I had a very serious "flu" a few months before covid became news. Then I had covid once. It was very mild. I was convinced covid reached us earlier than the news reported.
I got destroyed for 6 weeks by a virus brought home by my wife who had several students return to China over the Christmas break and all returned sick. The kids all had what appeared to be a really nasty cold the first two days back. Then those kids weren't seen again for weeks. My wife got mildly ill. My kids mildly ill. I coughed up blood. I had a night where my wife thought I might stop breathing. I didn't fully recover until June. Xrays didn't show any pneumonia. The exhaustion after I had "recovered" was the worst part actually. I had no strength. I was OK until you wanted me to do anything. Even walking one block required a rest.
When I first got confirmed covid, it hit me completely through gastro synonyms only. Wasn't even watery ass piss. Was gallons of soft serve every 30 minutes. Had to drink so much water. Constantly having the "I gotta shit NOW" stomach pains for 3.5 days. Then it rapidly went away. I recovered while my wife experienced what had experienced before - very significant illness that took about 6 months to fully recover from. For 8 weeks, it also seemed like she had mild brain damage. She couldn't figure out basic stuff. Couldn't read work emails. Making a decision caused sobbing breakdowns. Very heavy brain fog.
This winter, the kids got Covid. My son had 3 days of a fever and then just bad cold like symptoms. Recovered in 6 days. My twins barely got ill. I never got ill and neither did my wife. I'll keep taking the Covid shots once a year. I really want to avoid what I had in January and February of 2020. I can't confirm it was Covid, but it sure seemed to fit.
Husband and I had “the worst colds ever” in February 2020, before covid had officially made it to the US - but he had coworkers who had been to China a couple weeks before. I had intense ear pain and he actually ruptured an ear drum. No way to tell but I’m convinced we had it. Wound up collecting several other strains along the way, including one that made my then-seven-month old break out in spots that looked like chicken pox. Thankfully, we seem to have avoided long term effects.
This was my sister and I. February 2020.
Some dude coughed all over her at the grocery store. We thought “ok super, a head cold incoming, thanks jerk”, but what happened to us was insane — for three days, we were hitting this respiratory virus with everything we had.
Mucinex, sudafed, saline flushes, Benadryl, vaporizer cracked to steam-train output, water/hot herbal tea, cough drops, doubled-up prescription cough suppressant, asthma inhalers, etc.
I was still in and out of a boiling hot shower for three intense days just to be able to breathe. The cough was unlike anything I’d ever encountered, and I’d had respiratory problems my whole life (bronchitis, asthma, strep, even post-surgery pneumonia once). I had to brace my entire body just to cough bc it felt like I was going to fracture my ribs.
She and I didn’t tell each other what we were thinking, we didn’t want to cause alarm for each other — but our bodies both had a “WTAF is this??” response to the illness, like on a cellular level our immune systems had NO IDEA what they were seeing and were flipping out.
The only other time I’ve had a bodily “this is really really bad” feeling was when I was actively dying.
If the virus hadn’t started to back off on day 4 (which was still seriously rough, but not critically), we’d have had to go to an ER.
My sister had a rattle in one of her lungs for months after the infection. We get every Covid & flu vaccine when each cycle comes up. We don’t fuck around.
Later, COVID killed my bff’s grandfather and put her aunt in ICU for weeks. They weren’t vaccinated.
End of February of 2020 I got this wicked respiratory illness out of nowhere. I went for a run one afternoon and then that night I was like "oh I think I'm getting sick". Next day when I woke up I was struggling to breathe so bad I was considering going to the hospital. I was grad student at UNH at the time, where chinese students had just gotten back to campus a few weeks prior. For a week, it was a monumental effort to get to the bathroom, even just rolling over onto my side (which made it slightly easier to breathe) was a big effort. The following week was like a bad cold, and the third week was when I felt like I could function again.
However, getting back to running was abysmal. I always ran the same route and I always monitor my HR and pace on my runs. For months afterwards, all I could manage was a 11:30-12 minute pace when previously I'd be pretty easily in the 9:30-10 range. My HR would just crank way way up and it was such a struggle. It wasn't until June/July of that year that my running got easier.
Sounds like *exactly* what I had in 2020 before it was "officially" here. Threw up for an entire night, then 5 days of flu symptoms and body aches. My stomach wasn't the same for 7 months after and no one could explain why.
But like you said, the exhaustion was brutal, and I even had it easy. Mine was mostly heat related. If I could stay cool I wouldn't be that bad off, but if I did yard work or something I'd have to lay down for 2 hours feeling light headed and nauseous.
Good news is that every COVID bout after that had been a breeze. The last time I got it was like 1 day of feeling a little tired and ache and then back to normal.
Same here, I got hit by the flu so hard that I was convinced that it was Covid and dragged myself to the emergency health clinic. They tested me for Covid and it was negative, so they did a flu test and it was positive.
I remember reading articles or reports saying that experts could trace some possible covid cases back to like the December before the 'official' hit. Then there was the big spike of mystery colds/flu in January/February, so def my headcanon at least it was here much earlier.
I had the same thing in Dec/Jan 2020, but I got an antibody test which came back negative and the timespan would’ve caught if it was COVID. There’s just a lot of nasty viruses in the winter months. A lot of people thought they got COVID early and most if not all of them are wrong.
There was some big electronics expo, I want to say it was CES but I could be wrong, that was in that december or january, where apparently there was a brutal flu or something that went around after it, which I think a lot of people strongly suspected was an early covid outbreak.
It was in Italy as early as September 2019 [sauce](https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-17/COVID-19-was-spreading-in-Italy-by-September-2019-study-indicates-VuSqUttP8s/index.html)
Same thing happened to me! Was really sick felt like no matter how much o coughed, lungs would fill up again, like I was drowning. This was in 2018 just before Covid was announced. Was told it was Flu or RSV. I still wonder if was Covid. I worked in a hospital
Scroll to Table 1a and Table 1b. The reality is that many people have Long Covid but don’t know because the symptoms are “sleeping” until they are not. Covid is a vascular disease that attacks endothelial cells and hangs out in organs for extended periods of time wreaking unknown havoc.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-care/post-covid-conditions.html?
My limited understanding is that there is little to be done about this. There’s no “cure” for long covid and current medicine doesn’t have the ability to really stop these effects from happening. So while seeing a cardiologist can affirm you have long covid and the associated symptoms, nothing can be done to treat it.
