Reducing fever for COVID helpful?

The Sandbox Covid19
1

Does taking drugs to reduce fever (like Tylenol), mean the immune system takes longer to deal with COVID?

Google is giving me mixed messages.

To be clear, let’s say you take nothing, symptoms last 5 days. Does reducing fever mean symptoms will last 6 days?

2

With the mixed messages and no definitive guidance, I’d suggest treating any symptoms you find uncomfortable.

3

pretty sure my mother and sister took something the first day with covid when they had a fever and said fever never came back.

sample size = 2

4

Possibly.
A fever is supposed to make your body inhospitable to whatever is invading your body by boiling your body. A lot of immune responses are just kamikaze tactics. That said, if the inflammation is powerless against the virus, then you’re just hurting your body for no reason.

5

paxlovid imo

6

I thought the medical guidance was that there is no clear benefit to paxlovid for folks without other risk factors.

7

is that the covid pill? i’m guessing if twig had taken that pill she wouldn’t have issues due to covid months later. i’m not buying it that there is absolutely no benefit.

my uncle’s covid symptoms pretty much vanished immediately upon taking it. he’s over 70, but that sort of shows that even low risk people who would have symptoms for more than a day or so could benefit from this.

they just don’t want low risk people hogging it. i’m sure there is a benefit though.

8

I don’t know, but if the hypothetical you described were the case, you might consider 6 days of lesser unplesantness to be a better choice than 5 days of greater unpleasantness.

With my first case of COVID (presumably an originalish strain, pre-vaccination), the fever and the chills were very nasty. Seeking some brief periods of relief was probably better for me than suffering through. The thought I could be prolonging the misery didn’t enter into my mind…but at the start I would have done it anyway.

Towards the end of the misery, I started discontinuing the OTC fever treatment, because after 3 weeks in isolation, I wanted to get to the “you can come out when you have been fever free without medication for 24- hours” mark.

1 Like
9

The discussion I remember basically boiled down to:

  • Paxlovid is good at keeping people out of the hospital.
  • People without risk factors already have a pretty good chance of staying out of the hospital.
  • Paxlovid may help such people, but the folks expressing the opinion couldn’t see the benefit because the rate of hospitalization without the medication was already so low among the no-risk-factors crowd.
10

oh if you’re just talking hospitalizations sure maybe not much benefit, but if you can reduce the time you’re sick from a week to a day, why not?

low risk people take Tamiflu, so why shouldn’t they also take the covid pill? they aren’t eligible for it though unfortunately.

i think you have to be over 50 to qualify for said pill. late 40’s doesn’t qualify but this hard cutoff is dumb.

11

I believe in feeling better.