Show HN: Covid – How long did you make it?
michaelboerman.shinyapps.io
michaelboerman.shinyapps.io
It seems like a lot of other people who got the moderna booster are experiencing it. For me it started 9 days after the shot and I was initially convinced that it was some sort of allergic reaction to something I ate (I never had any allergies before).
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dermatographia/comments/t9xs4w/soan...
Two counter anecdotes. Both omicron.
1. A person I know well is vaccinated and boosted. Yet had severe symptoms and fever for a week.
2. Unvaccinated person had no fever and very mild symptoms for 3 days. Fatigue, sore throat.
But I don't have the impression anyone cares as much at this stage. It was more of an issue when we didn't have vaccinated folks and everyone was walking on egg shells trying to prevent our hospitals from imploding.
Got two doses of Pfizer and then a Moderna booster. May have had Delta in January, definitely had Omicron about a month ago. For my suspected Delta I was mildly sick for half a day. For Omicron I was moderately sick for about 36 hours.
No lingering "long Covid" side effects as far as I can tell. I typically get the winter blahs and this year is no exception so it's hard to tell. But, certainly no major after effects.
Mentally...
The isolation was difficult but it made human interactions more meaningful and appreciated, so maybe it was really a plus.
The toughest part was worrying about elderly family members, and if I'd even be able to see them again.
The other toughest part was tension w/ antivax family members.
The other other toughest part was my partner. Not a knock on them at all. I am essentially built for isolation. They suffered more from the isolation, and of course when your partner is suffering... you are suffering as well. So that's been tough,.
I'm hoping we are naturally immune, but I'm not going to count on it. I still mask up every time I go out. But less so around family that I know mask up everywhere.
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... claims there's currently > 1200 deaths per day from COVID in the USA. That's 450k a year at the present rate. If you want to compare, Influenza is around 50k a year. Cancer is 600k.
Seems wrong to me to be opening up with numbers still that high and likely to go higher as people start spreading it more.
I agree we're letting our guard down far too soon and it looks like we'll will probably see another surge based on what's happening elsewhere around the world right now, and what we've already been through.
I live in a Deep Red county in rural Missouri. So far it's about 1 in 60 confirmed infected that die from it and around 220 that have died so far. Almost no one here wears masks and less than half are fully vaxxed and boosted.
They think they're "fighting for freedom" but they're really killing off their parents and grandparents. 220 dead so far.
so to sum it up, i'd rather not catch it again, i lost so much happiness and freedom in these 2 years, i am not sure if the stress and depression lurking did some on these symptoms, but i feel sad when people just blush it off, saying it is a common cold, when it was heartbreaking for me
The first one was pretty bad, high fever (like 104F) for a week or so, lost sense of smell completely for months and had pretty bad coughing for some time. I have asthma, so I had to up my medicine dosage as high as allowed and the residual feeling in my lungs lasted for about 6 months in total.
Omicron last month I had a high 103.28F fever for one day, some cough and that was about it. Very odd fever in that it literally lasted for a little over 24 hours and then it was gone.
Day 1 I had a killer headache and daytime symptoms got better afterwards. Never got short of breath or anything (I'm a slim guy in his early 30s). Honestly, from the way people were describing their symptoms, it was like I caught a completely different virus.
Speaking on phone was tiring.
My doctor had doubts so on 5th day she prescribed repeat CRP test (had dropped from 6+ to 5+) and also chest ct scan (1/25).
Not sure which variant but didn’t lose smell etc.
I still feel hay fever sometimes or maybe it’s just anxiety and fear. It’ll take a lot from me to be able to step out again.
For everyone else I knew in last 2-3 months here this was merely a formality of some fever. I sometimes still think why it took so long for me.
Having no family made it tough and scary. Had informed closest friends that if I had to be hospitalised they’d at least check on me and maybe doctors and hospitals will get a sense that there are people asking about this patient (yeah, it’s that kind of country).
Wouldn’t want to experience this shit again. Those 4-5 days when I was waiting for fever to come down were of fear and hopelessness.
Covid itself was very mild, but few weeks after the skin got super sensitive and itchy. I can literally draw on it with a finger (not nail) and the drawing stays for a while. Apparently, it's something called "dermatographic urticaria" [1]. Been like this for weeks now and it just comes and goes.
