The very next day I got really painful arthralgia (august 27th). The next day was fever that lasted till the thursday (august 29th). On the next day (30th august) I was feeling good, though that that was the end. Oh boy how I was wrong. Later on the same day I've had issues with breathing, friday night was nightmare with short shallow breathing and fever, that scared me a lot, never feel that way. I've gad few times pneumonia when I was a kid, but this was next level. The next day was better, so I didn't call an ambulance as they were already overwhelmed, but got to the hospital by myself and did the test with positive result. On the monday (september 2nd) I started coughing a lot, but the next day was much worse. With tuesday I started having headaches, dizziness and ear ache.. Coughing, headaches and dizziness lasted more than a week, with better and worse days.
It was the worst experience of the last few years, and it started with loss of smell an taste.
Day 1: Fever, chills. I slept under 2 blanket and after 4 hours I started sweating so I threw off all the blankets.
Day 2: Took the test and came out positive but I started feeling good.
Day 3: I completely recovered. Got back to normal just like I was before
Day 4: fever back, wtf?
Day 5: cough started, lost taste
Day 6: Breathing difficulty, feeling pressure on chest
Day 7: joint pain started
Day 8: everything back to normal
Day 9-15: normal
I never lost my sense of smell. I am so sure about it because I was working on a DIY project at home where I was smelling distillate.
I had flu worse than this, if severe flus I experienced in paste were 90/100 then this would be at best 10/100 in severity, pain, discomfort.
I managed to work at home on my projects from my list and ate a lot and drink tons of water and slept peacefully.
I had some fever this two last days. and I'm experiencing weird tastes with a few good ingredients. Today, I don't had fever but nearly all day I feel a lot of sluggishnes.
also my brother when he was a kid, had pneumonia few times as I did, and when he's sick (mostly flu) he has the same issues that I've got.
you're talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_(antiseptic)
Based on the context, I now think the person was gargling the antiseptic called TCP, which is really phenol (a totally different chemical from TCP). So I think I understand the confusion now.
When using TLAs for chemicals, it's often better to write out the full chemical name instead. When I say "IPA" I mean isopropyl alcohol but everything thinks I mean beer.
In the UK, if you say "TCP" everybody knows that you're talking about the antiseptic phenolic liquid that can be used for gargling but never swallowed. It's present in most househould medicine cabinets.
It's important to note here, given that the subject is loss of the sense of taste and smell, that this stuff absolutely reeks.
Somewhere around April/May, everyone in my circles and all their dogs were suddenly talking about "IPA". I was very, very confused until I eventually figured out they didn't mean the beer.
Doesn't sound like something one should gargle tho.
https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/files/pil.3917.pdf
> TCP is recognized in California as a human carcinogen, and extensive animal studies have shown that it causes cancer.
They also say that about coffee in California.
http://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/303079/new-antiseptic-tcp...
https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/tcp-antiseptic-liquid-200ml/p/02...
It really isn't that bad to gargle but not particularly pleasant either. It is effective though and that's the real point.
https://www.nhs.uk/news/cancer/drinking-very-hot-tea-linked-...
No, not if the "risks" is comically small. The warning label becomes meaningless when applied to anything with an astronomically low chance of causing cancer.
It's literally a medical antiseptic designed to be gargled after dilution.
Titled: California Proposition 65 Warning
Fluke 87V so not some cheapy banger.
The antibody tests are fraught with issues, and if you fight the virus with your T cells rather than B cells, the antibody test won't pick that up and you'll show as negative.
i was VERY confused for a second
Ha!
It really did me in and I’m not sure I completely recovered form it yet. Took me 3 months after it was over to be able to run more than 30 seconds again. I could do a 5km run easily before. It’s a struggle now. But I’m in my 40’s so I expected a longer recovery cycle.
All I know is that when it came out 15 years ago it was awesome, and at some point probably 5 years ago I realised it tasted like crap and switched to pepsi max.
Nowadays when I do happen to drink some it tastes extremely terrible to me.
Edit: Apparently Coke Zero is no longer sold anywhere except where I live (New Zealand), so I guess nobody else in this forum will be able to check for themselves.
The rest of the world switched to "Coke Zero Sugar" and no longer has Coke Zero. In NZ the new product is called Coke No Sugar and Coke Zero continues to be sold because it was really popular I guess.
Are you talking about Coca-Cola Zero? That is still very much available in Europe.
They wouldn't test me because it wasn't on their list of symptoms in Germany, even though South Korea, UK and China were already reporting it as a strong indicator for Corona.
