Facebook post from Freshman UI OL Brady Feeney's mom after he contracted COVID

Submitted by BlockM on August 3rd, 2020 at 4:44 PM

Intense Facebook post here from Debbie Rucker, mother of Indiana freshman OL Brady Feeney. pic.twitter.com/Ula5lBQfO2

— Sam Blum (@SamBlum3) August 3, 2020

 

Seems like if there is a season we're going to have to get used to a lot of this kind of thing.

Larry Appleton

August 3rd, 2020 at 4:50 PM ^

That's awful.  I pray he recovers and can have a long and happy life.

And yes, WEAR A DAMN MASK.

oriental andrew

August 3rd, 2020 at 5:12 PM ^

Was in Traverse City this past week and while most people were wearing masks and doing so properly, there was that minority who either refused masks or did the "token" mask wearing. You know the type - mask below the nose, mask so loose it doesn't sit on your face, there was even a girl wearing a mask with a cutout for the nose, and then the kid with the neoprene mask with ventilation holes. SMH

LSAClassOf2000

August 3rd, 2020 at 5:23 PM ^

I have had to correct people in stores who leave their mask below their nose. Sorry, but unless you have a real problem, take it from someone with a real problem and wear the mask correctly. Otherwise, and many of you have undoubtedly seen the meme, it is indeed like letting your schlong hang out of your underwear and you certainly wouldn't walk around with that being the case, right? Those people irritate me to no end.

oriental andrew

August 4th, 2020 at 5:06 PM ^

The paper towel or facial tissue thing definitely works. This is also why N95 masks often have a strip of foam over the nose. 

This is most effective if you have a mask with a metal nose clip/strip thingy (technical term). If it's just a loose mask, then it still helps, but not as much and isn't as comfortable. 

TIMMMAAY

August 4th, 2020 at 9:53 AM ^

This is true, however while indoors, or if you can't properly distance outdoors then masks are critical. Indoor air circulates, and the virus floats on airborne particles. Indoors? Wear a mask. Outdoors and can't maintain at least 6' distance? Wear a mask. 

Bo Harbaugh

August 3rd, 2020 at 4:52 PM ^

Hoax!  Not possible for a young, healthy athlete to be significantly affected by the China virus, and everybody knows it.

I'm rich and my wife is a 10, btw.

SugarShane

August 3rd, 2020 at 4:53 PM ^

7-23% of Covid patients have myocardial injury. 
 

Death rate alone does not paint the full picture of this disease 

sadeto

August 3rd, 2020 at 5:14 PM ^

My wife is a visiting nurse in Queens who sees discharged COVID-19 survivors every day. She told me a couple of weeks ago that about 20% of her patients recovering from COVID seem to have heart issues. Young people, in their 20s and 30s, who can barely walk weeks after 'beating' the virus. 

Sopwith

August 3rd, 2020 at 5:49 PM ^

Was just talking to a friend of mine who is an ER doc in LA and one of the most common things she's seeing now that she's never seen before: strokes in people under 40. Weird, weird pathology, but the most risky co-morbidity looks to be hypertension. 

If I could get through to people on anything besides masks, it would be to adopt a blood-pressure control lifestyle of weight loss and dietary changes (not just caloric, but lower salt). If Covid-19 is a fire, the hypertension seems to be the dreaded backdraft.

Sopwith

August 3rd, 2020 at 5:36 PM ^

Yeah, that's been a hot topic of contention since a couple months back. Good discussion from this article in May:

https://elemental.medium.com/coronavirus-may-be-a-blood-vessel-disease-which-explains-everything-2c4032481ab2

“All these Covid-associated complications were a mystery. We see blood clotting, we see kidney damage, we see inflammation of the heart, we see stroke, we see encephalitis [swelling of the brain],” says William Li, MD, president of the Angiogenesis Foundation. “A whole myriad of seemingly unconnected phenomena that you do not normally see with SARS or H1N1 or, frankly, most infectious diseases.

If you start to put all of the data together that’s emerging, it turns out that this virus is probably a vasculotropic virus, meaning that it affects the [blood vessels],” says Mandeep Mehra, MD, medical director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Heart and Vascular Center.

Wendyk5

August 3rd, 2020 at 10:20 PM ^

I read a few articles several months ago on statins and how they may be protective because they treat inflammation in the blood vessels. I haven't heard anything since, though. Would be great if they could be in the arsenal -- cheap and readily available. 

Njia

August 3rd, 2020 at 11:07 PM ^

That's exactly part of the protocol my doctor is using to control inflammation, along with ACE inhibitors for blood pressure, and a baby aspirin. There is one other therapy he has prescribed for a few of his patients, including me: a peptide called Thymosin Alpha-1. It's used for other viral diseases, and it boosts T cell regulation and differentiation. A few peer reviewed studies in Italy and S. Korea are showing very good results as a prophylactic and early-cycle therapy for Covid-19.

The other things are more supportive, including diet, fitness, sleep, and managing stress.

Sopwith

August 3rd, 2020 at 5:24 PM ^

It's really a systemic disease with potential long-term consequences all over the body. While the lung scarring is not as frequent as originally feared, particularly compared to SARS, the diffuse and unpredictable effects suggest we are going to have millions upon millions of people with lingering or even permanent health damage. One of the least talked about: chronic fatigue (not to be confused with CFS or ME as a specific diagnosis).

Here's a good recent review from a reputable source: 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-damage-covid-19-s-lingering-problems-alarm-scientists

The list of lingering maladies from COVID-19 is longer and more varied than most doctors could have imagined. Ongoing problems include fatigue, a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, achy joints, foggy thinking, a persistent loss of sense of smell, and damage to the heart, lungs, kidneys, and brain.

