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Fear and beauty: two weeks living with Covid-19
- alfor 6y agoThings you can do if you have symptoms: - Sleep, it help your body build it's defense against virus - Zinc supplements, it slow down the virus propagation (you may also look into zinc rich food) The cloriquine is actualy helping zinc get into your cells and thus blocking the reproduction of the virus - Force fever in a hot bath: fever tell your body to go into virus defence mode (covid-19 has mechanism that calm your immune response), exposure to cold afteward is also usefull - vitamin D / Sun, help regulate your immune response I also had similar sensations, they went away after three days of this regiment. source: mostly medcram https://www.youtube.com/user/MEDCRAMvideos/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/MEDCRAMvideos/videos
- adrianN 6y agoWhat you recommend probably doesn't hurt, but I don't think it has been shown to work either. You should maybe be careful with giving out medical advice on the Internet.
- EducandoLogic 6y agowatch out people, these are Trolls , the one that commented you suggestions and the one that commentedmy suggestions or my doubts... The internet is Trolls playground.. and they seem to be very german... as I am , and watch out there are plentyspnish speaking Trolls in the WEB.
- klmadfejno 6y agoWhen 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).
- vanniv 6y agoWhen 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 sleep, so I did it. I'd absolutely panic if I had a fight with a family member at night and didn't have a chance to make up before bed -- what if I died before morning! But, illnesses never scared me much. Then one day. One day, I was at the doctor's office, having a minor outpatient surgery performed. Very minor, local anesthetic only, procedure takes 10 minutes. And the doc stuck me with the needle for the anesthetic, and it hurt just a little more than expected, and vasovagal reaction, and I fainted. Tunnel vision, echoing sound, sense of impending doom, blackness. I was awake again before I finished falling back on the exam table, but I had a major panic attack. Never happened before in my life, but suddenly I was in an unimaginable blind panic, hyperventilating like mad, hands and feet starting to tingle and feel like they were vibrating. Took two hours to calm down enough that they let me leave. From that day on, anxiety attacks were a part of my life. For awhile, they were uncontrollable, and I started down the path that leads to agoraphobia. Before I locked myself in my dorm room forever, I got the anxiety just barely enough under control to keep living. I learned to talk about my anxiety very frankly with anyone who would stand still long enough to listen. This might be awkward oversharing, but it prevented me from getting stuck in the feedback loop that keeps people locked at home -- fear of the embarrassment of a panic attack being enough to start one. I eventually learned to repeat my anxiety mantra aloud: "if every time I felt short of breath was really a heart attacks, I'd already have died long ago -- so these are not heart attacks" Anyway, long story, but the result is that 20 years later, I rarely have attacks anymore, though I'm still a bit of an anxious soul. I don't often have that existential angst that used to lead me to count lifespans as a teen. But I do get massively panicky when I'm sick, now. I'm not sure what you said that compelled me to write this, but... it needed to get out.
- dijit 6y agoThat sounds rough. Thanks for sharing.
- damnruskie 6y agono good content to contribute here other than to say: thanks much for penning this piece. hope you recover soon.
- whoisjuan 6y agoSo 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?
- DougN7 6y agoI don’t know but I’ve become aware of just how difficult it is to remain pristine. Touch a door handle? After that did you touch your phone, keys or wallet at the store? Did you touch your car door handle? When you washed your hands, did you disinfect the faucet handle and soap dispenser after? It’s always a game of percentages even when you’re careful.
- whoisjuan 6y agoYes. 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.
- pengaru 6y ago> 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. Quarantining the exposed clothes is a better method IMHO, just setup a FIFO of quarantine bins. Add sunlight if possible. I've been using 2-3 days personally, depending on what it is.
- archagon 6y agoI mean, you'd also have to wash your dog, right?
- whoisjuan 6y ago
- debaserab2 6y agoI'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.
- shadowprofile77 6y agoWhich would in fact be good news in a certain way, because either it's as deadly as reported and nowhere near as contagious as your last paragraph suggests, or its far more contagious and widespread but thus nowhere near as deadly as is being seen from case fatality rates derived from known cases. I'm not stating anything new with this really, but your case is likely one of many, many others in which a person felt mysterious illness symptoms for days or weeks and never was registered as a positive case through any testing procedure. This is not to even mention all possible asymptomatic cases. I'm sure many COVID-ralted deaths are also under-reported bit I strongly doubt the level of inaccuracy is nearly the same as that of cases being under-reported.