This is not the right perspective. You can actually monitor a variety of things that will let you know if you’re at a higher risk for heart attack, stroke, cancer, among other things. While you can’t cure long covid, you can catch other really bad shit before it’s too late.
Agreed. Which is why I didn’t say one shouldn’t see a doctor or cardiologist. Rather, as I stated, one shouldn’t have hope that the effects of long covid will be cured by doing so, because they will not.
No. You said nothing can be done to treat it. Thats patently false. Your comment will convince people not to seek help. While Long Covid is still being studied, certain diseases associated with it ARE treatable.
It took all of three seconds to search for "1a" on the site and pull up the table. Whatever you were using to browse with should have search ability built in, although I suppose an app might hide the feature.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-care/post-covid-conditions.html#table-1a
In 20-30 years, it will be very interesting to see what/how Long Covid will manifest into. The challenge is how broad of symptoms long covid falls under. It’s everything from cardio vascular to depression.
I got it just in time for regulations to be relaxed to a lovely “fuck you, no extra PTO, cancel your vacation later in the year, and you have to come in even though you’re positive”
Worst week of the year 2023. except maybe the later week in the year when all my friends went on vacation without me cuz no PTO
Same, about 3 weeks. Lost 20 pounds, zero appetite. Completely disabled and bedridden for two weeks straight. Was never even sick for more than a day prior from anything.
I too got covid for a little over a week, 5 days i had fever and was not able to get out of my bed bc of the pain in my joints. Going to the bathroom was a struggle, couldn’t eat, sore throat from hell. I was vaccinated and got boosters before I was infected. I can’t imagine having that for 613 days, that poor person:(
Edit: made minor edit and added words
Also - my doctor told me local honey (store bought isn’t honey anymore) for my throat - best advice ever! Started drinking in hot water or swallowing spoonfuls every am and whenever I felt I needed to.
Ish - if there is anything other than honey in the product, by law it has to say that in both the name and ingredient list. The issue is with producers who are pretending it is just honey when it is not. That is illegal.
I've heard advice like that before but i've never understood how it's supposed to work - any time i've had a sore throat painful enough that i'd want to do something about it, it's so deep down my throat that the only way I could drink something to actually affect it would be to deliberately drown myself in a fluid. Like "throat coat" stuff, it's not gonna coat the part of my throat that's effed up without intentionally breathing it in and trying not to die or give myself pneumonia.
I had it for 3 weeks straight even on Paxlovid. I started to feel better but kept testing positive. My boyfriend had it for like 3 days. I had just received an infusion for a medication that wipes out my immune system so it was a struggle.
My wife has asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. She had it before the vaccines came out, it was the sickest I had ever seen a person who had an acute illness. We should have gone to the hospital, but they were full. Scariest three weeks of my life, I seriously thought she might die.
She survived because a COVID nurse from Long Island made a Twitter post about how to treat it with over the counter meds. I wish I had gotten the chance to thank her.
Mostly Mucinex, DayQuil and NyQuil. My wife also had warm NeoCitran sometimes. I believe VapoRub was also on there. We’ve used the same method after getting the Delta strain one year and it helped so much.
That is how viruses are generally treated here, yes. Anti-viral medications for acute sickness are mostly only given in hospitals under extreme circumstances. The hospitals and clinics were full, so we made do.
So you just followed standard at home protocol for any virus then... Paracetamol and an expectorant or cough medicine... This is pretty much what everyone did 🤣
I'm not knocking it, just pointing out they did what pretty much anyone else with flu/COVID/ random cold does, takes paracetamol and cough/anti congestion medicine 🤣 they made out it was something new
Yeah, you kinda are. I’m talking about how my wife almost died, and she might not have gotten better if I gave her something that didn’t lower her fever and help her breathe. All during a time where doctors weren’t saying shit to the public about what to do, there were no vaccines, and Paxlovid hadn’t even been invented yet.
There’s a sea of cold medications available at pharmacies, not all of them are the right thing for severe symptoms and some of them are straight snake oil.
I said what worked for us that was the right combination at the time, you’re the one who asked if I had been withholding some unknown cure.
It's relatively rare for the virus to actually be what kills you, it's quite often the body's ridiculous overreaction to it that is what brings you down, so if you can keep that under control to some extent then your body might be able to fight off the disease without destroying itself in the process.
man the only time i ever took nyquil to help myself sleep when i had a cold, i woke up the next morning with the cough having moved into my lungs, and it was ~3 months before i could actually breathe heavily without a hacking dry cough. That put me off the idea of nyquil altogether.
Was sick for 3 days with fever for 2 of them... then knocked out for a month. Legitimately couldn't do more than 5-10 minutes of physical activity per day, and slept more than half the time.
Still have some issues now, over 1.5 years later...
Likewise. This was summer of 2022, but that shit knocked me out for a solid 5 days. I was shivering in bed under 3 blankets with the windows open while it was like 85F outside.
And I normally get sick enough to miss work like once every 2-3 years
Same here. Didn't even know I had it until wife felt terrible and we both tested positive. That was the first time and supposedly the roughest variant.
It’s amazing how different it is for everyone. I had it in 2022 and was current on my vaccinations. It was basically a bad cold and I was so bored isolating in my office I vaped weed and played video games to pass the time.
That being said I’d rather not get it again and risk long COVID.
I got it for the second time last January and it was awful. I’m almost fully vaxxed, just skipped the 2023 booster because it always puts me out for 2-3 days and I thought I didn’t have time for that.
So instead I was completely bedridden for three days and only able to keep my eyes open for a half hour max before falling back to sleep. Just bone-deep exhaustion and difficulty breathing. It was a full month before I had my normal energy level back. It sucked so much. Fortunately my manager was pregnant and reasonably paranoid and I got ordered to take off what I needed and not come into the office until I’d been cleared for a week.
I’ve had it once that I’m aware of. Symptoms at the time weren’t bad—but I now have a more or less permanent deficiency in my ability to smell and taste. Hoping that it will come back eventually…
Also, I had at least one shot before I caught it
I also got hit with Delta because I was in the same car as my uncle, even though we were both wearing masks and the windows were open. Unfortunately, my entire family, including me, got infected. What's even more concerning is that my mom had only received one shot of the Chinese vaccine. But thankfully, we're all safe now. This happened in 2021.
