{"id":7813,"date":"2024-10-08T16:04:55","date_gmt":"2024-10-08T21:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=7813"},"modified":"2024-10-08T16:04:59","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T21:04:59","slug":"anthony-fauci-a-mosquito-in-my-backyard-made-me-the-sickest-ive-ever-been","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2024\/10\/08\/anthony-fauci-a-mosquito-in-my-backyard-made-me-the-sickest-ive-ever-been\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Fauci: A Mosquito in My Backyard Made Me the Sickest I\u2019ve Ever Been"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NYT\/Opinion<\/a> After I spent more than 50 years chasing and fighting viruses, one fought back and nearly took me down. I speak of the West Nile virus, delivered by the deadliest animal on the planet: the mosquito.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got infected not during any of my international trips over the years but most likely while I was outside my home in Washington, D.C. In mid-August I was feeling weak and exhausted but attributed it to a recent bout with Covid-19. Though I tested positive for Covid over a month prior, I experienced a rebound of symptoms after taking the treatment Paxlovid. Perhaps I was still experiencing lingering symptoms that would eventually resolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not so. Instead, I began to experience unexplained severe fatigue and exhaustion, culminating in my admission to a hospital on Aug. 16, delirious and incoherent, with a temperature of 103 degrees. I remember little of the five and a half days that I spent in the hospital, except that I had never felt so ill in my life. My physicians assumed that I had sepsis and treated me with antibiotics. After several days, my fever subsided, and I was discharged on antibiotics without a clear diagnosis. That changed the next day when blood tests revealed that I had West Nile virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no treatment for West Nile virus disease, and I was left to deal with its toll on my body. It was terrifying. I could not swing my legs over the side of the bed to sit up without help from my wife and three daughters. I could not stand up without assistance and certainly could not walk. A very scary part of the ordeal was the effect on my cognition. I was disoriented, unable to remember certain words, asking questions of my family that I should have known the answers to. I was afraid that I would never recover and return to normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYT\/Opinion After I spent more than 50 years chasing and fighting viruses, one fought back and nearly took me down. I speak of the West Nile virus, delivered by the deadliest animal on the planet: the mosquito. I got infected not during any of my international trips over the years but most likely while I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mosquito-bourne-diseases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7814,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813\/revisions\/7814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}