a protease inhibitor¶

Damnit, I forgot to post my prediction that Biden would test positive again soon after testing negative 🤦

FYI, this is all too common with treatments like Paxlovid, which is a protease inhibitor. This prevents the virus from replicating effectively, but doesn't kill it. Normally, preventing a virus from replicating would be sufficient to end the infection. But SARS-CoV-2 is special. It can lay in wait for quite a while then resume its activities. So after the normal course of treatment, the drug degrades, and the virus can resurge. This has to do with its ability to evade immune detection by suppressing the "Hey, there's a virus in here!" MHC pathway. Which is also why the vaccines aren't very good at preventing transmission. Once the virus sets up shop, it can stay undetected and spread at its leisure. Hence the lunacy of Biden's message of "I got COVID, and I'm still working! I don't even need a mask!"

The most powerful tools we have still remain: tightly-sealed respirators, air filtration, contact tracing, and quarantining until you are completely clear of the virus.