Meghan McCain and Her Husband 'Got Very Sick' with COVID, She Reveals: 'Hard for Me to Shake'
Meghan McCain is on the mend — albeit slowly — after a stressful bout with COVID-19 that left her feeling "sad and pessimistic" and frustrated with the country's public health strategy, she said Wednesday.
The former View co-host and conservative commentator revealed her diagnosis in a piece for The Daily Mail, where she is a columnist.
McCain, 37, detailed how she and husband Ben Domenech first tested positive several weeks ago and their subsequent symptoms.
McCain wrote that the health saga began when Domenech "felt lightheaded and developed a bad cough" and subsequently tested positive at a center in the area the next day.
Domenech had been isolating in a guest bedroom after developing symptoms; after his positive test, "I started to feel bad, but didn't have the bandwidth or energy to go wait in line," McCain wrote. "Thankfully my sister-in-law had a leftover rapid test that she dropped off outside our house."
"After maneuvering the tricky at-home rapid test, I too tested positive," she wrote.
RELATED: Meghan McCain Reflects on Her Photo Shoot for The View After Her Miscarriage — 'I Hate That Photo'
"Mercifully," 15-month-old daughter Liberty "never got sick," McCain wrote. "But my husband and I got very sick — more sick than the 'mild Omicron' headlines and Twitter streams suggested."
"I am still now, a few weeks out from testing positive, waking up feeling the aftereffects of a cold in my throat, getting fatigued easily, and unable to taste food or smell anything normally," she wrote. "I have been lighting candles all over the house waiting for this to change."
"Again, like so many people before us it was a challenge to take care of our daughter while feeling so lousy," she continued. "And we had to isolate ourselves from friends and family, just like we did during the early days of the pandemic."
Charles Sykes/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty From left: Ben Domenech and Meghan McCain
Still, "I do not want to sound like a baby, or ungrateful because I am well aware of how much worse things could have been," she wrote.
She expressed gratitude for the COVID vaccines — both she and Domenech, publisher of right-wing website The Federalist, are fully vaccinated, she wrote — as well as the "support [and] resources" they needed to make it through.
Nonetheless the experience drained her and, she wrote, underlined her frustrations at the way the federal government is responding to the pandemic.
"Shouldn't we have more readily available treatment and testing?" she wrote, adding, "I thank God my case ... wasn't worse. But for so many others it is?"
She wrote that, after testing positive, she grappled with a "post-COVID depression."
"The most sad and pessimistic moments that I have ever felt — since the initial months in lockdown — were after being diagnosed and sick these past weeks," she wrote.
RELATED: Meghan McCain and Daughter Liberty Brave the Cold for a Snow Day — 'Ice, Ice, Baby'
"I am a pretty optimistic person by nature and this has been hard for me to shake both physically and emotionally," she continued. "I can't fathom how people without support, resources and international columns to tell their story feel."
In her piece, McCain took aim at what she called President Joe Biden's "feckless" approach to the virus and other issues.
His administration has widely touted their support of vaccines across the country as well as an embrace of science-based decisions in contrast to predecessor Donald Trump. But critics say Biden's team has been less successful at other public health measures, such as making testing easier.
The White House recently rolled out a system to provide at-home tests to people in their homes.
"Vaccinations are obviously the most important thing we are doing, but they are not the only important thing," Biden said earlier this month.