Also has a week of heart palpitations after the second vac shot, that too was fun.
Anyone else had the itchy part?
EDIT: Bug report in that I can't select "today"
Then most the toes on my left foot turned purple and itchy, and that lingered for over month. Nothing I've experienced before in my life. Was never tested for covid but assuming it based on covid toes being a known symptom, omicron was raging at the time after all.
Never lost sense of taste or smell, if not for the toes I'd be sure it was a random cold.
Wondering if the world has gone nuts has probably been worse for my health than covid itself.
No idea on the long term effect, but surely I will remember for a while being delirious for three days straight.
Congratulations, you're massively inconsiderate!
If you read the Conclusions section, it absolutely does not make that conclusion.
The only sentence in the study which might support that idea is the one you quoted, but I think that's a misreading -- infectivity is a specific term in epidemiology that refers to how effective a pathogen is at establishing an infection. The virus can have the same infectivity in two patients, but one can still be more or less likely to spread it because they have a higher/lower viral load, cough more/less, wear a mask/don't wear a mask, etc.
In fact I'm pretty sure I remember the WHO saying last year that they thought asymptomatic patients are less likely to spread the disease because they aren't coughing and sneezing, which are the primary means of transmission.
Also, please don't call people names, it's against the HN guidelines, if you think he exposed a bunch of people to Covid without knowing it, you can just say that.
No one will ever know for sure if the person in question did infect others, which is sadly just the grey area that some need to see it fully their way.
1) haven't been to a medical professional
2) haven't gotten tested
I generally wear a mask when going indoors but have gone to multiple concerts unmasked and not socially distanced.
I've been exposed at least twice but was vaccinated and never tested positive.
The site breaks if the date is blank, not sure if that is expected.
I scored 64% or so, but clicking February shows 94%
Did 30% of covid having Americans catch COVID for the first time in January?! I am incredulous.
6 months later I had blood antibody levels checked out of curiosity; 1 s.d. higher than average for a recovered person.
30's male.
- my 52yo wife, started to show symptoms last Sunday with headache, cough and fever. Still has around 38°C fever, muscle and stomach pain, headache, spaced-out feeling. She's using paracetamol against the headache, no further medication.
- my 17yo daughter, started showing symptoms on Monday. Fever is on its way out, current 37.3°C. She had a headache and a sore throat but those are gone now.
- my 10yo daughter. Woke up yesterday morning with a 39.8°C fever and a slight headache but was remarkably bright given her temperature. Today her fever is gone, she's mostly fine but we'll keep her home this week out.
- me, 56yo, got symptoms on Tuesday with a 38.8°C fever. Took 0.2mg/kg Ivermectin and sat in the bright sun for an hour to get Vitamin D up (at 3°C air temperature), no further medication. Today the fever is going down, this morning it was 38.4°C, now 37.5°C. Still coughing a little bit every now and then, taking it easy to allow my body to tackle the infection.
Conclusions are that the vaccines do not help against infection (which was known already), that children sail through this easily (which was known already) and that Ivermectin may be effective (which was known already).
- Vaccines DO reduce your chance of infection (never to zero, by how much depends on which vaccine and how many shots)
- Evidence for the effectiveness of ivermectin exists but isn't very strong (the most interesting take I've come across is https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ivermectin-much-more-t... , because among other things the guy notices that the most positive ivermectin studies come from countries where lots of people have worms).
- wife, one week from onset symptoms, still has low-grade fever, diarrhoea (seems to be subsiding), very tired, not coughing much any more. Lost sense of taste and smell.
- 17yo daughter, 6 days from onset of symptoms, normal temperature yesterday morning, no remaining symptoms - total duration of symptoms 4 days.
- 10yo daughter, 5 days from onset of symptoms, 37.2°C this morning, no noticeable symptoms but temperature still slightly above normal.
- me, 5 days from onset of symptoms, temperature down to 36.5°C yesterday and has remained there, no remaining symptoms. Total duration of symptoms 3 days.
To the down-voters to my previous post: open your eyes and minds, learn to think for yourselves. Realise that Big Pharma is not your friend, nor are the politicians who are on their pay roll. Individual doctors can be your friends, the staff at the hospital can be your friend, researchers can be your friends. The industry around them is decidedly not your friend. This used to be common knowledge, what has changed? What made you so afraid to speak up?
