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Ask HN: Have you been infected by Covid-19? What is it like?

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Re: Ask HN: Have you been infected by Covid-19? What is it like?

#91
post #42

Have 4 family members that have been tested positive for COVID-19 in Austria: - Male (56), no symptoms except weak voice - Female (55), no symptoms - Male (80), light fever (37,7C), weak voice - Female (81), no symptoms These cases are all connected, and we have talked with others that seem to have caught the same variant/mutation. None of them does really show symptoms, no hospitalizations, no real fever, and no har…

My best wishes for your family, i hope they don't experience any worse symptoms! Just out of curiosity, how long is it since they have been tested positive?

They were tested on Wednesday and Thursday, results came back the next morning.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been infected by Covid-19? What is it like?

#92
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We didn't know why they worked so I agree it's hard to call them science. Science doesn't always tell us why something works, but it may tell us "whether". The theory of whether something works is much easier to understand and test than the theory of why or how. It may not be rigorous science with good experimental design, that's all.

One could argue that science is about falsifying hypothesis - and terby narrowing in on not just if something works, but how. But an important part of that process is trying to determine if something works or not. I'd say doing that well is difficult without at least some theory and hypothesis of how - because of the need to determine significant factors. To take a silly example, you could take a group of diarrhea pa…

What you've described with green tee and water is science, it's just that your conclusions aren't well supported by the evidence.

> One could argue that science is about falsifying hypothesis - and terby narrowing in on not just if something works, but how.

To clarify, are YOU arguing that? Because if you're not arguing that, if you're just playing devil's advocate, then I'm unhappy with the way the conversation is going.

Testing "how" is not a requirement for science. There's been a lot of work on the philosophy of science over the past few centuries which I'm not going to try and summarize here (tl;dr: the idea of "falsifiability" is a bit outdated), but I'm going to copy and paste the first sentence of Wikipedia:

> Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.

There's no requirement in science that we understand a mechanism of action.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been infected by Covid-19? What is it like?

#93
post #83
post #12

I have had a fever for a week and difficulty breathing. I have asked my doctor about getting tested for Covid19 and they have declined to test me because I don't meet the critical criteria: age > 60, around large groups of people, etc. I run in circles with someone that returned from Italy and has been confirmed to have Covid19. I'm assuming I have it. The fever isn't so bad for me but there have been a few times whe…

Your old wife's tale might safe someones life at best and at worse do nothing, no reason to not say it, no one is going to mock you.

This "community" can be quite toxic and is easily triggered by anything "anecdotal". Typical coping strategy is doing penance as an introduction to it, like "I'm probably going to be down voted for this". This sort of preemptive obedience seems to have a mildly soothing effect on a mob of nerds.

On the other hand ... Why would anybody care about HN karma.

Having said that, I'm also curious and promise I'll upvote him for it. No matter how superstitious it might be.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been infected by Covid-19? What is it like?

#94

Your comment about not being older than 60 to get tested made me so angry and shows how fucked the US is. Testing has nothing to do with protecting you (the current treatment for Covid-19 is the same as any other severe respiratory illness), it's about deciding who needs to be quarantined and have their contacts tracked to protect other people. While the severity of symptoms varies by age, the transmissibility does n…

As I understand it, in GP's case it's already clear that the decision should be to quarantine without needing a test. Additionally, at least were I live, the number of cases has gotten so big that it has become unfeasible to track their contacts. Thus, there's not much use in testing.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been infected by Covid-19? What is it like?

#95
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely happening all over the US. The reason the counts are so low is the CDC refuses to test anyone.

Not just in the US. In most countries tests are extremely limited so they screen out massively.

Yes, I think CH and FR do that, they ask to self quarantine if you have symptoms. Italy was actually testing everyone afaik.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been infected by Covid-19? What is it like?

#96
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have declined to test me because I don't meet the critical criteria: age > 60 What kind of nonsense rule is that? They're intentionally breaking the statistics. Which country is this, if you don't mind saying?

The testing capacity simply doesn't exist. It's a huge failure, but it's not a nonsense rule, it's a result of poor planning and mistakes made weeks ago.

Feds have failed. We need to allow the states to determine who can run tests.

Re: Ask HN: Have you been infected by Covid-19? What is it like?

#97
post #48
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would appreciate the advice about the old wives tale, even if I don't after all use it. I promise to upvote every supportive comment and downvote every mocking comment!

Here it is: https://www.amazon.com/Zijainternational-SuperMix-Moringa-Ol... We forgot about it until I was gasping for air and then my wife remembered and we had some laying around. I could breath again in about 20 minutes. My chest and lungs still hurt until today.

Glad it worked for you - but it's not exactly obvious to me how it would help, or how you administered it? Especially when you were gasping for air?

Re: Ask HN: Have you been infected by Covid-19? What is it like?

#98
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have declined to test me because I don't meet the critical criteria: age > 60 What kind of nonsense rule is that? They're intentionally breaking the statistics. Which country is this, if you don't mind saying?

This is definitely happening all over the US. The reason the counts are so low is the CDC refuses to test anyone.

That meme is false and needs to die. Look at testing here [0], from the CDC website [1]. The CDC is just a part of this, and public labs are testing thousands per day right now. Expect this chart to keep going up.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/images/lab-data-gr...

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/test...

Re: Ask HN: Have you been infected by Covid-19? What is it like?

#99

I'm a retired programmer who does ride sharing in Silicon Valley. I often pick up people at the San Jose airport. Sometimes they are coming in from China or Seattle. I live in a Chinese neighborhood. I gave a woman who couldn't breath a ride to the emergency room. When I got sick in February, I figured it was the flu, but now realize it was probably Covid-19 based on symptoms. I recovered nicely and have been quarant…

It's interesting to read just how differently suspected cases are being handled across countries. In Singapore once a case was/is discovered, an intense contact tracing effort begins to identify and quarantine everyone who might be infected, to contain the spread. If you haven't, it might be useful to ring up healthcare workers and people you've met and let them know.

Oh yea they have stopped doing that here just about 4 days ago (Northern California) because there are too many community cases and the plan is to move to phase 2 (containment is now mitigation).

Singapore has a truly excellent infectious disease program.

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