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Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

joshuaweissburg.com

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Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#191

Post by anonymous_panic »

vanniv wrote: post #70
klmadfejno wrote: post #2

When I was in high school I was deeply afraid of death and thought about it daily. Then a few times over that period I got sick. Not unusually, or deathly sick, but feeling like utter garbage and perhaps enough to wonder if there was a very remote chance that the illness could threaten my life. And everytime I wondered that I realized that I had no fear of death which struck me as really odd given that I would otherw…

When I was younger, I was like you describe. I'd lay awake nights kinda freaked out that I would die some day. I remember looking up life expectancy and comforting myself that I had more than 75% or whatever left. When that wasn't enough, I'd think about how far away I was from graduation, and how, even after that, I'd have whatever-percent left. I knew it didn't work that way, and it was irrational, but it helped me…

I just wanted—anonymously, sadly, because mental health issues are still stigmatized—to let you know that you’re not alone on this one.

I also had a combination of a vasovagal episode and a panic attack, and it has taken years to mostly get over the resulting panic disorder. (It wasn’t helped by the fact that, during one trip to the ER for panic, a nurse performed an EKG incorrectly and I was misdiagnosed with a heart condition and admitted to the cardiac ward for the night. I still can’t believe that one.)

Being sick makes me panicky too. I have a host of coping techniques and it seems to get easier each year, but it still sucks. Having to mentally navigate the current pandemic seems to be adding some resilience, at least.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your story. It helped to read it. Best of luck.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#192

Post by californical »

steveeq1 wrote: post #180
californical wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you're people I've talked to recently -- any cold or flu and people are like "yeah I had it any it wasn't too bad, I don't get all the fuss. I'm immune to it now!" Even though they never got tested

For the vast majority of corona viruses cases, it is, in fact "not too bad". There is survivorship bias in the media reports. Mild cases don't get reported because it's bland, common, and everyday. The ones that cause death DO get reported because it's clickbait basically. This biases the population to overestimate the risk from this.

The point I was trying to make though is that people that almost certainly didn't have it are assuming that they did, which is dangerous because now they'll be much less cautious

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#193

Post by ksk »

jmvoodoo wrote: post #135
ksk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I know is that the streets are just as crowded, people are still going out and businesses are still open. There are plenty of news reports showing that. There is no known method of stopping the spread of this disease. Even if you flatten the curve, without a vaccine, the area under the curve remains the same.

The area under the infection curve does, but not the area under the death curve. The entire point of flattening the curve is to avoid doctors having to ration care due to overwhelming demand. Fwiw, I'm also in the camp that cases are an order of magnitude off and there is significantly more immunity in the population than we think. However that's a hunch and with out widespread antibody testing it would be irresponsi…

There's never ever going to be enough antibody kits for everyone in the world. Same with the PCR test, its impossible to make so many. The only discussion is going to be about the definition of "wide-spread". Whats yours?

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#194

Post by ksk »

DanBC wrote: post #157
ksk wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we already have direct evidence that when it spreads without any containment it causes unacceptably extreme amounts of sickness and death That hasn't happened in Sweden.

Sweden has a population of 10.2 million and has had over 1000 deaths, very roughly 100 deaths per million population. Compare to Denmark (52 deaths per 1m) or Norway (25 deaths per 1M) and Sweden's tactics don't seem to be working that well.

Sad as it may seem, you cannot avoid those deaths. Stopping the spread of this disease is impossible. Even if you flatten the curve, the virus will continue to infect just as many, just slowly.

>and Sweden's tactics don't seem to be working that well.

Their healthcare isn't being overwhelmed and that is the only thing that matters in any country at this moment.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#195

Post by gowld »

exhilaration wrote: post #173
whoisjuan wrote: post #4

So he claims that he got it despite practicing all the social distancing protocols, hand-washing, etc. Has anyone calculated what are the probabilities of infection in an area with an active infection cluster while practicing social-distancing and other hygiene measures?

Two things I'd like to share on the topic of how easily covid infections are transmitted: A Washington state choir decided to go ahead with their practice on March 6th. There were no handshakes or hugs, everyone was given hand sanitizer on the way in. 45 members contracted COVID-19, 2 died. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-29/corona... #2: This video was posted on /r/Coronavirus/ and was pretty inte…

Spitting on each other is a pretty big risk. Also they were heavily biased toward vulnerable elderly.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#196

Post by StavrosK »

gdubs wrote: post #187

I had wondered whether the flu our family got hit with over Christmas could have been coronavirus (had mentioned previously that my wife actually broke a rib from coughing). 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 shortn…

Was anyone in your family asymptomatic?

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#197

Post by ubercow13 »

steveeq1 wrote: post #172
Kaiyou wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking of this as a temporary hysteria. Nothing much you can do to reason with hysterical people. The only thing that sometimes works for hysteria is a good slap in the face.

It is temporary hysteria. Remember 'swine flu'? The infection fatality rate ended up being like 10x better than what the media initially reported.

Does that even matter? If the best estimate of fataility rate is what it is now, surely that is what any response should be based on. The media is reporting various figures from scientists, not making them up. If you don't calibrate your response based on such figures, what do you calibrate it based on? A gut feeling that everything will probably be fine?

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#198

Post by meerita »

steveeq1 wrote: post #170
meerita wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I experienced the same. I even did gym at home with good performance but i felt weird sensation on my chest. I don't want to think i had covid, but so many people had it that I am surprised i don't.

This is availability bias. Because you hear it in the news so much, whenever you have some weird pain in the body, the bias make you think "covid-19". I'm not saying you don't have it, but I'm saying your mind is making it seem much more likely than it actually is.

Mostly sure!

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#199

Post by RealityVoid »

ksk wrote: post #113
joe_the_user wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweden didn't take no measures. Sweden took flexible measures[1]. Social distancing, allowing anyone who felt sick to stay home, encouraging people to work from home (and 50% Swedes apparently can do that[2]). The problem is that when American employers grant to no sick leave to employees and are brutally against ever doing so, applying the flexible Swedish model to the US would be extremely hard. The model involves…

All I know is that the streets are just as crowded, people are still going out and businesses are still open. There are plenty of news reports showing that. There is no known method of stopping the spread of this disease. Even if you flatten the curve, without a vaccine, the area under the curve remains the same.

> Even if you flatten the curve, without a vaccine, the area under the curve remains the same.

Not necessarily. The higher the social distancing at the peak, the lower the percentage of infection needed for herd immunity to kick in. Ergo, in effect, lower number of cases. If you drop your R0 by half, your her immunity percentage necessary halves as well!

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

Look under the Mechanics section.

Re: Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

#200

Post by DanBC »

nzhkr wrote: post #179
DanBC wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where we live 70% of the COVID-19 patients which are currently in intensive care are very overweight men. Not really true. Here's data from the UK ICUs. Page 15 shows BMI. Here are the numbers of people by BMI. First column is BMI, second column is the percentage of people in ICU. BMI COVID-19 And here's the numbers of people dying or being discharged from critical care alive. BMI Risk increases with BMI, but it's…

> Not really true. > Here's data from the UK ICUs. Page 15 shows BMI. > Here are the numbers of people by BMI. First column is BMI, second column is the percentage of people in ICU. BMI COVID-19 Your data kind of proves the point which the OG has made that 70% of patients are overweight though. A BMI > 25 is overweight. When I look at the table which you have posten then I calculate that ~73% of patients in ICU in th…

I guess it depends what someone means when they say "very overweight".

To me that doesn't just mean "overweight", it means "obese".

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