The likelihood of a patient developing persistent symptoms is hard to pin down because different studies track different outcomes and follow survivors for different lengths of time. One group in Italy found that 87% of a patient cohort hospitalized for acute COVID-19 was still struggling 2 months later. Data from the COVID Symptom Study, which uses an app into which millions of people in the United States, United Kingdom, and Sweden have tapped their symptoms, suggest 10% to 15% of people—including some “mild” cases—don’t quickly recover. But with the crisis just months old, no one knows how far into the future symptoms will endure, and whether COVID-19 will prompt the onset of chronic diseases.

Sopwith

August 3rd, 2020 at 5:33 PM ^

The lung scarring is more closely related to ventilators, but many if not most (from what I can gather of the data) of the people with chronic effects were never on a ventilator. Many evidently weren't even hospitalized for the acute phase of the disease, which is particularly worrisome.

Njia

August 3rd, 2020 at 5:38 PM ^

Many of the symptoms listed in the article are closely related to inflammatory responses triggered by the immune system. My doctor has been emphasizing testing and prophylactic care to know and manage inflammation for several years. It started from his specialty in heart disease, stroke, and diabetes prevention and treatment, but it's very applicable to Covid-19 as well. To date, not a single patient of his has been hospitalized for the disease.

/knocks-on-wood

By the way, I showed him your Neck Sharpies series. If you're interested, he'd love to have you on as a guest on his weekly radio program here in Michigan on WJR.

The Deer Hunter

August 3rd, 2020 at 5:30 PM ^

I've read were there are instances of a myriad of possible residual conditions after a recovery, but this is terrible. I had no idea this was the % of long term heart conditions. I really hope he fully recovers and it shows what the inherent risk is to other kids and their parents.   

MLB isn't looking so great either. Looks like the grand sports experiment may be confined to a bubble.

cut it out no GIF by Amanda Cee Media

TrueBlue2003

August 4th, 2020 at 2:05 AM ^

Myocarditis isn't typically long term. It's also not at all uncommon.  Per the Mayo Clinic:

"Many viruses are commonly associated with myocarditis, including the viruses that cause the common cold (adenovirus); COVID-19; hepatitis B and C; parvovirus, which causes a mild rash, usually in children (fifth disease); and herpes simplex virus."

Since mild cases rarely have symptoms, it goes largely undiagnosed.  It's just that we're giving more people with covid MRIs than we've ever given virus patients before.

This isn't to downplay this aspect of covid-19.  Just to put it in context.  Which admittedly brings to light some of the dangers of other viruses that we usually don't attribute back to those virus because we don't test for them and haven't studied the effects of them all that intently.  It's quite possible that many ailments with unknown causes like strokes and heard attacks may link back to viruses.

blue in dc

August 3rd, 2020 at 6:17 PM ^

I’ve linked an article on a small study that looked at both patients who had been hospitalized and those who had relatively minor bouts of covid.   They found: ““Our findings demonstrate that participants with a relative paucity of preexisting cardiovascular condition and with mostly home-based recovery had frequent cardiac inflammatory involvement, which was similar to the hospitalized subgroup with regards to severity and extent,” 

https://www.healio.com/news/cardiology/20200730/abnormal-cardiac-mri-findings-after-covid19-may-mean-myocardial-damage
 

For anyone who doubts heart issues are both real and prevalent, you should google: covid, myocardial.   While there is a fair amount of redundancy (because often multiple stories will reference the same study), there are a number of different studies raising very similar concerns.   A number of them echo the point above, this isn’t just in the worst cases or in those with pre-existing heart conditions.

 

Blue_In_Texas

August 3rd, 2020 at 5:02 PM ^

Has there ever been a virus with such variety of effects on people? Seems like there are so many different symptoms and so many patients have different reactions. 

MichiganTeacher

August 3rd, 2020 at 10:03 PM ^

Hi Timmmaay!

That part's not difficult for (hardly) anyone.

What is difficult for some to understand, I think, is that policy decisions ought to be made at the margin and after weighing both costs and benefits. At the margin means thinking about the next thing that you do, for example the next hour of labor you work or the cost of the next potato that you buy. In this case, thinking at the margin means considering what is the cost of the next practice. If the kids aren't getting together at all anyway, the cost of the next practice could be huge. It's an enormous risk. But if the kids are getting together all the time anyway, then the cost of the next practice is pretty minimal. As a teacher, I assure you that the kids are, in fact, getting together all the time anyway.

I will add that when weighing costs and benefits, we must always be careful to consider both what is seen and unseen, as per Bastiat's famous essay. In this case, the medical costs of covid are easily seen. The kid who is beaten because his dad isn't distracted by football is unseen. Also unseen are things like the cure for ALS that doesn't get discovered because the researchers are at home and barred from the lab, or the high quality seeds that never fly to Algeria because the planes are grounded.

These covid policy decisions aren't easy decisions, at all.
 

uofmchris1

August 3rd, 2020 at 5:24 PM ^

I'm not going to neg you Blue, but you've gotta be kidding me....These are kids who are participating in full on contact drills in the middle of the summer and then going back to their tiny ass dorms, small apartments, or shared housing all while the general student population is running around town acting like normal 18-22 year olds. And news flash. The football players will be right there in the thick of things acting like normal 18-22 year old college athletes w/ the general student population. 

These football players are NOT in a bubble.

edit: ok, I'm going to neg you.