Anyone catch COVID-19 yet?

thegunguy

Administrator
Staff member
My wife's a doctor so we've been watching the count in my state and town slowly tick upward, but I don't know anyone who's had it yet.

Have any of y'all suffered through it? How was it?
 

Olon

Active member
No but close. One of my roommates went home to see his folks and after he came back found out that one of his dad's coworkers was sick. Nebraska health people were keeping an eye on his dad and he's cleared now.

I was about to offer him one of the sheds in the back yard. "It has power, you know? Heck you'd be getting a sweet deal brother" ;)

It's tough having roommates bc you never know where they're going to go or who they're going to see under these circumstances. I can be as careful as I want but if one of them gets sick it's hopeless in our tiny house.
 

Justin T.

Member
We secretly suspect that my wife had it in February, but we are saying zilch to anybody and so far, so good. Nobody else in my house or my immediate friend circle has come up with it
 

v35

Member
Have any of y'all suffered through it? How was it?

I think so, and great, respectively. So what does that mean? It gets a little involved so bear with me.

Back in the end of January I developed a slight cough, which was unusual to say the least because I have never been sick a day in my life. Literally. A runny nose now and then sure, but I've never had to take so much as an aspirin for anything. No prescription drugs. I don't even take vitamins. Nothing. I just don't get sick. I suppose it helps that I'm a compulsive hand-washer, and although I don't consider myself a fitness freak I have had a daily exercise regimen going on over twenty years now. At least one hour of vigorous exercise every day, winter or summer, rain or shine, no excuses. I don't really pay much attention to my diet. I eat whatever I want but I definitely don't overeat. I also get a thorough physical twice a year, which was coming up in a couple weeks anyway. The cough wasn't bad, didn't keep me up at night, didn't prevent me from doing anything including work. It was just annoying. I figured if the cough didn't go away by the time of my physical I'd ask about it.

Well, it didn't go away. No symptoms other than the annoying cough so my Dr. recommended a blood test, the full nine yard $2000 variety (I saw the bill) for which my insurance company paid $800 and for incomprehensible reasons stuck me with a $130 balance which I grudgingly paid in cash. Whatever. I'm used to that kind of insurance BS.

Blood tests come back 100% normal. No sign of infection. Nothing. Picture of health. So what about the cough? Dr. said the usual, drink plenty of fluids etc, the usual nonsense. Go about your business. Nothing to worry about.

Ok so the cough persists. By late February CV is all over the news, but everything I read is exactly what everyone else read: CV hits with a vengeance, symptoms include GI distress, fever, rash (sometimes), respiratory distress, you know the rest. I had exactly none of those symptoms. Just the cough, and reading WebMD and everything else that you already know about says a cough is the body's natural reaction to all sorts of irritants, don't worry about it, it might last for weeks, etc ad nauseam and as long as you don't have difficulty breathing just deal with it. Ok.

By now it's mid-March. I still go on my daily exercise regimen strong as an ox. Breaking my own personal best records. The cough persists but is just barely starting to subside. Imperceptibly, just a tiny bit every day. About 1% per day, but it's trending in the right direction.

Then the CV panic finally hits the news and I suddenly find myself out of work. WTF. I want to work, but I can't. Ok, so what can I do? Keep up daily exercise, but 2x what I've been doing. Two, three hours a day every day. Cough gets better. House is cleaner than ever.

Then... it gets weird. I notice my resting pulse, normally about 80 or so, is down to the mid 60s. Must be the exercise, right? Who knows, I'm feeling great and I'm not about to argue with a lower resting pulse. Heart doing its heart thing better than ever.

But then guess what, out of the blue, I get palpitations. WTF! That's a new one. I'd like to go back to see my doc but forget that, she's swamped. Unless I'm unconscious or bleeding she doesn't want to know me. Back to WebMD to read about heart palpitations. Another prognosis of "who knows, it happens, don't worry about it" so I don't. Cough still getting better a little bit each day, about 1% per day.

Eventually the heart palpitations cease just as quickly as they began. The cough goes down to once or twice a day, usually in the late morning, whereas in the past it persisted pretty much all day.

That brings me to now. The cough isn't completely gone, but it's down to a couple coughs every other day or so. Heart doing its heart thing better than ever, but resting pulse is back to the mid-70s. I can deal with that.

Ok, so what does this all mean? Your guess is as good as mine but this is what I have come to realize over the abundance of free time I have had to read up on the CV panic:
  • In retrospect I realize a lot of the people around me in December - January were coughing also. They kept working like I did and recovered the same way I did. When I asked (again this was late January) they said the cough cleared up on its own. Seasonal flu and its symptoms happen every winter, which brings us to...
  • Those symptoms will vary greatly from one individual to the next. It's obvious from news reports that anyone who already had respiratory / circulatory conditions may have been severely affected.
  • As usual, initial news reports were wrong.
  • Even doctors were wrong, probably including your own personal physician, even after CV was all over the news.
  • If you go to your doctor today with a stubbed toe, the diagnosis will probably be CV (well, I hope that's not true)
  • There is a definite correlation between CV and heart conditions, particularly myocarditis in which the tissues surrounding the heart become virus-infected, causing arrhythmia and in some cases, pain. Those people may present with symptoms consistent with heart attack. It's probably a good thing I wasn't able to see my doctor about that; who knows what she might have prescribed. Maybe I'd be in a hospital with a ventilator.
  • No one knows how this will play out, but in my clinical trial group of one and only one patient (me) I have come the conclusion that regardless of mitigation efforts it's unlikely there remains anyone on Earth not already infected. Most people will have no symptoms. Some people will have mild symptoms. Some people will have severe symptoms. Some people will die.
No one in my family has shown any symptoms. They probably had it too.
 

