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mtx013 t1_izkbkow wrote

People going way out of the way.

What you are describing usually falls into tracheobronchitis diagnosis, which is really common after an upper airway viral infection (common cold, but covid too).

While the overall cold symptoms usually resolve in less than an week, the same infection also happens on your trachea and bronchi, and there it takes a little more time to heal and properly return the mucosa to it's healthy state. Until then, said airways remain mildly inflamated and sensitive, which causes the nagging cough.

As a side note, there are two conditions which may look similar, but whose cause and treatment differ. One is postnasal drip, which happens due to filled sinuses slowly dripping secretion on the throat and making it irritated (mainly while laying down your head). The other is a bacterial tracheobronchitis, which usually has systemic symptoms like fever and purulent coughing and could be thought as a pneumonia-like infection (to make it really simple).

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CarboniferousCreek t1_izkfqsl wrote

Thanks for your answer!

I think people are giving complex answers because I asked why the post viral cough only starts / gets worse after you start getting better or have cleared the virus.

As an example, I had mild covid a few months back (vaxxed + boosted). I hardly had a cough. I started testing negative on ag tests after 7 days. And then I got this horrible dry cough for like a week.

So whether or not I had fully cleared the virus — maybe it was still chilling in my bronchi — where was that cough when I first got sick?

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mtx013 t1_izkjprz wrote

Great question! Upper airway virus start and do their main business between up until the larynx (not necessarily with same strength on all structures, usually it's more nose/throat/sinus). They do infect our trachea and bronchi, but it's a different kind of cell lining so things are usually not too intense.

From there, we have two things happening at same time:

  • the virus is not as efficient getting into your lower airway cells, taking longer (or not! e.g. omicron COVID)

  • your immune system is not interested in being kind. The inflammatory response is meant to target infected cells, but it does damage to the surrounding environment and healthy cells.

While your upper airways are meant to be attacked and quickly recover (afterall, it's exposed to the outside world), lower airways are not, they take longer to heal and to return it's inflammatory response back to base levels.

Edit: formatting

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hands-solooo t1_izmzz8g wrote

The building only gets bullet holes once the cops show up to shoot the bad guys.

Most symptoms of infection are the immune system and not the infection itself. And considering that a big part of immune response to viral infections is to just kill every infected cell, it makes sense that some symptoms appear once the infection is under control.

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