There is a hypothesis that prior exposure to other similar viruses provides a limited degree of immunity from SARS-CoV-2. It's plausible and fits some of the case patterns but we don't know yet if it's a significant effect.
With widespread serologic testing, we can at least get some waypoint data, and for people like you some peace of mind.
https://www.jimmunol.org/content/early/2020/09/03/jimmunol.2...
As with any pandemic there will be a small minority of outliers who experience symptomatic reinfections.
The evidence is actually scant but there's a decent discussion of it in the Guardian article I linked below and the paper linked from it.
This novel coronavirus is different enough from others, and the human body's response to it is very unusual, so it's reasonable to ask whether infection confers immunity.
People were quick to assume immunity at first, because that's what people want to be true. But it was recognised as a dangerous assumption, which has a realistic prospect of being wrong.
Some people end up with antibody levels too low to measure after infection, which adds more weight to the idea that they might not be immune afterwards. You could think of that as a level of evidence; certainly it comes under "we should take this seriously". (Fortunately the human body has other mechanisms for long-term immunity (T-cell memory), but that still needs to be studied.)
The difference between assumption and evidence on this is important because it strongly informs our models of its propagation, how many people will get it how fast, how best to contain and limit it, and whether people who have had can safely (for themselves and others) behave differently afterwards.
If you've had Covid-19 and you're still struggling with Long Covid 3-6 months later, you're going to want to know if there's a realistic chance you could catch it a second time, especially because by then you know you are one of those susceptible to awful symptoms. It's not enough to assume it's just like other coronaviruses - you will have personal experience that it isn't.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/27/corona...
-If the person gets sicker later, you don't have to wait on another test to know the diagnosis and start treatment.
-Second is from a contact tracing perspective and isolation perspective. If this person is positive, it is that much more important that they limit contact with people.
-Third is if you are positive you can donate your plasma which *may help others (good randomized controlled trials for convalescent plasma are still pending).
-If you are positive you make not need the vaccine later, it also could reduce your risk potentially for being infected later, less stress.
-Also helps population wide to know total number of infected to get an idea of rate of spread, herd immunity, other metrics.
For most people, going to the doctor is more bother than it's worth and half the time they'll tell you that you don't qualify for whatever test or treatment you were hoping to receive anyway.
There is a massive disconnect between how many people are testing positive and how many people are actually infected, and it's skewing everyone's perception of the virus.
You can't optimize only to stop viral spread. You have to strike some balance between maintaining normalcy and reducing the risk of spread.
Covid has killed a million, and will surely kill many more, but global poverty is going to increase this year for the first time in decades, and tens of millions are going go hungry.
The advice of not going to a store if you're sick with something that resembles Covid? Is that such a large number of people it will have a big cost?
One person told me she was cleaning something with vinegar, her daughter entered the kitchen and told her "mum, this vinegar smell is horrible!" and then it dawned on her she couldn't smell anything.
No runny or stuffy nose. She was normal, except she couldn't smell anything.
At this point of the pandemic, complete loss of smell and taste of this kind almost certainly indicates covid19, outliers notwithstanding.
I don't know if most people experience anosmia like you describe while having a common cold or the flu, though (I think they don't). From what I've read this symptom is a pretty reliable indicator of covid19, so much so that at this time it pretty much rules out any other diagnosis and it is a strong basis for medical decision making. (Of course, there will always be outliers for any symptom. Decisions still need to be made at the population scale, though).
Let's be clear about what we want. It sounds like you want people to spend money, not primarily that you want them to enter shops and breathe air and touch things.
Hmm doesn't that contradict the article? Of it is at the end of the infection, then it feels like it isn't good as a warning to others that you got the virus, and more of an indicator that you had the virus
Her breathing continued to get worse over a period of days to the point where she was waking up with blue lips and would become totally winded when walking a few feet.
Eventually she decided she needed to see a dr so we went to an urgent care -- due to the fact we had no car (we were living downtown Denver at the time) we walked and only a few blocks from the house she nearly collapsed -- I had to hold her up while we walked very slowly the rest of the way to the urgent care -- once we arrived she was immediately put on oxygen and given an IV.
later that night she was sent home, but in the morning her condition was worse, so we went to the ER but she was sent home again this time with asthma medication including an emergency inhaler.
Her breathing was labored for months and she continued to use the emergency inhaler during this time.
In August of 2019 she completely lost her sense of taste and smell.
