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Comment by raducu | Hacker News Reader

20 days after first symptoms, still tired and coughing, and I had very mild symptoms.

I've been very strict about social distancing EXCEPT the day(the first in 6 months) I went out for beers with two friends at and outdoor space.

What I want to say is: that one time you let your guard down is when you will get infected and the horrors begin, especially if you don't live alone and care for the people you live with!

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This is something I can't find... how safe is being outdoor in close proximity? So I'll take your story.

How close were you to your friends/others and did you go inside the bar at all? Did either of your friends test positive?

We were more than 2 meters apart, but we did shake hands and I smoked cigarettes from one of them.

My friends did not get tested, but they also showed no symptoms.

I sprayed the table with alcohol, the seats, my beer bottles.

I did share an uber ride with one of my friends, I did open the windows, I think the driver might have coughed once or twice, I did make the huge mistake about asking him about his car model and he wouldn't shut up afterwards.

Thanks. Hope you fully recover soon!

The fact that you have very mild symptoms, which most majority of the cases will be, should be viewed as a good thing, instead of fear and despite you've been very strict about social distancing and still got infected shows that lockdown is not effective.

Here something for comparison :

"Shopping in Sweden during Coronavirus" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQat0vX-wjM&feature=emb_titl...

Hardly any mask and businesses seems normal

Indeed if op knew the symptoms would be mild for them in advance, this statement would sound pretty crazy as it could be equally applied to the flu. If I knew the symptoms would be mild for me I’d run out and get it instead of hiding inside for 6 months and have it over with.

Question is who is around you that might have a harder go of it.

And we still don't seem to understand the long term damage that even mild COVID causes. I remember reading about people getting blood clots for instance

I did get d-dimers of 1.3 on my first test and 1.26 4 days later, so they got my anticoagulant shots in the hospital and aspirin at home, I initially did worry about that as well.

The funny thing is the other patients had higher strength shots or for much longer -- and they had massive blood shot bruises on their arms/bellies and the nurses had to use some special cream, otherwise those bruises could clot and lead to stroke or heart attacks.

So it was like, even the anti-cloting medicine was somehow trying to kill you in some perverse way.

But that was my exact thought -- would I do it again?

Day 7 of mild symptoms and my relatives starting to get sick one by one -- NO!

Day 20 -- still no!

For 2-4 weeks after my daughter's symptoms I'll stress about kawasaki signs in her.

Perhaps I'll change my time later, but I don't see the risks worth the rewards.

There were 571 cases of COVID associated MIS-C in children as of July 2020. There’s so many zeroes in front of that percentage likelihood I don’t even know where to start. Worry about it if it happens haha. [1]

Yes it could happen, but the likelihood of your child hurting themselves with something sharp and pointy in your house is several orders of magnitude higher. This is why I hate the way the media is reporting on these literal one-off symptoms as though everyone who catches Covid will certainly absolutely get them.

Kawasaki is broadly associated with all sorts of viral infections. It’s super duper rare.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6932e2-H.pdf

That is the thing -- mild symptoms is suuuuch a misleasing term -- sure, they were mild, but 20 days later and still tired, still caughing, stressing if that pain I feel is just a muscle tiree from caughing or I'm actually getting lung fibrosis? That never happened before; my wife was alone at home with out 2.5 year old daughter unable to get up from the floor. My daughter started having a fever 2 days after I returned from hospital, 12 days after I started having symptoms, wave 3 of stress and worry.

I barely slept during this time.

I saw and heard a lot of examples of how quickly things can turn south in the hospital.

How do you dispose of the trash when you're quarantined in a flat?

There's so much more than the symptoms that will screw with you for this disease.

It took me six months to get anywhere near my normal energy levels. I too would say I had a 'mild' case, still I was out for about 3 weeks completely.

The first time I realised how wiped out I really was, was when I helped an older patient -- his bed was next to a curtainless window and I climbed up to improvise a curtain from a bedsheet -- I was panting for air.

Up to that point it didn't register how tired I was, because I was just not doing anything physical.

I had a double pneumonia when I was 23 or so, that may have set me up for this one, I'll never know. But fortunately I knew to sleep on my belly to ensure my lungs don't drown, even so I had some pretty big dips in O2 saturation levels. After three weeks I was out and about but even the slightest exercise and I would be sweating like a pig and unable to take in enough air. Now it's as good as before, I've been super careful all summer and I hope to sit this one out without a re-infection.