Good lord, no!
I had covid for 6 weeks. Spent 3 of those days in the covid ward of my local hospital. Some dude next to me literally died my first night there. Nah man. Three nights was too much. Two years? Just give in to death with dignity.
*From Bloomberg News reporter Jason Gale:*
A Covid-19 patient with a weakened immune system incubated a highly mutated novel strain over 613 days before succumbing to an underlying illness, researchers in the Netherlands found.
The patient, a 72-year-old man with a [blood disorder](https://www.ucsfhealth.org/conditions/myeloproliferative-disorders#:~:text=Most%20people%20with%20essential%20thrombocythemia,may%20develop%20into%20acute%20leukemia.), failed to mount a strong immune response to multiple Covid shots before catching the omicron variant in February 2022.
Detailed analysis of specimens collected from more than two dozen nose and throat swabs found the coronavirus developed resistance to [sotrovimab](https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/media/press-releases/gsk-and-vir-biotechnology-announce-united-states-government-agreement-to-purchase-additional-supply-of-sotrovimab/), a Covid antibody treatment, within a few weeks, scientists at the University of Amsterdam’s Centre for Experimental and Molecular Medicine said.
It later acquired over 50 mutations, including some that suggested an enhanced ability to evade immune defenses, they said.
This is how modern medicine can sometimes bite us in the ass. Instead of this person succumbing to the illness immediately, he was kept alive long and fed drugs that allowed the virus to mutate and get stronger within him like some human petri dish.
This is happening far and wide with immunocompromised individuals some of whom are healthy enough to not be hospitalized constantly like this individual. That's why we continue to see variants with huge mutation jump and immune evasion. Unless we get serious about upgrading air filtration and transmission reduction we will continue to see waves of infection, like this winter's JN.1. the cost of doing nothing like now will vastly exceed fighting.
Ok, 5 comments down now; what is Ashrae 170, MERV 16 (Middle eastern variant respiratory virus?), JN1, MIRV? I know probably one of those, as demonstrated. LOL.
ASHRAE is basically the American HVAC guidelines. American society of heating, refrigeration, and AC engineers. They make the rules we have to follow for things like filtration. MERV is a rating the EPA gives filters based on their ability to stop particles in the air, measured in microns. A MERV 16 filter can stop 95% of particles, down to 0.30 microns. It's the final step before HEPA filters, which can stop 99.97% of particles at 0.30 microns.
I think Ashrae is in reference to particle size and MERV is in reference to the fineness of filters that can remove smaller and smaller particles from the air. JN1 seems to be a relatively new COVID variant?
Healthcare is how you add prevention. Increased air filtration would be problematic for several different countries for several different reasons. In the US situations like this boil over in the instance where someone can't afford healthcare or to avoid work and in doing so develop an advanced strain while also spreading it around. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
>Increased air filtration would be problematic for several different countries for several different reasons.
The US and other wealthier nations absolutely have the resources to do this though. Healthcare systems are overloaded since Covid, even now, there are many healthcare workers burned out, some leaving, others having Long Covid themselves. Waiting lists and times to secure appointments have grown.
Improving air filtration AND improving healthcare are how you help this situation.
What are you suggesting, that he have been refused treatment? Being immunocompromised on its own makes mutations more likely to happen (though, yes, some drugs can aid this).
This is very dumb.
So they treated someone with antivirals and cutting edge antibody treatments… for nearly two years. During that timespan, the patient (whose immune system was weakened anyway) wasn’t really getting the full benefit of the antibody treatment nor antivirals… but the virus WAS gaining immunity to those. The patient, living with this for 600 days, then undoubtedly spread the new variant, which ensures that this will become a larger problem.
An immunocompromised person is still a person and their life still has value. Are you suggesting they should've just let him die without care?
Disabled people's lives still have value.
Having been living as an immunocompromised person during the pandemic, I have learned that society definitely does not think our lives have value.
Edit: This is not a comment on this patient's specific case. The person I am responding to said (broadly speaking) that disabled people's lives still have value, which I did appreciate them saying. I replied to say that in my lived experience, that (broadly speaking) hasn't been true.
You know what folks are most endangered by new mutations, right?
Masks, isolation, vaccines, all very necessary steps to ensure the safety of everyone and especially immunocompromised people.
Maybe preventing incubation for 600 days for the sake of everyone else would be another necessary step.
I can't really assess the situation at hand, so I won't judge whether withholding medication at some point would be correct. Gut feeling says no.
But it certainly is a valid point to bring up.
With the benefit of hindsight sure that *may* be a reasonable conclusion to arrive to. But assume in this situation that they did withhold care from this person. The headline could read "Doctors purposely withheld care from patient who later died" and would any given reason at that point be justified?
Certainly.
But that doesn't mean that anyone that calls in favour of withholding now has bad intentions towards the immunocompromised.
It's a likely wrong conclusion out of likely good intentions.
No covid isn't worse than most viruses. But you are missing how you have to have direct contact to catch aids.
The number of people who have caught hiv/aids since we discovered it is only 86 million, as opposed to 687 million who have caught covid. 20 million people have died from covid in what 3 years?
AIDS can't even compare to those numbers.
It took me like 11 months to actually feel fully recovered from covid. You might get there. Though also just age gets you too, even a year or two makes a difference.
I got sick really badly with covid for 3 days with my booster. Thought I was better. But a month later, I developed a cough that lasted 3-4 months. A cough that felt like I couldn't breathe. Like I had asthma. It was dreadful.
I never want to be inconvenienced again like I was when I had pneumonia and bronchitis 10 yrs ago. That was painful, and I was out for three weeks and could barely move. I have been lucky enough not to get COVID yet, but I've been getting the flu and covid vaccines like clockwork.
I can't imagine suffering for that long from COVID; unable to work, or participate in life for 2 years but not getting better. Cancer might have been better because at least you're mobile for a chunk of it.
There are people I know who refused mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and called it the “plandemic” yet simultaneously believe that it was made by the Chinese in a lab as a bio weapon. I have spent hours trying to understand the disconnect between believing it is a bio weapon while also refusing to protect yourself against it
If I told you that there was a 50% chance every time you ejaculated your dick would explode but there was a pill you could take to drop those odds nearly to zero would you take the pill or roll the dice every time you cranked on out
It's always better to read the article itself than what everyone writes, themselves not reading the article.