SlowFuse

New member
I have come the conclusion that regardless of mitigation efforts it's unlikely there remains anyone on Earth not already infected.

I dont know about everyone, but i've heard a theory that this has been here since the end of last year. I know that I had something like the flu somewhere about a week before Christmas. It didn't get bad enough for me to get to the doc, just typical male stubbornness... So the logic is that some people already went through this before it was named (and feared) as it is today. I don't think they're wrong.
 

Bikerdoc

Administrator
Staff member
Perhaps an anti-body test is in order.
I'm paranoid of getting it. I'm 71, have heart and lung issues, as does my wife. We are isolating and distancing very rigidly, but still scared.
This is no joke, take care people, I don't want to lose any more friends.
 

telomerase

New member
No way to know, unless I fly to a country where I could legally get tests. (Ironically, I used to run q-pcr in a Mayo research lab...)

I "think" I had it in early March. Three days down in bed with fatigue, that's very sick for me. My company demanded I "get tested" but then they realized that wasn't possible, so they settled for a letter from my physician's assistant saying that I didn't look any sicker than any other geezer (of course she wouldn't take the risk of seeing me in person, but she WAS nice enough to send me the email form letter to pass on ;)
 

Armorer 101

New member
Some of us like Waldo, have issues, last Friday I had my 3rd heart Cath in 90 days, am a 40 year diabetic, high blood pressure, sore butt, etc., there is a commercial on TV where the guy is asked if he robbed a pharmacy, I sympathize with no laughing.

No C-19 here yet. It was interesting to see the hospitals go through the change from medical mercey facility to a real close mirror to a prison.
 

Mike J

New member
I haven't. I have made it a point to gargle with peroxide every evening since word about this came up. It is what I do if I feel like I'm getting sick. Usually stops things before they get started.
One of my wife's church lady friends was diagnosed yesterday though. She had been isolating inside her home because she has lung problems but her husband has been working & her 18 year old son has had contact with the outside world. Their family is going through a rough patch.
My sister-in-law & her now ex-fiance were both really sick in December. They think they had it.
 

climbnjump

Active member
I dont know about everyone, but i've heard a theory that this has been here since the end of last year. I know that I had something like the flu somewhere about a week before Christmas. It didn't get bad enough for me to get to the doc, just typical male stubbornness... So the logic is that some people already went through this before it was named (and feared) as it is today. I don't think they're wrong.

A couple of anecdotal stories...

I have a friend who is a Professor at the University of Washington. He routinely works with grad students from China. One of those folks became ill in early December and went back to China. My friend became very ill a couple weeks later - fever, cough, muscle aches, etc. It took about three weeks, but as it was Christmas break anyway, he stayed home from the lab, just toughed it out and eventually got better. Based on the circumstances, he now believes he probably had covid-19.

My next door neighbor is a pilot who flies for Delta Airlines. Compared to similar time periods in previous years, a large number of pilots called in sick in early January and February. Most of those were international pilots but based here in the states. Speculation is that at least some of them had covid-19.

In the beginning of this debacle, we were told that the virus was going to spread "exponentially" through the population and since none of us had any natural immunity, we were going to be in deep deep doo-doo.

So if the virus actually HAS spread exponentially (or some lesser but still rapidly increasing function), then many, many more folks have had it than the testing numbers show. And most of them with no or mild symptoms.

I suppose someday perhaps, we'll know the real story...
 

Rdnktrkr

New member
A member in my lodge has it and is in ICU at the hospital, he thinks he got it when his wife had to have fluid removed from around her heart, my niece HAD it in Scottsboro AL and she was very sick for 3 weeks but has gone home and is still weak.
 

Magnum

Well-known member
No, but my wife works in the ICU and were waiting for it. I suspect we already had it in February but without an antibody test, who knows.
We're still young, I'm 35 my wife's 33 but we gave 2 very young kids.
 

Armorer 101

New member
I have asked several folks in the medical field if it can repeat and no one has answered that question yet. I do get a strong maybe.
 

Mike J

New member
That's funny. Personally, I gargle with bourbon - several times per day.

There was a time in my life when I was very fond of Sour Mash, Bourbon, or pretty much anything else that had alcohol in it. After a great deal of trial & tribulation I realized I was allergic to alcohol (I broke out in handcuffs). I have abstained since then.
 

thegunguy

Administrator
Staff member
Beer for me. As I've grown older I've developed an aversion to wheat - my wife can tell if I've had some because my eyes itch and I snore that night. The last time I had beer was over Christmas, and I felt like bugs were crawling up my back. <shivers>

I miss it though.
 
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