Anyone else sick?
I had a fever, cough and achy body Wednesday, have been on and off with what I would describe as a “mid-level cold” but certainly not bad enough to qualify for testing. Hoping down the road an antibodies test is available to see if this is or is not the Covid.
anyone else out there in this limbo where you are obviously sick but not really badly sick?
March 21st, 2020 at 11:36 PM ^
I think the coronavirus is essentially everywhere and has infected a lot more people than believed.
March 21st, 2020 at 11:46 PM ^
I traveled to Orlando area last week and during the trip got the cough, night sweats and little bit of the poops. Feeling pretty good now, just feel something respiratory going on still. Isolating for a bit. Thought about getting tested.
March 22nd, 2020 at 12:34 AM ^
I’ve had a cough for several days. Small aches, but nothing serious. No fever. I’m young so I wonder whether if I’d experience severe symptoms or not. My office often has visitors from New York...
With seemingly "everyone" having it, are we just woefully behind on testing? I still keep on looking at numbers, and globally 300k is barely a drop in the bucket in terms of total population affected.
March 22nd, 2020 at 10:30 AM ^
There are a lot more affected by this than 300k. A lot more. I’d say at least a seven figure count by now. Many just have no access to testing and never will. There will be countless that die from this but no one will ver be able to confirm why.
Remember, the numbers the news gives you, those are only the numbers that we know of. There number of those infected and die that we don’t know is likely much higher than the number of infected/deaths that we do know.
March 22nd, 2020 at 10:36 AM ^
Short answer: the concern is the exponential growth curves of the viral infection and mortality. Check out wordometers.info.
Longer answer: here's the math:
About 86-91% will have minimal or no symptoms. Best guess right now is about 0.9% mortality. Time from infection to death is 14-24 days depending on which numbers you are looking at. Since we don't have adequate testing, you can take the deaths at a given time point and make a guess as to the number of cases 2-3 weeks ago.
There's a couple ways of doing VERY simplistic calculations. For example, take Michigan with about 8 deaths. If you work back 14 days, you would say that there must have been 800 cases (8/0.01) about 14 days ago. Now pick your doubling rate (every 2,3,4,5,6 days). If it's every 2 days, then today you would have seven doubling episodes and we're at 102,400 cases, which means about 1024 deaths are going to happen in the next two weeks.
What happens when you play with the assumptions? Well, if you reduce the mortality rate from 1% to 0.1% (i.e. "the flu"), it's actually an order of magnitude worse because rather than 800 cases two weeks ago there would have been 8000 cases. If you select time from infection to death as 24 days, then that's MUCH worse as you've added more doubling time and locked in more deaths.
Reducing the doubling rate is the most helpful thing right now and is where you get "flattening of the curve". That essentially buys time to not overload the hospitals (see Italy) which causes a spike in deaths. The concern in the past week in particular was the doubling rate appeared to be every 2 days or less. I mentioned the above analysis is simplistic and it is; the really good models are in the hands of people who do this for a living, with better data, less simplistic math, and who take into account many other factors (e.g. population distribution, age, comorbidities, etc). Personally, I believe the rate of increased mortality and new deaths are probably the only "real" numbers we can follow as testing is so limited and saturated ("new" cases are just a function of testing ability at this time and is a relatively unhelpful number).
If we're careful in isolating ourselves, then we can start to get an effect from an intervention in an incubation period for the virus (5-7 days mean/average; about 14 days for 99% of cases). Given the lack of a coordinated federal response and piecemeal state response, we're about to see the natural history of what happens when you don't shut down early enough. Personally, I'm very happy with the way the Democrats and Republicans in Michigan have been working together on this and am fairly optimistic that we may not get hit as hard as other communities. This will leave us in Michigan in a better position to help them down the road. But it's going to get worse before it gets better and may take months to restart anything. I'm not optimistic that there will be any large gatherings in the next several months and would be surprised if Michigan sends out football renewals in the next couple weeks. But we'll see as hope springs eternal and we've had a reduction in new deaths in the US the last couple days.
Michigan already sent out season ticket renewals. I got mine last week.
I live in A2 and haven't gotten it or an email yet. We'll see this week...
March 23rd, 2020 at 12:35 AM ^
We're above New York's trajectory for positive cases at the moment.
Anecdotal evidence from my few trips to get fresh air and supplies, people are not social distancing adequetly.
It's likely (based on what I've read about rules of thumb re: epidemiology) that as soon as community spread has been confirmed, you are likely at 1% contraction already.
I'd estimate a 3% contraction right now in major metro areas (maybe 4% in Seattle Bost down thru DC) and 1% in rural areas.
We were tracking this in Jan with my students and the exponential growth is faaaaast, man.
My experience has been that my annual colds have been getting worse for several years. Last year we passed a nasty cold between 3 people (and God knows how many more) that lasted almost 8-12 weeks of terrible coughing, congestion, bouts of fever and aches galore. It eventually passed but one of us developed pneumonia and their overall symptoms lasted from early August to late October. There is a lot of nasty stuff going around that simply can't be explained as "the flu" that is also not Covid-19.
Lots of nasty stuff? Username checks out.
/s
A friend of mine had pneumonia last week. No CV-19 Was on a respirator for a few days. Is home now. All is well. Daughter was quaranteened but it was a false alarm.
2002 had one of the worst things going around. Myself and several in my office had terrible colds followed by residual coughing for maybe 4 weeks.
March 22nd, 2020 at 12:16 PM ^
I had mild cold symptoms this past week -- low fever, very slight sore throat and congestion. I guess it's possible it was a very mild case of COVID-19, but certainly nothing like what I have been reading about from people who have it. I had no shortness of breath or other lung symptoms. But if some people can have it with no symptoms, I guess it stands to reason that others would have very slight symptoms without shortness of breath. Of course, there's no chance in hell of me getting tested to determine one way or the other.
March 22nd, 2020 at 12:46 PM ^
Praying for all the old fellas on here, hoping the Boomer Remover doesn't pop up and get them.
You honestly may have CO-VID19.
That's what makes this virus so difficult; a majority of the people who get it exhibit mild symptoms. The guy in Illinois who first got it and was quarantined said in an interview that it basically felt like a mild cold and nothing else. Same with the 37 year old woman in Seattle whose story I posted here a little over a week ago: she felt sick but not deathly ill.
Addendum: for the record, I was last ill in December. Strep. To be honest, it's rare for me to catch flu or cold; I can't really remember the last time I caught either one.
I do, however, have an issue with sinus infections, and usually get them at least once a year, in the spring or fall.
And even before CO-VID19, I was a big believer in social distancing. I tell my students that, if they're sick to 1.) stay home, and 2.) not approach me when speaking. I hate being sick, even if it's nothing more than a mild cold.
While I wouldn't put myself on the level of a Howie Mandel germophobe, I generally practice thorough hand washing anyway. I take my vitamins, work out fairly regularly, and try to eat decent.
One other thing: I try to avoid dairy as well, save for an occasional meal like cheese on pizza. Dairy tends to clog me up, and I've noticed that I can handle sinus infections MUCH BETTER when I'm not drinking milk or eating a lot of cheese. So there's that.
I have had this sinus\ear\bronchial thing on and off since December. Mostly on.
Some antibiotics made a dent but nothing cleared it up.