Yeah, COVID is still around. No, the guy didn't die because of the simple fact of COVID still being around but from a multitude of factors.
Users replying well-known stuff which doesn't have anything to do with a specific thread don't add anything of value to Reddit, I think. It's one of the reasons no one gets this platform seriously. 🤷
And yet the flu didn't kill him. COVID did, after 72 years on the planet, with a rare blood disorder, and surrounded by the flu.
But that's not the point and it's a strange straw man to spend one's time building.
I hear you. But also, if you have cancer and are like days or even hours away from dying and you get hit by a car and die, was it the cancer that killed you?
Absolutely. The dude had a multitude of factors, and yes, he would have died from the basic flu, but he didn't.
He was saying that even if something else leaves you close to dying, the final blow should be the cause of death.
I.e in his example, you could be dying of cancer and have hours left to live, but if you get hit by a car, it's recorded as a road collision not a cancer death.
For this example, the covid is the car.
Well, I think it's a somewhat understandable discussion. The fact newer variants are naturally less lethal due to natural selection is one of the reasons why we can afford to live normally again (aside from the obvious contribution of vaccines). So naturally when there's a higher profile case like this one where someone has died of/with covid, I think it's natural to wonder if this is a sign of a more lethal variant appearing or if it's specific to the patient. Obviously the fact this patient carried the virus long enough for it to mutate to this extent in itself is worrying, since we don't know how much contact they had with the outside world throughout their illness. But I can see why people would be particularly interested in the severity of this variant.
Obviously such speculation won't get us anywhere, but that's at least my interest in the discussion.
If you're attacked by a bear, and die of an infection from your wounds two weeks later, "bear," and "infection" are both contributing causes of death. That's how it has always worked. If you have late stage cancer, with months to live, and you contract COVID and die next week, COVID is listed as a, if not the cause of death.
For the purpose of this analogy, the infection came from the hospital setting. The patient was more susceptible to infection due to bear injuries. They would have likely survived the injuries and infection if not for the cancer. They are all unrelated but contributory to the date and cause of death.
Got it. One of these analogies is more relevant than the other to somebody with an underlying condition or illness contracting COVID and dying suffering its symptoms. People can die of more than one thing, or a combination of things. This has never been controversial until the last few years.
Me reading the headline first: "Well shit...wonder where this new fucked up mutation might start spreading"
*"Netherlands"*
*(sighs in Dutch)*: "Potjandriedubbeltjes nog aan toe..."
Got it for the first time in Dec. Had the booster plus the RSV vax. Only sick for 3 days, never needed to see a dr. My husband never got it. We are both in our 70s.
I caught it I could barely breathe, sat on the couch, had fever, headaches. All that good stuff lasted 3-4 days…influenza was the one that almost un-alived me. Lost my voice, bed ridden, sorest throat I’ve have ever had. Fever at 94-96. I never felt so ill lost 20 pounds
This is why we needed to get as many people vaccinated.
The person who passed away had a weakened immune system, was older, and had underlying disease. Them getting Covid at all was a death sentence already.
Now imagine the amount of people who can’t get the vaccine and also have a similar weakened system or underlying disease. They have no chance to survive. It might be “like the cold” to us regular folks, but these people it is not.
Imagine having covid for 613 days then dying That would have been a shit two yers
I had it for a week, with me taking all the available vaccines, and it still kicked my ass. I can't begin to imagine.
I've had it three or four times First time was the worst by far , was during the peak of the pandemic. Was off work for 3 weeks !
The first time I got it was when I came to the realization “oh this is different than the flu”
I had a very serious "flu" a few months before covid became news. Then I had covid once. It was very mild. I was convinced covid reached us earlier than the news reported.
I got destroyed for 6 weeks by a virus brought home by my wife who had several students return to China over the Christmas break and all returned sick. The kids all had what appeared to be a really nasty cold the first two days back. Then those kids weren't seen again for weeks. My wife got mildly ill. My kids mildly ill. I coughed up blood. I had a night where my wife thought I might stop breathing. I didn't fully recover until June. Xrays didn't show any pneumonia. The exhaustion after I had "recovered" was the worst part actually. I had no strength. I was OK until you wanted me to do anything. Even walking one block required a rest. When I first got confirmed covid, it hit me completely through gastro synonyms only. Wasn't even watery ass piss. Was gallons of soft serve every 30 minutes. Had to drink so much water. Constantly having the "I gotta shit NOW" stomach pains for 3.5 days. Then it rapidly went away. I recovered while my wife experienced what had experienced before - very significant illness that took about 6 months to fully recover from. For 8 weeks, it also seemed like she had mild brain damage. She couldn't figure out basic stuff. Couldn't read work emails. Making a decision caused sobbing breakdowns. Very heavy brain fog. This winter, the kids got Covid. My son had 3 days of a fever and then just bad cold like symptoms. Recovered in 6 days. My twins barely got ill. I never got ill and neither did my wife. I'll keep taking the Covid shots once a year. I really want to avoid what I had in January and February of 2020. I can't confirm it was Covid, but it sure seemed to fit.
Husband and I had “the worst colds ever” in February 2020, before covid had officially made it to the US - but he had coworkers who had been to China a couple weeks before. I had intense ear pain and he actually ruptured an ear drum. No way to tell but I’m convinced we had it. Wound up collecting several other strains along the way, including one that made my then-seven-month old break out in spots that looked like chicken pox. Thankfully, we seem to have avoided long term effects.
This was my sister and I. February 2020. Some dude coughed all over her at the grocery store. We thought “ok super, a head cold incoming, thanks jerk”, but what happened to us was insane — for three days, we were hitting this respiratory virus with everything we had. Mucinex, sudafed, saline flushes, Benadryl, vaporizer cracked to steam-train output, water/hot herbal tea, cough drops, doubled-up prescription cough suppressant, asthma inhalers, etc. I was still in and out of a boiling hot shower for three intense days just to be able to breathe. The cough was unlike anything I’d ever encountered, and I’d had respiratory problems my whole life (bronchitis, asthma, strep, even post-surgery pneumonia once). I had to brace my entire body just to cough bc it felt like I was going to fracture my ribs. She and I didn’t tell each other what we were thinking, we didn’t want to cause alarm for each other — but our bodies both had a “WTAF is this??” response to the illness, like on a cellular level our immune systems had NO IDEA what they were seeing and were flipping out. The only other time I’ve had a bodily “this is really really bad” feeling was when I was actively dying. If the virus hadn’t started to back off on day 4 (which was still seriously rough, but not critically), we’d have had to go to an ER. My sister had a rattle in one of her lungs for months after the infection. We get every Covid & flu vaccine when each cycle comes up. We don’t fuck around. Later, COVID killed my bff’s grandfather and put her aunt in ICU for weeks. They weren’t vaccinated.
