local Nevada hospital staffed by federal employees.

There is one area where I think we did very well. For a long time now, we have been aware of the FLCCC protocols for COVID. As a result, we already had a large stock of the drugs and supplements we needed when we got COVID (e.g., ivermectin, zinc, doxycycline, Vitamins C and D, quercetin, etc.). You cannot plan on getting ivermectin and similar prescription drugs when you are diagnosed with COVID because most physicians (at least in our experience) will not prescribe them. Also, we have heard of pharmacies that will not fill a valid prescription for these drugs. This means that you may need to obtain these drugs from overseas pharmacies that do not require a U.S. prescription, such as River Pharmacy. Since the turnaround time at an overseas pharmacy can be three to four weeks, this must be done well in advance of the time that you need the prescription medications.

The moral of this story is "hope for the best, but prepare for the worst." In other words, while everyone should hope he does not catch COVID, if you do, be prepared with an effective treatment plan that can be quickly and easily implemented.

Robert Jones is a pseudonym.

Image via Public Domain Pictures.

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