thusband CrownandCanvas
I have a medical background, and I hope you recover fully and quickly. I had COVID myself earlier this summer.
The COVID test you took and those type of tests in general are not designed to be quantitative. If the “T” line appears, then you have COVID, but the appearance of the line doesn’t tell you anything about how much COVID you have.
COVID has two factors that determine how you might be affected by a COVID infection. The first is the viral load. The more virus you have, the worse your symptoms might be.
The second is what COVID does to your immune system. This part is still not well understood, but to me it’s pretty clear that the reaction one’s immune system has to COVID also determines how you might be affected by a COVID infection. How your immune system is triggered by COVID can be somewhat independent of how much COVID virus you initially had. Think of how a single bee sting can make you allergic for life.
There are other infectious diseases where it’s more the immune response that’s the problem, and not the bug that infected you. Lyme disease is an example of an infection that can have long lasting effects that go beyond whether the Lyme bacteria is still in you. Meningitis caused by Neisseria meningitidis is a form of meningitis that is often lethal, and is another example of where it’s the immune system, not the bug, that’s the issue. It’s actually really easy to kill the bug with antibiotics. It’s how the immune system then responds that tries to kill you.
Finally, for COVID I’ve found that ibuprofen and naproxen are your friends.