Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

In the case of the US, I think a lot of the insane response we've gotten is because of a combination of two things. First, we've not had real personal danger within our borders in most of our lifetimes. Second, media has learned that it's profitable to sell fear. The result is a bunch of manufactured fears, that aren't rationally actionable because they don't exist to begin with, and we become accustomed to reacting irrationally to fear and not looking too closely at our responses because ultimately there's no consequence to doing something ineffective in response to a danger that doesn't exist. But when a real danger like Covid 19 comes along, people don't have a rational set of coping mechanisms honed against previous real dangers, so they react to a real danger the same way they've reacted to a bunch of nonexistent, media-manufactured dangers in the past. If people post about how WiFi causes cancer[2] on Facebook and then do nothing to avoid WiFi, that's not great, but it isn't critical. But if people post about Covid19 danger on Facebook and then do nothing to avoid Covid19, at a societal level that causes the disease to spread and kill more people.

[1] I did live in Israel, although that's not what I'm talking about. I was 5-6 so I'm not sure how relevant that experience is.

[2] I'm not saying WiFi causes cancer.

I also had tightness in my upper chest. It lasted a week, from 10-18 March. During that time, it didn't get better or worse. But it lasted long enough that I started planning for a future A&E visit...

Then all of a sudden, thankfully, the chest tightness was gone. Occasional dry coughs continued for two more weeks.

I have had asthma and bronchitis my whole life. So I am always very aware of the state of my lungs. This tightness and dry cough is different from anything I ever had before.

But then a few weeks ago we all started to sneeze, cough, and run low grade fevers. Wife lost her sense of smell. And then a bunch of symptoms between us that I later learned are all coronavirus symptoms.

The dominant things for me was the shortness of breath, and the extreme fatigue. Like, feeling like you’ll just go “goodnight!” and collapse on the kitchen floor fatigue.

The breathing was the most disconcerting. I’d wake up in the morning thinking I was getting better, but by the afternoon I’d feel like someone was sitting on my chest. The cough never really got crazy bad for me. Where a panic attack might feel like you can’t catch your breath, this felt more like trying to breath under a swimming pool.

Caring for 3 young kids with a sick spouse has been... a test, lol. But fortunately we’re all young and healthy and things are returning to normal. As slowly as it came on. Luckily I stocked up on things just in case, but at the height of being sick it was impossible to get any grocery delivery windows. They did finally come through about a month into this process, so, feeling grateful all around.

I had what would be called a “mild” case, but it definitely sucked. Looking forward to antibody testing so we can know fo sure it’s what we had, but based on all of the symptoms, the long incubation time, etc, it seems very likely.