Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19

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 otherwise feel true terror at the thought of impending doom. This led me to the belief that fear of death is really just a biological impulse, and that pressing that mental button that says death is scary is just... not actually a reflection of your mentality but a biological response which can be dulled by physical circumstances like illness. By recognizing it wasn't really a rationally based thing, it became much easier to just not touch that biological scare button when contemplating death, and now it rarely bothers me (though it's still easy to trigger terror if I want to).

I feel I arrived at a similar place to the author but on a much less romantic path. Not sure if I would have the same experience if the illness actually felt life threatening in an active way (e.g. breathing problems like the author experiences).

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?

holy shit, might as well just go out and enjoy your life

Yes. It's extremely hard. Clothes are especially hard. I have to take my dog out two times a day and I always try to use the same shoes and same hoodie for this activity. I wash them every other day, but that's a half-baked hygiene measure.

In reality, the only way to be safe is to always wash all your clothing every time you go out, but with a dog, I find that pretty hard.

I'm also in CO and had COVID-19 like symptoms about a month ago (fever and GI issues without any other major symptoms for a week progressing into a dry cough/heavy breathing -- completely unlike any other flu I've had). I never got tested due to lack of test kits here in CO at the time and because my symptoms stayed manageable I never saw a health care provider beyond a virtual meeting to get a rescue inhaler.

At the point when my fever started getting more severe is about the same time people were going absolutely crazy buying everything up - my girlfriend couldn't even find a thermometer or medicine to keep my fever down. Luckily I had a friend who overnighted a bunch of supplies to me.

It's really scary to realize there is a possibility that you could die, alone, in a hospital, unable to have family visit. The lowest my blood oxygen got was 89% -- I'm fortunate that if I had CVD19 I seem to have got the "light" version of it and never reached the respiratory distress that would put me in the hospital.

I strongly suspect that the reported infections in CO are off by a lot - it wouldn't surprise me to find out it is/was off by an order of magnitude.