POLITICO NIGHTLY: How I got Covid

 

BY SARAH OWERMOHLE Presented by eBay Health care reporter Sarah Owermohle's character in the video game "Animal Crossing," which she played frequently during her breakthrough case of Covid, as evidenced by tissues up the character's nose. I HAD BREAKTHROUGH COVID, AND YOU CAN TOO — I was 20 months into covering the pandemic, yet when I started showing symptoms I was in denial. “Probably just a bad cold!” I texted friends as I sat on the floor with ginger ale because I was dizzy but too tired to get to the couch. I don’t know whom I persuaded. (It wasn’t them.) I had already started isolating as I waited for definitive test results, sparked by breakthrough cases among friends I had seen five days earlier. So there were plenty of reasons I shouldn’t have been surprised when my test came back positive, and not all of them were my symptoms. I’m lucky that I can count on one hand the number of Covid-19 cases among my family and friends before this August. I’d need three hands now. The Delta variant has played a major role, but so has our return to schools, restaurants, weddings and a near-sense of normal. I all but certainly got it because I had friends over for dinner. It’s not a moral failing or mistake to get Covid-19, just an increasingly likely event as our return to normal collides with a patchwork of vaccination rates and booster shots. As I write this, D.C. Gov. Muriel Bowser announced she’s lifting the city’s indoor mask mandate on Monday. Even so, a mere fraction of young children newly eligible for Covid shots have received their first dose. Booster shots are not yet broadly available. And winter is coming. Breakthroughs are more common than we know. There is an increasingly poor picture of what breakthrough risk and sickness itself looks like, garbled both by the lack of current federal data and how people simply handle their cases. At-home tests, for instance, are a double-edged sword: convenient and essential as breakthrough cases rise, but not automatically shared with public health authorities. Most people aren’t thinking about the need for clear data when they see the little red lines. And how many people know the best way to do it? The instructions with most at-home tests tell you to inform your health provider. That’s an immediate roadblock for the more than one-quarter of Americans who don’t have a primary care physician. Even data the public can see from providers and testing centers are outdated. The CDC hasn’t updated its data on breakthrough cases of Covid-19 for two months, as Sophie Putka recently wrote in medical news outlet MedPage Today. CDC also tracks only severe cases like those that require hospitalization, which are still extremely rare. Breakthrough infections with the Delta variant often start with symptoms that people haven’t associated with Covid-19 before — sneezing and runny noses that are easy to attribute to allergies or colds instead, as I did when my sneezing began. I will admit that I was surprised by how my infection hit me. I’m testing negative now, but still have a bad cough and fatigue. My sense of smell is making up new rules every day. My longtime perfume now smells like grass. Other scents simply aren’t back. Yet the worst of it was over in days, and throughout this experience I’ve had the means, job and community to get through my illness and sneak naps when I can. I also am all but assured that I’ll spend the holidays Covid-free, while that risk still looms large for millions of people weighing travel and seeing loved ones after nearly two years of Covid precautions. This experience has underscored the bleak reality that we’ll be living with those concerns for another season. You still could get Covid-19 — though it is unlikely to be severe — if you are following all the government recommendations when it happens. But we’re also in a new era of coronavirus treatments, on the edge of broader booster dosing and finally making testing more accessible. With boosted immunizations, quickly caught cases and readily available pills, in a few months, for vaccinated people, Covid-19 really could be just like a bad cold. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Something to bake into your holiday plans alongside cookies: The White House dodging an early-December debt cliff through a stack of infrastructure cash, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said today. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at sowermohle@politico.com, or on Twitter at @owermohle. A message from eBay: Americans casually selling things online are just trying to make ends meet and new tax regulations could make it even harder. Starting in 2022, a single transaction over $600 – the new reporting threshold – could land small-time sellers with a 1099-K tax form. eBay believes Americans shouldn’t receive unnecessary and confusing tax forms for selling used or pre-owned goods. Learn more about eBay's position on raising the 1099-K threshold and lifting the burden on Americans.   WHAT'D I MISS? — Pfizer seeks emergency use authorization for Covid-19 antiviral pill: Pfizer is formally petitioning the FDA for emergency use authorization of its antiviral Covid-19 pill , two weeks after reporting trial results showing the treatment cuts the risk of hospitalization and death from the disease by 89 percent. The positive results from an interim analysis of its Phase II/III trial data — focused on more than 770 high-risk, infected adults who were treated with the drug or a placebo within three days of the onset of symptoms — convinced the company to halt enrollment of new participants due to “the overwhelming efficacy demonstrated in these results,” Pfizer said at the time. — House will vote to censure Gosar anime video that depicted killing of AOC: The House will vote Wednesday to censure Rep. Paul Gosar after the Arizona Republican posted a violent cartoon video last week depicting him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking Biden. The resolution will also yank Gosar off the House Oversight Committee, a panel he serves on alongside Ocasio-Cortez. — Trump says defeat in Jan. 6 lawsuit would let lawmakers ‘perpetually harass’ former presidents: Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers argued today that a defeat in his lawsuit to keep Jan. 6-related records secret would unleash permanent political warfare between Congress and former presidents . The attorneys said the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — led by a pro-Trump mob — would become just one in a list of pretenses for lawmakers to probe White House documents.   BECOME A GLOBAL INSIDER: The world is more connected than ever. It has never been more essential to identify, unpack and analyze important news, trends and decisions shaping our future — and we’ve got you covered! Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Global Insider author Ryan Heath navigates the global news maze and connects you to power players and events changing our world. Don’t miss out on this influential global community. Subscribe now.     — Rep. Jackie Speier retiring from Congress: Rep. Jackie Speier today announced she would not seek reelection to Congress next year , becoming the latest House Democrat to opt against running for another term. An ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Speier ascended to Congress in 2008, replacing late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), who died in office earlier that year. — GOP Rep. Curtis: ‘Extremist’ voices setting the tone for party on climate: Utah Republican Rep. John Curtis pushed his party today to articulate a positive vision on climate policy, lamenting that GOP rhetoric on the issue is too often dominated by “extremist” voices within the party. The chair of the House’s Conservative Climate Caucus, Curtis said that while climate change denialists are a slim faction of Republicans overall, they have often drowned out people like him. — New York ethics board revokes approval for Cuomo book deal: A New York state ethics board today revoked the approval it gave former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to publish his 2020 memoir, a move the Democrat dismissed as “the height of hypocrisy.” The revocation by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics will require Cuomo to reapply for authorization. If his application is denied, the board could attempt to force the former governor to surrender the $5.1 million he was paid for authoring “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic.”   A message from eBay:     AROUND THE WORLD LOCK, DOC AND BARREL — As Russia flexes its muscles in Ukraine and Belarus, China tests a nuclear-capable missile and the U.S. turns its gaze toward the Pacific, the EU is reacting in its favorite fashion: with a policy document. EU defense ministers today discussed for the first time their so-called “Strategic Compass,” a plan meant to bolster the bloc’s military capabilities amid a dawning realization that the Continent can’t always rely on the Americans or NATO for cover, Jacopo Barigazzi writes. The talk came after they gave foreign ministers the rundown on the document Monday afternoon during a joint meeting. The meeting marks the start of a debate on how ambitious the EU should be as it attempts to become a security provider, more able to determine its own fate when conflicts erupt. The U.S. pullout in Afghanistan has fueled the desire. EU allies were barely consulted on the withdrawal, to the humiliation of many capitals. Yet the proposals outlined in the most recent 28-page draft risks highlighting the gap between EU ambition and EU reality, especially considering the seismic scale of the geopolitical shifts and hot spots beyond the bloc’s boundaries. The biggest potential plan would be a rapid-deployment force of up to 5,000 troops the EU could send to conflict zones — starting in 2025. Even that seems like a long shot to some diplomats, who remember the EU’s failed promise in 1999 to create a force up to 60,000 strong and who have long witnessed Europe’s long-running wariness to boosting defense spending.   WOMEN RULE: JOIN US WEDNESDAY FOR A TALK ABOUT THE NEW WORLD OF WORK: The way women work, including what is expected and demanded from their workplaces, has been upended. How should businesses, governments, and workers take advantage of this opportunity to rethink what wasn’t working and strengthen working environments for women moving forward? Join the Women Rule community to discuss with leading women and explore how they are seizing the moment. REGISTER HERE.     NIGHTLY NUMBER 29 percent The decline in the number of containers sitting on docks at the port of Los Angeles, CEO Gene Seroka said on a call with reporters today. Carriers have increased sweeper ships to reduce the backlog of empty containers, Bloomberg reported, with 65,000 empties on the docks right now. There has been gradual improvement since port officials announced new fines for lingering containers last month. PARTING WORDS A security staff guards the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics flame during a welcoming ceremony at Beijing Olympic Tower. | Lintao Zhang/Getty Images GAMES WITHIN THE GAMES — As Biden weighs whether to impose a diplomatic boycott on next year’s Winter Olympics in China, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill want to force his hand, Andrew Desiderio and Connor O’Brien write. Biden is facing bipartisan pressure from Congress to snub China at the 2022 games. Some senators seek to force a diplomatic boycott as part of annual defense policy legislation hitting the Senate floor this week. The goal, lawmakers say, is to call attention to China’s human rights record, including what the Biden administration has characterized as a genocide of religious minorities in Xinjiang. But House and Senate leaders are cool to the idea of imposing a diplomatic boycott on the games as part of the defense policy bill — even as support is growing on both sides of the aisle to send a message to Beijing. “I think it’s a very difficult issue, and it would be tough to get it done in that way,” House Armed Services Chair Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said in a brief interview. “As a general rule, I don’t think boycotting the Olympics is a good approach.” “I don’t think we’ll get it done,” added Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who supports a diplomatic boycott. His GOP counterpart on the panel, Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, offered a similar assessment: “I don’t think there’s a consensus one way or the other at this point.” Biden is expected to heed a recommendation from his advisers to bar U.S. government-sponsored travel to China for the Olympics, according to a Washington Post report today . The Biden administration has declined to comment on that report. A message from eBay: Americans throughout the country turn to online marketplaces to sell used personal items to make ends meet and keep things out of landfills. A new law passed earlier this year will require millions of them to receive confusing and burdensome tax forms for their sales online, even when they don’t owe taxes because they’re selling used goods. eBay believes the new low reporting threshold will cause confusion and over-reporting of non-taxable income for millions of Americans already struggling as a result of the pandemic. Congress should protect consumers and increase the reporting threshold for platforms enabling consumer sales of goods. Learn more about eBay's position on raising the 1099-K threshold and lifting the burden on Americans.     Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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