Anyone have Coronavirus on the boards? If so fill us in on severity.

In Italy, as another poster pointed out, there is an aging population, that is one factor. That is combined with some of the worst air quality in all of Europe- we are not talking about the likes of air pollution in LA or NYC on their worst days we are talking systemic and widespread pollutants and particulates that are impacting lungs and immune systems. The same is the case in Northern China.

Stay home, rest, rest, rest, sleep, get better. Thank you for your post. Best to you and yours.

This is interesting, as I went down to the US Olympic Marathon Trials, and felt great all week. About 4 days later I started with what can only described as a total health roller coaster. Until today. I went through about 9 days of weirdness. Headache started first--a bad one, for two days. But still able to run. Then blurry vision and the sweats. No running for a week. Fatigue was intermittent, but not terrible. Then a fever that would come and go- where I could literally not look at the computer screen for work ( I stayed home as something wasn't "right"). Advil seemed to hold things in check, but then a sore throat hit and then a brutal head cold feeling. Then a day of nothing. Almost normal. Then back to fever, sweats , and shortness of breath for two days. But here is the weird thing--it never seemed to hit my lungs.

Started feeling well enough to jog today. Went for 2 miles. Felt fine running, dizzy after. I am in Toronto and when I called for a test a few days, they said I was too healthy to get a test...I will likely never know. Maybe it was the flu, or a cold...but it was bizarre. Now I am on the mend, I actually hope it was COVID, as I really did self-isolate and I think stopped it spread to others..

(I should note I didn't even have a sniffle all winter long before this)

Thanks. Best to you and us all in the times ahead.

Unknown virus wrote:Long-term, I'm worried this is like TB or lyme where maybe you don't quite get rid of it. I think my running fitness has helped me endure whatever this is so far, but I also feel like I'm slowly getting worse. I don't care about my running at the moment. I just want to get better. Wake up, folks, this sh*t is real.

Yet you don’t actually even know you have it? Please get tested before you claim to have it.

You may have had it, but roughly 9/10 people tested for this virus in the US do not have it according to

Not sure what that means but the poster below shouldn't assume that everyone with a respiratory illness has Covid. Tests are showing they do not. Shows the need for much more data and much more tests. If your state is getting a bad grade below and you know someone in the health community try and get them to improve the data.

And death rates will lag behind testing rates so everyone need to think of this lag. It would be great if more countries went the direction of Germany but the data there is still too early. We need more data and testing and time.

Take the US as of 4pm today there were 112 dead from Corona according to

. 2 weeks ago today we only had 118 positive cases of Corona in the US. Now obviously the 118 positive cases wasn't the real number but we're doing 20,000 tests a day according to Covid tracker so the numbers are changing.

I was thinking it was good that 9/10 people aren't testing positive for Covid, but it could also be a bad thing right? It's good if a bunch of people just are unlikely to catch it (I don't think scientists even know conclusively if this spreads slower or faster than a flu. I had hear faster but head of WHO said slower here

), it's bad if it just means more people are likely to get it in future and it's super deadly.

Say we reversed the numbers and had 9/10 people testing for it were coming back positive for it. Then one might argue a lot of the flu cases early in the year may have been Covid and not that many people can be expected to die from it. Or if you are a pessimist you could say it's just spread to all of us and we're all screwed. Anyone know the testing numbers in China (not sure you can trust them) or elsewhere?

Harambe wrote:

The fatalities curve lags the infection case curve because most of the news. The other day you used Belgium as an example of 'only' 0.4% case fatality rate and said it would go down. I said it would go up. Right now it is at 14 deaths for 1,486 cases (1%).

Stop cherry picking! You admit it's "an" example, not "the" example, so did you bother to check every other country I mentioned? No, you picked just one, and the one you picked happens to have few enough cases that a small variation in number of deaths can still produce a significant swing in "death rate."

Norway is still holding steady at 0.4%, Denmark at 0.37%, and Germany has a huge sample size now of 12,300 with only 28 deaths for 0.22%, lower than it was when I posted about it before.

News reporting has nothing to do with when fatalities are reported to medical statisticians. Rather, a death is likely to be reported no later than the case it resulted from because the death is often known first before the test is even done. Maybe you're suggesting there's a lot of Germans laid up in ICU's likely to die soon? Hope you're feeling morbid because at the current case level, 95 of them would have to croak right now to get to that 1% you think is the real death rate.

