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Comment by CyanLite2 | Hacker News Reader

This is actually quite common in COVID-19 and SARS patients, Chris Cuomo from CNN popularized the "waves" that it comes in with his personal ordeal. Some evidence that this virus either replicates very fast, or hides from the immune system (could explain the asymptomatic people) until the right moment when you feel weak after a workout. Eventually your body will 100% defeat it, but you should probably take it easy and socially distance until you have 72 straight hours without a fever.

This is common in Chickenpox too, where it hides out and then re-emerges later in life as shingles near the age where your immune system starts to weaken.

Good luck, you'll get through this.

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> hides from the immune system (could explain the asymptomatic people) until the right moment when you feel weak after a workout

I'm pretty sure this is what happened to me. I felt fine, did a big workout for the first time in a few weeks, and a few hours later, came down with a low grade fever, which progressed into an illness that very closely tracked the symptoms and timeline of COVID-19.

The good news: I was recovering in a house with my two parents around age 60, and my younger brother. I spent most of the two weeks in my room, trying to avoid any contact, and nobody else in the house got sick (it's been over a month since I recovered, so we're pretty confident of that at this point). So, it's not inevitable that you'll transmit it if you take distancing measures early!

Have your two parents and younger brother had a particularly big workout yet? ;)

Both the parents have, at least! My dad and I did a 35mi bike ride last weekend :)

If this person has COVID-19, should they not socially distance with extreme vigilance for a very long time?

I must be misinterpreting you, are you really saying you'd be comfortable being around people right after peak symptoms of a COVID-19 infection?

parent is using CDC guidelines (I think?). I agree with your take, however.

Yeah, those were (and maybe still are) CDC guidelines:

2 negative tests at least 24 hours apart OR

7+ days since symptom onset, AND 72+ hours without fever (with no meds) AND significant improvement in respiratory symptoms

There's mounting evidence that people are no longer infectious from day 8 after symptoms first appear onward. A German study tracked only a handful of patients, but tracked them very rigorously, with multiple swabs each day for 30 days and were unable to cultivate a live viral isolate after day 8 in ALL cases, even when the patient's viral load was still extremely high. (But in fairness, a bunch of viruses work this way, where patients are still sick and their viral load is high, but they cease being contagious after a few days. Eight days is still a long time, but you shouldn't have to quarantine for a month, we hope.)

Do you have a link to the study?

For those who wonder, it's a preprint[1].

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.05.20030502v...

Unrelated, but that fake, dramatized departure from quarantine that Cuomo did really bothered me.

He was leaving his home well before that, violating doctors orders. It made me question how much of his "ordeal" was dramatized as well.

I don't necessarily blame him: CNN producers are likely at fault.

Is there evidence of that? I remember him claiming he hadn't left the basement at all. Also, I know you can't tell by looking, but he never really looked all that sick. Never a stuffy or runny nose and usually not that tired looking, no red face, no watery eyes, etc.

I have no reason to doubt his account, unless of course there is evidence that he didn't stay down in the basement that whole time.

You mean more evidence than Cuomo's own account of him being outside his residence that he gave on his radio show?

what? that's a far different thing from gp's claim

The account Cuomo gave was of a confrontation he had because a cyclist who knew from CNN that Cuomo had COVID19 and was quarantining asked him what he was doing outside in public around his family. It wasn't close to his property. He was violating quarantine.

He didn’t stay in the basement. He was “caught” outside with family members and no mask.

Look up the “fat tire biker” incident.

For obvious reasons CNN is not admitting that the basement emergence video was entirely fake.

Personally I now think that Cuomo did have Covid but probably had mild symptoms and was basically soft-forced into hamming up the symptoms to “drive the reality of Covid home” to America.

I hate to use the term but CNN is truly fake news at this point.

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