Is this known? That would be zero percent efficacy, wouldn't it?
To those who felt the need to press the down-vote, please explain. This is, to use a modern term, our "lived experience" and as such should not be questioned as far as I gather? Is it my voluntarily application of a forbidden substance (Ivermectin) which triggered you? Is it the fact that my anecdata seems to indicate it might have a positive effect? If so I have another piece of anecdata related to going rogue on the medical frontier:
More than a decade ago I lost a lot of weight - and I'm not overweight to begin with - and had a rapid heart beat. A bunch of tests later the conclusion was that my thyroid was acting up and that the solution lay in either radiotherapy - which would knock it out for good, and make me dependent on supplemental medicine for the rest of my life - or the application of a preparation named Thiamazole [1]. Not wanting to become medicine-dependent for the rest of my life I chose the latter, if with reticence since I do not really put much trust in the pharmaceutical industry when it comes to its claims of efficacy and absence of side effects. The doctor told me there was a very rare side effect of a decrease or cessation in the production of white blood cells but that this hardly ever happened. Sure, I thought, but for this time I will be "wise" and listen to the "expert". To cut a long story short, 2 weeks later I was put in an isolation room in the hospital because my immune system had been knocked out. I stayed there for a week, was given some preparation to jump-start the production of white blood cells which on closer examination increases the chance of getting leukaemia in later life by 50% (which I only found out about later) and was sent home. I dumped the Thiamazole into the chemical thrash and bought a bottle of... fluor mouth wash. Even though the label tells you not to swallow the stuff I did so intentionally until the bottle was finished. Why? Well, fluoride was used to treat hyperthyroidism before the ascent of Thiamazole. It has the disadvantage of making you feel quite sick (to which I can vow) but not that much else. Above all else, it does not mess with your immune system.
After swigging 1 litre of fluoride mouth wash in about 3 weeks I was free from thyroid-related complaints (as shown by blood tests) and have been ever since. Sometimes it pays off to go rogue.
I didn't bother to downvote but your comment left a sour taste in my mouth because you made medical assertions that 1) are extremely broad and sweeping on the basis of your extremely narrow anecdata, 2) don't agree with medical consensus or at best oversimplify the situation 3) line up neatly with a widespread political subtext that covid is overblown and we should all ignore it and get on with our lives.
No "oversimplification¨, just our experience, backed by quite a lot of research which has been demonised by the industry but seems to have a core of truth to it given our (and many other's) experience.
Also, since when is consensus something to strive after in science, let alone medicine? Where does this one size fits all approach suddenly come from? Science progresses not through consensus by committee but through that was unexpected, let's study it some more.
And then your last statement, pulling in politics... why? Let alone the fact that you seem to question whether we should go on with our lives... of course we need to go on with our lives, what else should we do? Don't you realise the incongruence of that statement? Should we just move from one panic to the next, always being afraid, always looking for shelter?
Hell no, we shouldn't, nor will we. Not here at least.
Describing your "lived experience" is fine. What's not fine is saying "I took ivermectin and felt a little better the next day, therefore it definitely works". That's not science. In fact it's the opposite of science - it's motivated reasoning. You want ivermectin to be effective, so you're eager to accept the results of an uncontrolled, unblinded trial with an n = 1. Presumably that's also why you incorrectly describe this position as "backed by quite a lot of research".
>since when is consensus something to strive after in science... Where does this one size fits all approach suddenly come from?
Since always. Replication is the heart of science and Truth is indeed one size fits all. The more people study a thing and get similar results, the more confident we are about that thing. When most scientists agree, we call that the "scientific consensus".
>Should we just move from one panic to the next, always being afraid, always looking for shelter? ...Hell no, we shouldn't, nor will we.
Your response to an accusation of political motivation is... to double down on the politics. This rather reinforces the impression that your "scientific" claims are emotionally motivated.
Have a good life but take my advice to heart: don't blindly trust consensus, especially when dealing with the revolving door between the pharmaceutical industry, lobbyists and policy makers. This used to be common sense but it seems to be a sign of radicalism now - how things change.