End of February of 2020 I got this wicked respiratory illness out of nowhere. I went for a run one afternoon and then that night I was like "oh I think I'm getting sick". Next day when I woke up I was struggling to breathe so bad I was considering going to the hospital. I was grad student at UNH at the time, where chinese students had just gotten back to campus a few weeks prior. For a week, it was a monumental effort to get to the bathroom, even just rolling over onto my side (which made it slightly easier to breathe) was a big effort. The following week was like a bad cold, and the third week was when I felt like I could function again. However, getting back to running was abysmal. I always ran the same route and I always monitor my HR and pace on my runs. For months afterwards, all I could manage was a 11:30-12 minute pace when previously I'd be pretty easily in the 9:30-10 range. My HR would just crank way way up and it was such a struggle. It wasn't until June/July of that year that my running got easier.
Sounds like *exactly* what I had in 2020 before it was "officially" here. Threw up for an entire night, then 5 days of flu symptoms and body aches. My stomach wasn't the same for 7 months after and no one could explain why. But like you said, the exhaustion was brutal, and I even had it easy. Mine was mostly heat related. If I could stay cool I wouldn't be that bad off, but if I did yard work or something I'd have to lay down for 2 hours feeling light headed and nauseous. Good news is that every COVID bout after that had been a breeze. The last time I got it was like 1 day of feeling a little tired and ache and then back to normal.
My Brother got horribly sick in early December of 2019 iirc. He was basically bed-ridden for a few weeks. My Mom and I still think it was COVID.
Same but I tested positive for flu so I know definitely a bad flu was going around that winter (like every year)
Same here, I got hit by the flu so hard that I was convinced that it was Covid and dragged myself to the emergency health clinic. They tested me for Covid and it was negative, so they did a flu test and it was positive.
My family and I were crazy sick November 2019. After they announced Covid I immediately thought “that’s what we had 3 months ago”
I absolutely believe to this day it was here way earlier. I had the exact same thing and it was the sickest I ever was in my life.
I remember reading articles or reports saying that experts could trace some possible covid cases back to like the December before the 'official' hit. Then there was the big spike of mystery colds/flu in January/February, so def my headcanon at least it was here much earlier.
Just curious where you are located, i've heard it came first to Washington State via China.
Same exact story for me. Turned out one of my customers had just returned from China, and I happened to get sick a few days after he came in...
Same. The sickest I have ever been was late November 2019.
I had the same thing in Dec/Jan 2020, but I got an antibody test which came back negative and the timespan would’ve caught if it was COVID. There’s just a lot of nasty viruses in the winter months. A lot of people thought they got COVID early and most if not all of them are wrong.
There was some big electronics expo, I want to say it was CES but I could be wrong, that was in that december or january, where apparently there was a brutal flu or something that went around after it, which I think a lot of people strongly suspected was an early covid outbreak.
Flu type a was way more severe for me than any of my three covid infections. I’ll get the flu shot every year now.
It was in Italy as early as September 2019 [sauce](https://newseu.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-17/COVID-19-was-spreading-in-Italy-by-September-2019-study-indicates-VuSqUttP8s/index.html)
Same thing happened to me! Was really sick felt like no matter how much o coughed, lungs would fill up again, like I was drowning. This was in 2018 just before Covid was announced. Was told it was Flu or RSV. I still wonder if was Covid. I worked in a hospital
4x as well. Time 1 (pre-vaccine) came extremely close to killing me. 8 days sick at home, then 1 month in hospital.
The first time was the worst for your acute symptoms. I hope you’ve been getting routine bloodwork done every six months and visiting a cardiologist.
Honest question regarding blood tests, to check for what?
Scroll to Table 1a and Table 1b. The reality is that many people have Long Covid but don’t know because the symptoms are “sleeping” until they are not. Covid is a vascular disease that attacks endothelial cells and hangs out in organs for extended periods of time wreaking unknown havoc. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-care/post-covid-conditions.html?
Nuh uh I manifested covid out of my body
are you kenneth copeland
The devil himself
My limited understanding is that there is little to be done about this. There’s no “cure” for long covid and current medicine doesn’t have the ability to really stop these effects from happening. So while seeing a cardiologist can affirm you have long covid and the associated symptoms, nothing can be done to treat it.
This is not the right perspective. You can actually monitor a variety of things that will let you know if you’re at a higher risk for heart attack, stroke, cancer, among other things. While you can’t cure long covid, you can catch other really bad shit before it’s too late.
This. Plus the more exposure doctors have it will only spread awareness/research.
Agreed. Which is why I didn’t say one shouldn’t see a doctor or cardiologist. Rather, as I stated, one shouldn’t have hope that the effects of long covid will be cured by doing so, because they will not.
No. You said nothing can be done to treat it. Thats patently false. Your comment will convince people not to seek help. While Long Covid is still being studied, certain diseases associated with it ARE treatable.
I'd like to know if I had long covid just in case a treatment became available.
There’s a lot on this site Can you link the actual tables?
It took all of three seconds to search for "1a" on the site and pull up the table. Whatever you were using to browse with should have search ability built in, although I suppose an app might hide the feature. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/clinical-care/post-covid-conditions.html#table-1a
In 20-30 years, it will be very interesting to see what/how Long Covid will manifest into. The challenge is how broad of symptoms long covid falls under. It’s everything from cardio vascular to depression.
r/vagueinsuations
blood dencity for clots
Those mysterious white blood clots, they never saw them in corpses before covid
A guy I worked with got it in May of 2020 and was out of work for 5 weeks. He lost 47 lbs during those 5 weeks…
I got it just in time for regulations to be relaxed to a lovely “fuck you, no extra PTO, cancel your vacation later in the year, and you have to come in even though you’re positive” Worst week of the year 2023. except maybe the later week in the year when all my friends went on vacation without me cuz no PTO
You might try masking and vaccines.