In October 2019 she got exponentially worse so we went back to the ER and this time they checked her in.
They ran loads of tests on her, checked for cancer, HIV etc. -- eventually they gave her a bronchoscopy and found lots of very thick stringy mucus all in her lungs and found that she had a collapsed lung.
During this time they treated her with oxygen and antibiotics.
All of the tests they ran came back negative -- she remained in the hospital for a week and eventually recovered. I was in close contact with her during this time I even laid next to her in the hospital bed but did not contract her illness.
After 7 days the doctors concluded that she must have developed asthma and sent her home with an inhaler which she relied on daily until around February.
She is now able to exercise on a treadmill without ill effects. However if I cook things on the stove and it produces smoke this seems to trigger mild issues, and occasionally she has a stuffy nose that seems like allergies.
I'm not saying she had covid-19 but she had many of the symptoms. She had no fever during this time.
>I'm not saying she had covid-19 but she had many of the symptoms.
What are you trying to say? If she got ill in Feb 2019 it's definitely not covid-19.
Couldn’t even smell the alcohol in a bottle of whiskey.
Only symptom I had.
You're basically smelling "charred wood extract" when smelling Whiskey.
It's quite obvious how different ethanol versus isopropyl alcohol versus methanol smell (former chemist) when pure.
For instance, if I have sinus congestion so that I can't breathe through my nose, I can't experience the olfactory component of tastes. If you gave me orange juice and lemon juice, I'd be able to tell that both were sweet and sour but might not be able to distinguish between the flavors.
So when I've read about losing taste, I've wondered if this was like all the prior times when I've lost the sense of smell, or if this was something new and my taste buds would also stop working so that I couldn't experience "salty" anymore.
When people discuss taste, it's not always clear whether they mean the sensation you experience in your tongue or in your nose.
Very much true. Usually when you bite a lemon you feel a strong sour taste followed by involuntary movement of hands tightening towards the chest and shivering briefly.
With covid's loss of taste, i felt no taste at all when biting a lemon, but the body wants to shiver which i could control easily but was very confusing experience i never felt before. Very unique experience.
Also realized the appetite falls rapidly. Without taste i had to force feed myself. During normal illness your are tired and don't want to eat, but this is very different experience.
Strange that this was known early, yet never was considered an indicator easily tested.
Edit: nm, I see it was answered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24665323
I had all the other symptoms, including some of the post effects, but not this particular one.
After about 4 days, I regained some ability to differentiate between salty/sour/sweet, but it’s been in and out for the last 2-3 days. I accidentally poured too much mustard on a sandwich at lunch today and could not have told you there was any mustard on it at all in a blind test.
It made for a very picky eater, since all that I cared about was the texture
I lost maybe 85% of my sense of smell, and 1/2 the sense of taste. I could no longer smell anything in the air, atmospheric scents. Like if you walk into a restaurant you might be able to smell food broadly in the air; I couldn't smell what was cooking on the stove six feet away. I could only smell something if it was right under my nose (within ~20-30cm). A lot of people seem to totally lose the sense of smell, I didn't reach that level (and it still took most of a month to return).
Granted everyone's different, but I'd rather soup than gummy bears if I'm unwell.
I did test multiple times and I could still smell and taste, though it felt like maaaybe my smell was decreasing, but every article I read said completely gone smell and taste.
I realises my smell was reduced when I was in the hospital and I suddenly could smell how stinky the room and I were, then it hit me "yeah, my smelling was probably bad untill now.
My wife "realised" she lost her smell and taste right after her test came back positive. But she most likely lied for the attention(I know this sounds harsh, but I have goos reasons to think so).
So I wouldn't call this reliable.
EDIT: I’m 33 and my wife is 32 btw.
On top of that, hand waving away the death of people because they are fat or elderly is both incorrect and pretty fucking callous.
I’m just saying that like with the flu, everyone around me who had COVID finds it laughable because it was actually milder than the flu. Feels to me like the people who get critically ill must be some really badly unhealthy people with some bad existing health issues. I’m not hand waving it, I’m just not very surprised and not freaking out when someone tells me that extremely unhealthy people have health issues. I mean that’s kind of what unhealthy means at the end of the day, when your body is much weaker than the average person and vulnerable to benign viruses.
We had someone die in our family presumably from COVID, but that person was 94 and we were told that she probably won’t make this year already in November 2019, which was before COVID. It’s a perfect example where she ends up in the COVID statistic, but she didn’t die from COVID. She died because she was 94 and her body gave up no matter what she would’ve had.