That's not gonna happen, because unlike the Italians, Americans, and others, the Germans plainly are less stingy about who they test, so a far greater proportion of their positives stand basically no chance whatsoever of dying. If they did, it would have happened by now.

All of this remains in the greater context of none of these countries testing anywhere near everyone with cold/flu symptoms, so whatever "death rate" they end up with by their official numbers is only an upper bound for a real figure probably several times lower.

I do wonder if I had it in December. I work in the shipping industry, which has a lot of workers from the far East.

I had the flu vaccination in October. My symptoms were:terrible headaches, followed a few days later by fever on and off, aching muscles (but not as bad as with the flu), extreme tiredness and a terrible dry cough which made my throat so scratchy that I was being sick from coughing. After a few more days, my throat became so painfall and red raw that I had to force myself not to cough, it was so painful. At that point, I realised this was the worst illness I'd had, much worse than normal flu, although I always knew in myself I would get better. My voice was affected. I developed pleurisy type pain and my whole breastbone was painful to the touch. I was quite breathless.

It took 3 weeks to feel relatively normal again but I notice I'm still a bit breathless when starting exercise until my lungs have warned up.

I was also in London last week, using the underground, shops, trains, offices, hotel, etc and I wonder whether I have it again, but very mildly. As I have the same, very distinctive headache again (it's much milder today though) and slight chest/lung pain. I also feel a little tired and am training lightly.

I think we should be testing antibodies in people's blood. And making more use of the anti-vitals out there which might work. And investigating why some people get very mild symptoms.

Oh, and in case anyone wonders, I have been self isolating since returning from London. I'm working from home just now anyway.

Look at Germany, possibly best-prepared country in the world. 12,000 cases, few deaths, massive blow to their economy.

USA completely unprepared, our strategy is basically secrecy/denial/tardy response. Other times we actually go backwards, refusing to test or giving out advice that will make it worse.

Been following along and have several observations:

1. Obligatory I had something as well. 50 year old with good physical health. Live in IL. Beginning of February had a slight tickle cough start mid morning. By 10pm had a 101 temp and chills. Advil to control the fever. Fever lasts 2 days and Advil not great at reduction. Overall feeling of lethargy. Worst cough of my adult life. Uncontrollable. Hard. Very little phlegm produced so mostly dry. Took almost three weeks to get rid of it. I am an every day runner and took almost a week off. When I got back it was similar to what others are saying......very aware of diminished lung capacity. I had not taken a sick day in 5 years and took 3 to get over whatever this was. I am now back at full running capacity.

2. On a hunch I pulled the flu surveillance for IL. The corresponding weeks I was ill were the HIGHEST flu weeks in the last 5 years, even higher than 17/18 which was notorious for being bad. I then pulled more rural states (MS/AL/LA) and it showed NORMAL to LOWER flu seasons. Given that these numbers are not triggered by a test, but only "flu like symptoms" I think it would be an interesting test to go back to check antibodies.

3. This is a coughing virus but also mostly ambulatory. While yes it is possible to be contagious for long periods of time, if you are not coughing/sneezing to expel then you are SIGNIFICANTLY less likely to spread the disease. The fact that people cough for longer periods of time MAY indicate why this is so infectious.

Not making proclamations just sharing observations.

Get the test first please wrote:

Unknown virus wrote:Long-term, I'm worried this is like TB or lyme where maybe you don't quite get rid of it. I think my running fitness has helped me endure whatever this is so far, but I also feel like I'm slowly getting worse. I don't care about my running at the moment. I just want to get better. Wake up, folks, this sh*t is real.

Yet you don’t actually even know you have it? Please get tested before you claim to have it.

I never said I had it. They said they couldn't rule it out while ruling out other things (flu/strep throat), but I can't get tested unless I'm sick enough to be hospitalized, because there aren't enough tests. They are effectively rationing tests at this point for the most acute cases. Doc said by the time there are enough tests and I recover, even if I have it now, I'll probably test negative. I'm effectively self-quarantining now, so if I do have it, I don't spread to others, but if not, given my current health, I'd probably be more susceptible. What's real is I'm sick of some unknown virus that's frustratingly persistent, at home with family members who are sick, too, while schools are closed, most restaurants are closed (except carryout) and only thing open are the grocery stores and pharmacies. And they are taking these drastic measures because we don't have enough tests to know how widespread it is. This is starting to shape up as the most defining moment for our country in a generation. May we rise to this occasion.

