What you have is exactly how my experience with Covid was, I recommend getting tested.

Whats the point of testing anyway when there is no vaccine available ?

It helps to track the virus and facilitates contact tracing.

A couple possible reasons I can think of:

-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.

I was sick with something like that at the end of nov 2019 - end of dec 2019. normally cold air is relaxing to my lungs, but then cold air stung. no loss of taste though, does the pain feel like stinging or something else?

Yes, stinging describes it precisely.

Interesting. I wonder if that's something 'normal' to getting a raspatory disease or if there is a specific kind that leads to that

This sounds like a sinus infection. Go to your doctor and ask her to prescribe medication and a covid test.

And it feels like sinus infection, but on the other hand I can't imagine why I can't smell and taste stuff if I can easily breath. I'm taking already meds for sinus infection, will call my doctor after the weekend if there will be no improvement. Unfortunately in Poland we can't get covid test without having all four symptoms of it... I could do this myself, but it's very pricey and I'm doing my work from home and wearing a mask in shops anyway, so I'll just isolate even more.

This is why I think all the case count numbers are basically garbage.

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.

This seems to have huge geographic variation. Some places you've got to go to the doc & get a referral & they're screening people out of getting the test. Other places, they're having drive-through or walk-up testing for anyone, no questions asked. Of course you'll get different results in these cases.

Please stop going into shops.

That would certainly help to stop the spread of Covid, but if everyone followed your advice, we would very quickly find ourselves with an entirely new set of problems.

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.

> That would certainly help to stop the spread of Covid, but if everyone followed your advice, we would very quickly find ourselves with an entirely new set of problems.

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?

I have to admit I skimmed the parent and didn't read the comment correctly. I have to take back what I said.

The tricky part there is "resembles Covid". The symptoms are so variable from person to person (I've heard it likened to the flu, a bad cold, a mild cold, a sinus infection - all this from different people that tested positive) that nailing those down with any certainty enough to make hard decisions like that on, is basically impossible.

Complete loss of smell and taste seems to be pretty specific to covid19, though. That's more than "resembles covid".

I completely lose smell and taste every time I get a reasonable respiratory infection. This happens at least once a year.

From what people who experienced it told me, it's not the smell & taste loss which come from colds and similar illnesses, where your nose is runny or obstructed.

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.

Trust me, I know the difference between being unable to smell/taste because your nose is blocked, and actual anosmia where you can breathe normally but the sense is just gone.

Fair enough.

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).

I can manage to buy myself a three-course dinner with wine and dessert (spending a pretty $$) without going into a shop. I've managed to buy hundreds of dollars worth of books from my local bookstores without going into shops. I can lie on my floor gasping for air and get power tools delivered to my porch!

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.