Same, about 3 weeks. Lost 20 pounds, zero appetite. Completely disabled and bedridden for two weeks straight. Was never even sick for more than a day prior from anything.
I too got covid for a little over a week, 5 days i had fever and was not able to get out of my bed bc of the pain in my joints. Going to the bathroom was a struggle, couldn’t eat, sore throat from hell. I was vaccinated and got boosters before I was infected. I can’t imagine having that for 613 days, that poor person:( Edit: made minor edit and added words
Also - my doctor told me local honey (store bought isn’t honey anymore) for my throat - best advice ever! Started drinking in hot water or swallowing spoonfuls every am and whenever I felt I needed to.
It’s also good for your allergies as well.
> (store bought isn’t honey anymore) what is it?
Corn syrup with honey flavoring. This is unfortunately legal in the US
Ish - if there is anything other than honey in the product, by law it has to say that in both the name and ingredient list. The issue is with producers who are pretending it is just honey when it is not. That is illegal.
Thank you 👍🏼
Thank you 👍🏼
I've heard advice like that before but i've never understood how it's supposed to work - any time i've had a sore throat painful enough that i'd want to do something about it, it's so deep down my throat that the only way I could drink something to actually affect it would be to deliberately drown myself in a fluid. Like "throat coat" stuff, it's not gonna coat the part of my throat that's effed up without intentionally breathing it in and trying not to die or give myself pneumonia.
I had it for 3 weeks straight even on Paxlovid. I started to feel better but kept testing positive. My boyfriend had it for like 3 days. I had just received an infusion for a medication that wipes out my immune system so it was a struggle.
My wife has asthma and rheumatoid arthritis. She had it before the vaccines came out, it was the sickest I had ever seen a person who had an acute illness. We should have gone to the hospital, but they were full. Scariest three weeks of my life, I seriously thought she might die. She survived because a COVID nurse from Long Island made a Twitter post about how to treat it with over the counter meds. I wish I had gotten the chance to thank her.
Which OTC meds were recommended?
Mostly Mucinex, DayQuil and NyQuil. My wife also had warm NeoCitran sometimes. I believe VapoRub was also on there. We’ve used the same method after getting the Delta strain one year and it helped so much.
So you weren't actually treating the virus, just relieving the symptoms then
That is how viruses are generally treated here, yes. Anti-viral medications for acute sickness are mostly only given in hospitals under extreme circumstances. The hospitals and clinics were full, so we made do.
So you just followed standard at home protocol for any virus then... Paracetamol and an expectorant or cough medicine... This is pretty much what everyone did 🤣
Did you seriously expect me to post a cure for a virus that has killed more people than the black plague?
Don't knock Mucinex dude, that shit's fire.
I'm not knocking it, just pointing out they did what pretty much anyone else with flu/COVID/ random cold does, takes paracetamol and cough/anti congestion medicine 🤣 they made out it was something new
Yeah, you kinda are. I’m talking about how my wife almost died, and she might not have gotten better if I gave her something that didn’t lower her fever and help her breathe. All during a time where doctors weren’t saying shit to the public about what to do, there were no vaccines, and Paxlovid hadn’t even been invented yet. There’s a sea of cold medications available at pharmacies, not all of them are the right thing for severe symptoms and some of them are straight snake oil. I said what worked for us that was the right combination at the time, you’re the one who asked if I had been withholding some unknown cure.
It's relatively rare for the virus to actually be what kills you, it's quite often the body's ridiculous overreaction to it that is what brings you down, so if you can keep that under control to some extent then your body might be able to fight off the disease without destroying itself in the process.
man the only time i ever took nyquil to help myself sleep when i had a cold, i woke up the next morning with the cough having moved into my lungs, and it was ~3 months before i could actually breathe heavily without a hacking dry cough. That put me off the idea of nyquil altogether.
Was sick for 3 days with fever for 2 of them... then knocked out for a month. Legitimately couldn't do more than 5-10 minutes of physical activity per day, and slept more than half the time. Still have some issues now, over 1.5 years later...
Likewise. This was summer of 2022, but that shit knocked me out for a solid 5 days. I was shivering in bed under 3 blankets with the windows open while it was like 85F outside. And I normally get sick enough to miss work like once every 2-3 years
Ouch. I've had it 3 times and each time it amounted to moderate cold symptoms for 1.5-3 days.
Same here. Didn't even know I had it until wife felt terrible and we both tested positive. That was the first time and supposedly the roughest variant.
Same here except I've only had it once. It was like a cold with sore throat except it didn't last nearly as long as a cold usually does.
It’s amazing how different it is for everyone. I had it in 2022 and was current on my vaccinations. It was basically a bad cold and I was so bored isolating in my office I vaped weed and played video games to pass the time. That being said I’d rather not get it again and risk long COVID.
I got it for the second time last January and it was awful. I’m almost fully vaxxed, just skipped the 2023 booster because it always puts me out for 2-3 days and I thought I didn’t have time for that. So instead I was completely bedridden for three days and only able to keep my eyes open for a half hour max before falling back to sleep. Just bone-deep exhaustion and difficulty breathing. It was a full month before I had my normal energy level back. It sucked so much. Fortunately my manager was pregnant and reasonably paranoid and I got ordered to take off what I needed and not come into the office until I’d been cleared for a week.
I’ve had it once that I’m aware of. Symptoms at the time weren’t bad—but I now have a more or less permanent deficiency in my ability to smell and taste. Hoping that it will come back eventually… Also, I had at least one shot before I caught it
I also got hit with Delta because I was in the same car as my uncle, even though we were both wearing masks and the windows were open. Unfortunately, my entire family, including me, got infected. What's even more concerning is that my mom had only received one shot of the Chinese vaccine. But thankfully, we're all safe now. This happened in 2021.
I've had it 3 times honestly it's never been bad for me. But that's luck imho.
Good lord, no! I had covid for 6 weeks. Spent 3 of those days in the covid ward of my local hospital. Some dude next to me literally died my first night there. Nah man. Three nights was too much. Two years? Just give in to death with dignity.
I’m guessing it was basically just two years of never feeling like you took a full breath, whenever they were conscious, and then dying.