Bad Wigins wrote:

[quote]Harambe wrote:

Maybe you're suggesting there's a lot of Germans laid up in ICU's likely to die soon? Hope you're feeling morbid because at the current case level, 95 of them would have to croak right now to get to that 1% you think is the real death rate.

Yes, that is exactly what is going on. This isn't difficult. At this moment, over 8K cases in Germany have been diagnosed in the last 4 days alone. People from that group will die, but most of those haven't yet. If 1% of those people alone die, that means over 80 deaths just from them, reasonably close to your 95, and then Germany's overall fatality rate of current diagnosed infections will be very close to 1%.

That's what happens with exponential growth--the bulk of the diagnoses are always very recent cases, so the number of diagnoses is dominated by people who are recently infected and haven't had time to die.

Society has tough decisions to make now, with mitigation efforts coming with their own costs in lives and suffering. But anyone on this thread who is not strongly encouraging at least the low-cost mitigation efforts (working from home if you can, not socializing in person, etc) has blood on their hands. Reports of overwhelmed hospitals in the US are already becoming commonplace, and we are just at the start of this.

I never had it, but back in January, virtually all of us distance guys at school were hacking up lungs and lethargic for three day stretches. It went through one apartment and then the other. It got to the point that we even went to get tested which all came back negative. We assumed it was the flu, but my guess is that our health clinic was testing for something that didn't have a test. Three days, run through what you could and hydrate

I don't think I've read one post on this board oddly enough, suggesting people shouldn't work from home, limit contact etc,.

6 weeks ago wrote:

Completely back to normal in terms of training and breathing. No lasting effects that I can see, but I’m distancing from all but family just in case.

Glad to hear that!

Kvothe wrote:

While I don't want anyone to die, they knew the consequences of their actions as they embarked on their unhealthy lifestyles.

Yeah - screw all those immunocompromised childhood cancer kids! They knew what they signed up for!

Oh wait...

And screw my uncle who gave a kidney to said immunocompromised kid and is now immunocompromised himself.

Oh wait...

It’s not just 80 year old smokers, you insensitive moron.

I just thought of different way to think about this that may scare Bad Wiggins.

Not that my point is to scare but we need more and more testing.

Let's say Coronavirus kills .2% of people infected as Bad is saying and the infection grows at 30% a day. (The growth has been that high in the US)

After 20 days it grows to nearly 1.5 million infected and 2,924 deaths. Not ideal but with social distancing hopefully we would the spread and society carries on.

Infected People Deaths .2%

1 10,000 20

2 13,000 26

3 16,900 34

4 21,970 44

5 28,561 57

6 37,129 74

7 48,268 97

8 62,749 125

9 81,573 163

10 106,045 212

11 137,858 276

12 179,216 358

13 232,981 466

14 302,875 606

15 393,738 787

16 511,859 1,024

17 665,417 1,331

18 865,042 1,730

19 1,124,554 2,249

20 1,461,920 2,924

However, now instead of killing .2% of people infected let's say we were looking at this wrong because a person who tests positive on day 1 who is going to die won't die until 13 days later. So what looked like a .2% death rate really isn't.

So same numbers. But we we really need to look at the # of new people getting infected and the # of new people dieing 13 days later if I'm thinking of this correctly.

So between day 1 and Day 2 we had 3000 new infections.

Between Day 14 and Day 15 we had 181 new deaths. That's roughly a 6% death rate. The numbers are rounded in this theoretical scenario the death rate 13 days later would be 6.06%.

Let's go one more day forward, Between Day 2 and Day 3 we have 3,900 new infections and between Day 15 and Day 16 we had 236 deaths, that also is a 6.06% death rate.

In this theoretical scenario 6.06% is constant. 13 days after someone gets infected with what looks like Bad Wiggins .2% death rate 6% of them are dead.

Am I missing something? I haven't seen this discussed in great detail anywhere except people saying "deaths lag infections."

I think the actual death rate in this theoretical scenario with Bad Wiggins .2% "constant number" is actually (1+Growth rate )ʌ13 *.2.

So if Corona was growing "only" 10% a day the actual death rate would be .69%. Point is a constant death rate doesn't mean much now.

Is my math wrong?

Questions like this reiterate my belief that we need more discussion of this.

mag250 wrote:

3. This is a coughing virus but also mostly ambulatory. While yes it is possible to be contagious for long periods of time, if you are not coughing/sneezing to expel then you are SIGNIFICANTLY less likely to spread the disease. The fact that people cough for longer periods of time MAY indicate why this is so infectious.

Not making proclamations just sharing observations.

What do you mean by ambulatory?