However, if I have it, my wife probably has it too. Her only symptoms are a mild sore throat and an ache in her back. It's much less severe than mine.
I had the bad luck of getting swine flu in 2009 and this is just as bad.
>Similar to patients with SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, some patients with 2019-nCoV develop acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) with characteristic pulmonary ground glass changes on imaging. In most moribund patients, 2019-nCoV infection is also associated with a cytokine storm, ... in those who survive intensive care, these aberrant and excessive immune responses lead to long-term lung damage and fibrosis, causing functional disability and reduced quality of life.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
With all of the information available demonstrating that it clearly is pretty serious, I've come to identify people downplaying it as essentially the exercising of wishful thinking: If I tell everyone it's nothing, maybe it will be.
I hope it's nothing. At the same time I understand the responses that have occurred.
For middle age people, if you are unlucky and get other virus at the same time(because you met with lots of people in a place), like the flu, it can be extremely dangerous.
Last year I catched two virus at the same time and it was so painful. My body reacted too strong with an autoimmune reaction, attacking my own body, my joints, my muscles.
It took me two months to properly recover, and I live a very healthy lifestyle. I sleep and eat well and exercise. The doctor told me that someone in the same situation that smokes for example could develop lots of complications.
> Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death.
The problem is that some people forget that between "common signs" and "severe cases" there's a vast area of very uncomfortable symptoms until you get to the severe cases, and we're currently still learning about this very gray area.
Just yesterday the following link was posted on Hacker News: "Coronavirus: Some recovered patients may have reduced lung function", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22568100
Good shot of ending up in the ICU.
1.22434.701, P = 0.028) were risk factor for disease progression [Table 4].”
[1] https://journals.lww.com/cmj/Abstract/publishahead/Analysis_...
Here's a chart made from a study in China. It's actually a bit unclear, but I'm assuming it's 18.5% of confirmed cases that require hospitalization. Now, the question is how many of those that got sick at all got confirmed in China, and how many people presented symptoms (those are unknown).
So it seems like it's less than 18.5%. On top of this, Chinese men are heavy smokers and the air quality in China is pretty terrible, so that may play a part as well.