I got it right out of the gate! 50yr male
Was Feb 2020, later in the month. I was doing a fair amount of domestic, and a little bit of International travel for business prior. As things began to heat up, it was obvious Covid was going global. Italy... I have friends there. It was horrible.
Got mails from them early on, "It's just a strong flu, no worries, ONWARD!"
Then... "Stay home, we are losing our elders."
:(
With all that happening, I wrapped it up and prepared to transition things to a remote service model. Was doing travel to setup industrial equipment personally and basically nail each one. Was a get what you pay for model, and we were offering a lot. Needed to be more of a get enough, and make the price right climate rapidly upon us!
Had a partner in trouble, begging, so I took one last trip mid Feb. Got them sorted, was safe. In fact, that whole trip was nothing but masks, guards at the hotel checking for room credentials to keep the numbers down, and massive distance from everyone! I remember feeling it all so surreal. Being a people oriented technical person, this hurt! I like others. My more introvert friends were in heaven, and we had some good fun with that:
DAY OF THE INTROVERT! (truth for a lot of people, I am sure)
But, I digress:
Fact is, coming back was when I got exposed. Airline snafu saw my flight changed, and I ended up in the same terminal with arrivals from Asia. And was stuck there for a long time. Enough to reconsider flying that day, but maybe I was doomed anyway. Who knows?
What I do know is 5 days later, it hit. I felt rough one morning, and called in sick, our nice and shiny new Covid protocol in place meant a no worries, work from home scenario anyway. I called in to basically say I just need the rest.
By that afternoon, I was hammered! It came on FAST.
I won't detail the whole course, but will say I had two solid weeks of hell. In the middle of that, at peak shitty, I had to sit up in our nice recliner chair doing deep, deliberate breathing for a couple nights! If you have ever run low, your body tingles, and for me it's lips start first, and you can just tell your body isn't getting what it needs. Had an oximeter on my phone and used it.
I saw 89 once, and it was low 90's for a few hours, but climbing every little bit. Coughing, hacking up gak, just staying awake, making sure I engaged the process fully. This scared me.
I've never been that sick. Have wanted to die type sick, but never, "shit, I could really die" type sick. Do not recommend.
Some have asked why I did not get checked in, and the simple answer was fear. We did not know how to treat this, and people were getting isolated, slapped into ventlators and all manner of stuff as the medical people proceed to learn how to handle this the hard way, one sick person at a time. Made a call, and basically learned if I was staying lucid, and was in the 90's, I was likely going to make it, so that's what I did with people watching me, but trying to stay away.
Whole family got it anyway. My wife lost taste and smell, but that did return completely. Younger ones basically were tired for a couple weeks and everyone had massive body aches!
And that's the rough part. As I was improving, I had to nurse them through, and they didn't have quite the rough time I did, thankfully.
All told, we lost a month together, just in the worst of shape.
There have been some symptoms that persisted for a long time, and the biggest one is general fatigue and some inability to focus when I might normally expect to power through. These are improving slowly, but I am still just a bit impacted to this day.
Now, you are going to read us telling our stories. I've got friends who had a runny nose basically. I've lost a couple friends to this too, one after 40 some days on a ventilator.
When I got my case, the death rates were about 12 percent!! Talk about a fucking dice roll!
Today, it's much lower, 0.5 percent'ish or about 1:200 or so. Still no joke, but not the fear session I had to struggle through for sure.
And it's gonna get lower as our understanding and medicine improve, and frankly as the virus continues to mutate and we all figure out how to live in a world plus Covid.
My advice?
Treat this with respect.
If you get sick, test! What I've decided to do is keep a couple of the better home tests that act on the core protein handy. If someone is sick, test once, then test again.
If positive, then isolate hard. What I did after the mess we struggled through was setup the camp trailer. If someone needs a place to get through it, they can crash in there, and it's fueled up, ready for someone to just use for a while. Figure out whatever that plan is now. That way, if someone needs to do it, things are ready and you will get the max benefit from having figure out what will be done and why and when.
I think almost everyone, if not everyone, will get Covid. Plan for when you get it, and that's gonna help with fear and all the anxiety. A good plan, healthy body, and trust in the medicine are the best tools you've got.