Hang in there, it will hopefully get better soon.

Dips in O2 can be very dangerous.

I saw a 48 year old guy unable to put his oxygen nostrils back when his saturation read something like 85.

I think he went ~72% before someone put his nostrils back and the nurse put him back on facemask + an additional O2 tank, besides the regulat O2 coming in the copper pipes.

He kept saying he was fine, just sleepy.

Glad you're ok now.

Pretty impressive how fast this hit. Compared to a 'normal' pneumonia which is comparable to a slow descent this was like falling off a cliff. Fine one moment and unable to do much of anything several hours later. Initial recovery seemed to go very well too but then this very strong fatigue just would not let go. I'm curious how other people have experienced their recovery, what phases they went through and how long each of those took.

> That is the thing -- mild symptoms is suuuuch a misleasing term -- sure, they were mild, but 20 days later and still tired, still caughing, stressing if that pain I feel is just a muscle tiree from caughing or I'm actually getting lung fibrosis?

You can get the exact same thing from the flu. I had a flu a few years ago that kept me coughing for 8 weeks.

Yes, that is true, I know I keep coughing for a long time even after regular colds, but somehow this doesn't put my mind at ease at all.

Its highly possible that the anxiety and stress would cause you more trouble then the virus itself.

Then again, I had flu/cold before that is mild but feel horrible as I experienced it.

Source? This is a virus killing a ton of people and leaving many more flat on their backs for weeks... To suggest that it's "highly possible" someone's symptoms are from anxiety is kind of insulting IMO.

>killing a ton of people

its not.

current best estimate of ifr according to cdc :

0-19 years: 0.00003

20-49 years: 0.0002

50-69 years: 0.005

70+ years: 0.054

Percent of infections that are asymptomatic: 40%

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

Which is a good news that so many the cases are asymptomatic and the ifr is so low.

Which is also inline with my own observation, I know almost nobody get really sick from covid.

I still go out whenever I can, still travel whenever I can, still doing normal socialization/gathering as I possibly still can.

That is a lot of people. 200,000 deaths already attributed to COVID-19 in the USA. That's 0.0006 of the entire population dead already. Is it good that it's not that contagious? Yes. Is it killing a lot of people? Also yes.

All-causes mortality is up quite a bit too.

This is the part where it become very subjective. I disagree that its a lot, to me is not a lot.

Though i could understand that for some people even 1 death is a lot.

How much is a lot for you? A million? Two? At what level will you admit that you're just plain wrong about all this? Or is it all fine as long as you get through in one piece?

Wrong about what? It is a fact that vast majority of cases are asymptomatic or only have mild symptoms.

What about million people suffering due to lockdown? To you they should just endure it right?

How about you, how much low is low to you ? 0 death ? 1 death ?

How much is lockdown suffering is acceptable to you ?

So, no answer then. Ok.

It's hard to define "a lot" for 2 reasons:

1. The human population is very large so even the smallest fraction is a sensational number.

2. Any death is a tragedy for someone, not the least the person who died.

This creates a situation where you have lots of people talking past each other.

Maybe it's easier to understand as a rate. Around the beginning of May, the all-causes mortality rate in the USA was about 50% higher than normal. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02497-w

It sure sounds like a lot but historically its not, not yet anyway.

This is a graph of historical deaths in Sweden which has a similar death rate as the US. https://twitter.com/PanData19/status/1297919439212552193/pho...

While this year isn't over yet there has been years in my life time with worse death rates that went by completely unnoticed. Looking back in a couple of years I don't think people are gonna say that a lot of people died this year.

You really should take that message at the end of the post to heart. It is directly addressed to you and those like you.

Likewise my comments are directly addressed to you and people like you too.

The thing is decision to lockdown is not just affect you, it affect other people too.

Yeah, I'd say 90% of the issue(for me, not my wife, she actually was too sick to leave bed and had a todler to look after) was the stress and anxiety.

But am I alone in this?

I don't think so, I think most people would go through the same stress and anxiety in my situation, that is the part that is so easy to overlook.

You are not alone, I too had some anxiety in beginning of march but over time, as more data and fact come out, now I have almost zero stress and anxiety due to covid. Now my stress and anxiety is largely from the people/government response of the covid.

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