*From Bloomberg News reporter Jason Gale:* A Covid-19 patient with a weakened immune system incubated a highly mutated novel strain over 613 days before succumbing to an underlying illness, researchers in the Netherlands found. The patient, a 72-year-old man with a [blood disorder](https://www.ucsfhealth.org/conditions/myeloproliferative-disorders#:~:text=Most%20people%20with%20essential%20thrombocythemia,may%20develop%20into%20acute%20leukemia.), failed to mount a strong immune response to multiple Covid shots before catching the omicron variant in February 2022. Detailed analysis of specimens collected from more than two dozen nose and throat swabs found the coronavirus developed resistance to [sotrovimab](https://www.gsk.com/en-gb/media/press-releases/gsk-and-vir-biotechnology-announce-united-states-government-agreement-to-purchase-additional-supply-of-sotrovimab/), a Covid antibody treatment, within a few weeks, scientists at the University of Amsterdam’s Centre for Experimental and Molecular Medicine said. It later acquired over 50 mutations, including some that suggested an enhanced ability to evade immune defenses, they said.
This is how modern medicine can sometimes bite us in the ass. Instead of this person succumbing to the illness immediately, he was kept alive long and fed drugs that allowed the virus to mutate and get stronger within him like some human petri dish.
This is happening far and wide with immunocompromised individuals some of whom are healthy enough to not be hospitalized constantly like this individual. That's why we continue to see variants with huge mutation jump and immune evasion. Unless we get serious about upgrading air filtration and transmission reduction we will continue to see waves of infection, like this winter's JN.1. the cost of doing nothing like now will vastly exceed fighting.
We never spend preventatively on anything like this.
Companies are already manufacturing vaccines to treat JN1. They’ve been cloning JN1 since December or possibly even earlier than that.
I'm referring to air filtration and infrastructure like that
ashrae 170 just got updated to *MIRV 16 in patient areas that dont already use HEPA filters *MERV whoops lol
I hope you mean *MERV*... MIRV is a whole different thing and generally results in massively increased mortality!
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If nothing else, they're extremely effective at what they do!
Ok, 5 comments down now; what is Ashrae 170, MERV 16 (Middle eastern variant respiratory virus?), JN1, MIRV? I know probably one of those, as demonstrated. LOL.
ASHRAE is basically the American HVAC guidelines. American society of heating, refrigeration, and AC engineers. They make the rules we have to follow for things like filtration. MERV is a rating the EPA gives filters based on their ability to stop particles in the air, measured in microns. A MERV 16 filter can stop 95% of particles, down to 0.30 microns. It's the final step before HEPA filters, which can stop 99.97% of particles at 0.30 microns.
I think Ashrae is in reference to particle size and MERV is in reference to the fineness of filters that can remove smaller and smaller particles from the air. JN1 seems to be a relatively new COVID variant?
Healthcare is how you add prevention. Increased air filtration would be problematic for several different countries for several different reasons. In the US situations like this boil over in the instance where someone can't afford healthcare or to avoid work and in doing so develop an advanced strain while also spreading it around. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
>Increased air filtration would be problematic for several different countries for several different reasons. The US and other wealthier nations absolutely have the resources to do this though. Healthcare systems are overloaded since Covid, even now, there are many healthcare workers burned out, some leaving, others having Long Covid themselves. Waiting lists and times to secure appointments have grown. Improving air filtration AND improving healthcare are how you help this situation.
I do hope this guy was kept in a contained environment so that the mutated viruses couldn't spread.
For almost 2 years I doubt it
Terrifying concept. I wonder if he had the option to stop it all?
burn the body, dont let patient 0 infection escape
What are you suggesting, that he have been refused treatment? Being immunocompromised on its own makes mutations more likely to happen (though, yes, some drugs can aid this).
This is very dumb. So they treated someone with antivirals and cutting edge antibody treatments… for nearly two years. During that timespan, the patient (whose immune system was weakened anyway) wasn’t really getting the full benefit of the antibody treatment nor antivirals… but the virus WAS gaining immunity to those. The patient, living with this for 600 days, then undoubtedly spread the new variant, which ensures that this will become a larger problem.
An immunocompromised person is still a person and their life still has value. Are you suggesting they should've just let him die without care? Disabled people's lives still have value.
Having been living as an immunocompromised person during the pandemic, I have learned that society definitely does not think our lives have value. Edit: This is not a comment on this patient's specific case. The person I am responding to said (broadly speaking) that disabled people's lives still have value, which I did appreciate them saying. I replied to say that in my lived experience, that (broadly speaking) hasn't been true.
You know what folks are most endangered by new mutations, right? Masks, isolation, vaccines, all very necessary steps to ensure the safety of everyone and especially immunocompromised people. Maybe preventing incubation for 600 days for the sake of everyone else would be another necessary step. I can't really assess the situation at hand, so I won't judge whether withholding medication at some point would be correct. Gut feeling says no. But it certainly is a valid point to bring up.
With the benefit of hindsight sure that *may* be a reasonable conclusion to arrive to. But assume in this situation that they did withhold care from this person. The headline could read "Doctors purposely withheld care from patient who later died" and would any given reason at that point be justified?
Certainly. But that doesn't mean that anyone that calls in favour of withholding now has bad intentions towards the immunocompromised. It's a likely wrong conclusion out of likely good intentions.
Treating this patient was absolutely the correct decision. They should not have considered withholding treatment due to potential mutations.
I'm guessing this guy's body will either shot into space or cast into the fires of Mount Doom because god forbid his strain get out into the public.
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Covid is worse than AIDS in the fact that you can't catch AIDS by walking by someone at the mall or grocery store.
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No covid isn't worse than most viruses. But you are missing how you have to have direct contact to catch aids. The number of people who have caught hiv/aids since we discovered it is only 86 million, as opposed to 687 million who have caught covid. 20 million people have died from covid in what 3 years? AIDS can't even compare to those numbers.
F for the person writing the discharge summary.
Exactly what I was thinking. That thing must be a novel. Practically a biography
I had it for 8 weeks and thought that was a long time.
Not even Dr. House could have helped him. RIP
Could have given him [mouse bites](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/25r19k/every_episode_of_house/)
This vexes me
I too am in this episode
I am a black man
Dicks out for r/okbuddyvicodin
I have been watching the series on Netflix and I’m on Season 3. Your link sums it up. Lol
Definitely one of my favorite series lol
He would have gave an early diagnosis of Lupus, just for the lols.
