I know that "con flu" is mostly anecdotal, but a preponderance of evidence is still a preponderance of evidence, and quite litterally every person person I've known that regularly goes to conferences and conventions has not only heard of con flu, but has had it on more than one occasion. It's absolutely a thing.
A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January
11–20 of 37 posts
Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January
#12I'm not saying this isn't COVID, it sounds like it might very well have been, but isn't "picking up the con crud" a stereotype of all conventions?
I'm amazed (not surprised however) that this neologism is at least a decade old:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=con%20crud
edit: of course there's a 1995 citation from Usenet:
Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January
#13To explain the cavalier attitude expressed by people with symptoms: the “CES Flu” is a real thing. I’ve gone 11 years in a row now, and either me or my brother usually catches it every year. Something about thousands of international visitors in the same space, touching all the same things I guess. Interestingly, I took a really proactive approach this year with liberal hand sanitizer usage and neither of us got sick…
Drupal Flu too. DrupalCon, an event with just a few thousand attendees practically always spread illness. Read https://groups.drupal.org/node/294978 this post from 2013, it'll be eerily familiar: > Learn to wash your hands properly. We all think we know how to wash our hands, but most of us don't. Really. > Wash your hands regularly, especially after lots of handshaking (Some people even wish we could avoid shaking h…
I've personally gotten the 'Drupal Flu' twice, there are just so many surfaces and items that multiple people (often hundreds) touch including elevator buttons, door handles, coffee carafes, stuff on vendor tables, etc. — even if you are diligent in washing hands and trying to avoid rubbing eyes, etc., it doesn't take much.
It's telling that usually one or two vendors have a freebie that consists of some sample-size medication and vitamin packs.
Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January
#14Color me deeply skeptical. All the data we see out of "real" hotspots like New York seem to show a fairly clear progression on infection rate, days-to-show-symptoms, days-to-go-south, and days-to-die. If ConFlu was Covid, we would have seen a much more clear connection and growth. I would expect for Nevada to have been in a New York scenario.
Huh, what percentage of the CES visitors are natives? They probably got the virus but went home before they got sick...
Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January
#15To explain the cavalier attitude expressed by people with symptoms: the “CES Flu” is a real thing. I’ve gone 11 years in a row now, and either me or my brother usually catches it every year. Something about thousands of international visitors in the same space, touching all the same things I guess. Interestingly, I took a really proactive approach this year with liberal hand sanitizer usage and neither of us got sick…
This is a known phenomenon at science fiction conventions as well, typically known as "con crud". It's not uncommon for a large percentage of attendees to all get sick immediately after an event. It turns out conventions of any type are excellent vectors for spreading contagion.
And it should be almost tautologically obvious, but this is extremely common for music festivals, which adds in the additional challenges of low sleep and immunocompromise caused by drug usage (drugs like mdma are thought to be immunosuppressive in recreational doses)
Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January
#16Isn't it considerably more likely that the flu they all had from CES was... well... the flu? Given January is the tail-end of flu season?
Incidentally I’ve noticed tons of people talking about having come down sick at the beginning of January in the US and assuming they must have had covid. It’s like people forgot how many different respiratory infections are out there.
Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January
#17Disclaimer: this is my own anecdote. I'm not trying to spread misinformation. These are my personal opinions.
I think we'll eventually find out COVID-19 has been around way earlier in 2019 than we thought. I've seen both here on HN and elsewhere anecdotal reports of people having a "flu like nothing before" in late 2019 and early 2020 in the US. There's at least one report of Italian doctors seeing a "strange pneumonia" in November (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3076334/coro...).
My own story is this. My wife went with her team to a Chinese karaoke bar here in Seattle, in International District, in mid-November. Everyone fell very, very sick (one person has a lingering dry cough to this day). Fever for days on end, cough, etc. It seemed like the flu, except my wife and others claim it just felt different from other times they had the flu.
I caught it from my wife, and it did feel different. I'd never had a fever run for so long, and the way it progressed was just different. And the most unusual thing was that it seemed to affect my heart. I take a beta blocker to control frequent PVCs. But on the days immediately following "recovery" (by which I mean no more fever), I just couldn't move around too much or my heart would start throwing PVCs like crazy, as if I hadn't taken my meds. I was also feeling very weak and faint, which never happened to me before (I'm usually able to exercise just fine right after recovering from illness).
To add to the anecdote, our daughter caught it too but she just seemed to have a mild cold, which also matches the majority of infant COVID-19 cases.
I hope serological tests become widely available, since I'm really curious to know if I actually had it back then. Obviously in the mean time I'm not assuming I did, and I'm staying home and avoiding all human contact I can.
Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January
#18Disclaimer: this is my own anecdote. I'm not trying to spread misinformation. These are my personal opinions. I think we'll eventually find out COVID-19 has been around way earlier in 2019 than we thought. I've seen both here on HN and elsewhere anecdotal reports of people having a "flu like nothing before" in late 2019 and early 2020 in the US . There's at least one report of Italian doctors seeing a "strange pneumo…
Why didn't all of you spread the disease to everyone else in the neighborhood?
Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January
#19Color me deeply skeptical. All the data we see out of "real" hotspots like New York seem to show a fairly clear progression on infection rate, days-to-show-symptoms, days-to-go-south, and days-to-die. If ConFlu was Covid, we would have seen a much more clear connection and growth. I would expect for Nevada to have been in a New York scenario.
Huh, what percentage of the CES visitors are natives? They probably got the virus but went home before they got sick...
I'm more thinking of the hospitality industry workers (high proportion of residents) as a vector for local outbreak.
Re: A Covid-infected attendee emerges from CES in January
#20Disclaimer: this is my own anecdote. I'm not trying to spread misinformation. These are my personal opinions. I think we'll eventually find out COVID-19 has been around way earlier in 2019 than we thought. I've seen both here on HN and elsewhere anecdotal reports of people having a "flu like nothing before" in late 2019 and early 2020 in the US . There's at least one report of Italian doctors seeing a "strange pneumo…
Same disclaimer applies for my comment, and adding that I'll be throwing out some of my own crackpot theories...
I'm in NYC, and am convinced my family had it in February. This leads me to also wonder if it wasn't rampaging its way through NYC for months before we had a confirmed case. My wife went to urgent care in tears because of breathing problems, a fever, etc. All we know was it was not the flu or strep and she eventually recovered. The rest of our family had at least mild symptoms, and given how infectious it is - how would we not have gotten it given we did no distancing whatsoever.
The thing I am trying to wrap my mind around, is that if it was so prevalent before we knew about it - how did we not notices so many people dropping dead, etc? I have two thoughts that I would love to explore more.
1. We know about the placebo effect. Why would there not be a reverse placebo effect for this virus? If my wife had been seeing non stop covid news in February about how scary this disease is, why would she not start panicking, having more breathing problems, worse symptoms, and maybe even take a turn for the worse? If giving a sugar pill to someone and calling it medicine can improve outcomes - surely watching dire cable news about how people with your symptoms are dying left and right could do the opposite.
2. Maybe those of us who got it early were lucky, because they just weren't exposed over and over like people who finally got it in March/April.
If either or both of these things were true, then it could explain why/how the fatality rate rose dramatically in March/April, which would explain better how this could fly under the radar for so long, but be so prevalent.
And who knows - maybe someday I'll get a chance to take an antibody test and will find that I'm wrong and my family just got hit with a bad cold.