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Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

joshuaweissburg.com

201–210 of 232 posts

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

#201
post #73

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I'm failing to find a list of recommended OTC drugs for covid19. All I'm finding is a generic statement that OTC drugs may help with symptom management. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-are-sick/ca... Ventolin is an inhaler. It opens up the airways during asthma attacks or similar. Pseudoephedrine is a decongestant. The article under discussion indicates the author was given an inhaler and cough medic…

> Amphetamine salts are apparently used to treat ADHD. Some people use them illegally to concentrate for mid terms and finals at college or similar. I'm not personally aware of any valid reason to think they are appropriate for covid19. There is a study that shows in vitro, it helps fight the flu: https://covid19data.com/2020/03/06/meth-may-fight-flu-virus-... There are also many reports from meth users that they alm…

.. apart from all the meth side effects??

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

#202
post #95
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget he's in CO, SPO2 is lower at altitude. Nobody has 100% in Denver- unless they have carbon monoxide poisoning (or so I'm told).

Average blood oxygen levels only drop about 5% in Denver.

Right, so if a healthy person is typically 95% then 89% is less dramatic. Perhaps comparable to having 94% at sea level.

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to visit friends and family is a hell of a step up over having zero face-to-face interactions with any other humans though.

> Being able to visit friends and family is a hell of a step up over having zero face-to-face interactions with any other humans though. Sure, if your friends and family all have antibodies. Otherwise you have to fear for their safety. You could just be running around spreading it to all your loved ones. Having antibodies doesn't suddenly turn you and your appendages into magical virus-free objects.

Or instead of "running around spreading" you could take reasonable precautions - shower, put on clean clothes, drive directly from your house to theirs. Pretty negligible risk in that case.

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

#204
post #179
post #152

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> 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…

You're neglecting to consider the rates of obesity in the general population.

29% of adults in the UK are obese (BMI > 30) and another 36% are overweight (25 [1] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03...

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to visit friends and family is a hell of a step up over having zero face-to-face interactions with any other humans though.

You can still be contagious for a while after being free of symptoms - how long to isolate after that is still difficult to gauge. The NHS suggests 14 days after being free of symptoms. But when is that? That dry cough can last for quite a while...

Sure, but even if you bump that up by a lot, like to 90 days, you're likely still better off after those 90 days than people who don't have antibodies.

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No, the media tends to report the most sensationalized numbers, not the most accurate numbers. I rely on World Health Organization type stuff, not "the news".

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

#207
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?

Not really. Only in that the kids symptoms were fairly mild — cranky, cold-like symptoms, etc. Which is apparently fairly common with coronavirus and younger kids (thankfully).

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

#208
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…

However that's a hunch and with out widespread antibody testing it would be irresponsible for anyone to act on such a hunch.

Wow, it is gratifying to see someone able to say this. Absolutely, with some luck there are a bunch of limiting factors (both that there's are harmless infections, that ) that are going to keep the epidemic from reaching the potential it seems to have "on paper". But these are unknown, these are the major unknowns and acting like we can just guestimate them and be safe is supremely irresponsible since if get it wrong, an order of magnitude more people die. A flu season? Ten flu season? A hundred flu season? Do you really want to roll those dice? To a fair extent, we already are but it's not comforting.

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

#209
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why wouldn't there literally be enough antibody tests for everyone in the world?

The world is full of factories producing a wide variety of things, including biological material. These factories can certainly gear up given time.

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

#210
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still be contagious for a while after being free of symptoms - how long to isolate after that is still difficult to gauge. The NHS suggests 14 days after being free of symptoms. But when is that? That dry cough can last for quite a while...

The NHS advice is very weak, and much weaker than international advice. I hesitate to link it because I think they've got it wrong. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/self-isol... NHS says If you have symptoms the NHS tells you to self isolate for 7 days. If you still have symptoms you need to self isolate until those symptoms go. NHS says If you live with someone who has symptoms you need to self iso…

Which international advice is much stronger than the NHS guidance?

e.g. CDC is the greater of 7 days since symptoms start or 72 hours after symptoms end: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/disposition-in...

My local (Canada) guidance is greater of 10 days or end of symptoms: https://www.alberta.ca/isolation.aspx

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