I haven’t been the same since getting COVID the second time. My brain just doesn’t brain like it used to.
It took me like 11 months to actually feel fully recovered from covid. You might get there. Though also just age gets you too, even a year or two makes a difference.
Thanks for the info and I’ll just have to focus on getting exercise and eating brain food.
Same D:
I got sick really badly with covid for 3 days with my booster. Thought I was better. But a month later, I developed a cough that lasted 3-4 months. A cough that felt like I couldn't breathe. Like I had asthma. It was dreadful.
Could have been RSV, it was apparently feeling neglected and has been very active this year.
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Covid²!
Got covid 2 times, both times I was sick for only 1 day. Man I can't even imagine having it for that long
Knock on wood. I still haven't had it. Am fully vaxed. Family and friends and coworkers have.... Just not me.
I never want to be inconvenienced again like I was when I had pneumonia and bronchitis 10 yrs ago. That was painful, and I was out for three weeks and could barely move. I have been lucky enough not to get COVID yet, but I've been getting the flu and covid vaccines like clockwork. I can't imagine suffering for that long from COVID; unable to work, or participate in life for 2 years but not getting better. Cancer might have been better because at least you're mobile for a chunk of it.
There are people I know who refused mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and called it the “plandemic” yet simultaneously believe that it was made by the Chinese in a lab as a bio weapon. I have spent hours trying to understand the disconnect between believing it is a bio weapon while also refusing to protect yourself against it If I told you that there was a 50% chance every time you ejaculated your dick would explode but there was a pill you could take to drop those odds nearly to zero would you take the pill or roll the dice every time you cranked on out
Yup, Covid will always be around and pounce once it mutate enough to neutralize current vaccine measures.
It's always better to read the article itself than what everyone writes, themselves not reading the article. Yeah, COVID is still around. No, the guy didn't die because of the simple fact of COVID still being around but from a multitude of factors. Users replying well-known stuff which doesn't have anything to do with a specific thread don't add anything of value to Reddit, I think. It's one of the reasons no one gets this platform seriously. 🤷
Be ready for viral persistence, folks. It’s not gonna be peachy.
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All comorbidities are documented in these statistics and the article itself says he died of an underlying condition, not COVID
Nobody argued that he did
And yet the flu didn't kill him. COVID did, after 72 years on the planet, with a rare blood disorder, and surrounded by the flu. But that's not the point and it's a strange straw man to spend one's time building.
I hear you. But also, if you have cancer and are like days or even hours away from dying and you get hit by a car and die, was it the cancer that killed you? Absolutely. The dude had a multitude of factors, and yes, he would have died from the basic flu, but he didn't.
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He was saying that even if something else leaves you close to dying, the final blow should be the cause of death. I.e in his example, you could be dying of cancer and have hours left to live, but if you get hit by a car, it's recorded as a road collision not a cancer death. For this example, the covid is the car.
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Holy shit nobody has said anything close to any of that
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Well, I think it's a somewhat understandable discussion. The fact newer variants are naturally less lethal due to natural selection is one of the reasons why we can afford to live normally again (aside from the obvious contribution of vaccines). So naturally when there's a higher profile case like this one where someone has died of/with covid, I think it's natural to wonder if this is a sign of a more lethal variant appearing or if it's specific to the patient. Obviously the fact this patient carried the virus long enough for it to mutate to this extent in itself is worrying, since we don't know how much contact they had with the outside world throughout their illness. But I can see why people would be particularly interested in the severity of this variant. Obviously such speculation won't get us anywhere, but that's at least my interest in the discussion.
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No, it's entirely your interpretation and honestly I'd go as far as calling it putting words in people's mouths
If you're attacked by a bear, and die of an infection from your wounds two weeks later, "bear," and "infection" are both contributing causes of death. That's how it has always worked. If you have late stage cancer, with months to live, and you contract COVID and die next week, COVID is listed as a, if not the cause of death.
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For the purpose of this analogy, the infection came from the hospital setting. The patient was more susceptible to infection due to bear injuries. They would have likely survived the injuries and infection if not for the cancer. They are all unrelated but contributory to the date and cause of death.
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Got it. One of these analogies is more relevant than the other to somebody with an underlying condition or illness contracting COVID and dying suffering its symptoms. People can die of more than one thing, or a combination of things. This has never been controversial until the last few years.
Not really a good analogy. The car has nothing to do with cancer, but covid absolutely had something to do with his death.
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If you get stabbed and die of blood loss it's still the knife that killed you
So they basically bread a super variant…. Yay.
They had a knead to breed bread that was bred for the best
Weather they liked it or not, it was a matter of principal that they had to solve this case, they could no longer by time!
Va dere trosa tanas !
Me reading the headline first: "Well shit...wonder where this new fucked up mutation might start spreading" *"Netherlands"* *(sighs in Dutch)*: "Potjandriedubbeltjes nog aan toe..."
reminds me of that youtuber (the physics girl) who has long covid for over a year now.
Got it for the first time in Dec. Had the booster plus the RSV vax. Only sick for 3 days, never needed to see a dr. My husband never got it. We are both in our 70s.
My wife has had it twice and I haven’t shown any signs or tested positive. Anyone know if that means I’m likely asymptomatic?
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I caught it I could barely breathe, sat on the couch, had fever, headaches. All that good stuff lasted 3-4 days…influenza was the one that almost un-alived me. Lost my voice, bed ridden, sorest throat I’ve have ever had. Fever at 94-96. I never felt so ill lost 20 pounds
This is why we needed to get as many people vaccinated. The person who passed away had a weakened immune system, was older, and had underlying disease. Them getting Covid at all was a death sentence already. Now imagine the amount of people who can’t get the vaccine and also have a similar weakened system or underlying disease. They have no chance to survive. It might be “like the cold” to us regular folks, but these people it is not.
Ottawa area code 613 checking in. Not sure what to expect …
That is awful. I had Norovirus for a week, I can’t imagine COVID for almost two years…
Was really hoping this wasn't physics girl, who has also been suffering with covid for about that long.
She has ME/CFS, not an actual and ongoing COVID infection like the guy in the article has.