- birken 6y agoThe problem with this interpretation is that whatever the combination of deadly/contagious the virus is, we already have direct evidence that when it spreads without any containment it causes unacceptably extreme amounts of sickness and death. So exactly where the virus ends up on the grid of mortality/contagiousness doesn't seem to be all that important because it is well beyond the frontier of being problematic. Hopefully in the next few days/weeks we'll get very concrete data on exactly what percentage of people are/were asymptomatic cases, but my guess is it will not be some crazy high number because if so we'd have likely already figured that out by now.
- codac_mac 6y agoThanks for this. I'm from MA - woke up a couple days ago with heavy breathing and am now progressing into GI issues. Been racing through the probabilities and dependencies of my potential contact so this encapsulated how I'm feeling well - awful how we are so helpless but not much you can do..
- DoreenMichele 6y agoBut for those of us with Covid-19, the full force of modern social technologies that enable cooperation, communication and specialization among billions of humans around the world has been applied and come up snake eyes. For the record, I don't think this is an accurate representation of the situation. The world has done a remarkable job of coming up with ventilators, masks and new practices on the fly in the face of overwhelming demand and labor shortages. The ventilators aren't working as well as expected, so doctors are collaborating via internet in real time to come up with other options. New hypotheses concerning the pathology of the condition are already emerging. Also, with internet access, you can google up medically recommended airway clearance techniques, recommended OTC drugs, etc. You can double check that it's a reputable source and an established practice for management of lung issues. Covid19 is not the first time people have been faced with managing deadly lung issues. You can find good info on that very thing by searching for resources for cystic fibrosis. It's very deadly and people routinely manage it from home with medically approved and doctor recommended treatment modalities.
- 0x8BADF00D 6y agoAs a matter of caution, I always keep psychostimulants handy. Particularly: ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, and amphetamine salts. Also keep some other beta receptor agonists, like Ventolin. You never know when it can save your life.
- rashkov 6y agoAre those medicines actually advisable for covid?
- DoreenMichele 6y agoI'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/care-for-someone.html 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 medicine at the ER and states they helped marginally. 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. Epinephrine is used to treat potentially deadly allergic reactions. You might know it better as "an epi pen." It is contraindicated for a long list of things, including several heart issues that are potentially similar to the heart distress covid19 is causing in some patients. I'm guessing epinephrine would be a really bad idea to use with Covid19 without a really compelling reason, especially without medical supervision. https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-146863/epinephrine-hcl-pf-injection/details/list-contraindications https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-146863/epinephrine-hcl-pf...
- Havoc 6y agoScary. Need to brush up on my stoicism in case the gods don’t favour me. I can def see myself feeling the same fears
- AlexanderNull 6y agoGreat write up on the nature of fear! It's amazing how much the mind can fight to deny the reality of the situation you're in during such episodes. The dull chest pain sticks around for a surprisingly long amount of time. I'm at day 25 now since my ER visit and just noticed that I haven't felt any of that dull pressure in at least 2 or 3 days at this point.
- drabadur 6y agoWhat exactly is this dull chest pain? I've had symptoms of lower chest and back-pain more than a month ago, with a strange feeling of not being able to get sufficient air through my nose as well as seemingly high blood-pressure and heart racing in late afternoons. This all lasted just short of a week, but took a couple of weeks in total until I could say it was gone, with a persistent minor dry cough. No idea if it was Covid but the symptoms sound strangely familiar with what other people experience elsewhere in my community. Could be panic attacks as well, obviously, but it felt strange.
- meerita 6y agoI 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.
- steveeq1 6y agoThis 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.
- drabadur 6y agoFact is, that when I know when something feels unusual. And when this happened, I had no idea what the Covid symptoms are like. And at the time, I also didn't think that it was this. Only after several people in my community reported the same "symptoms" did I become suspicious.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y agoI hate to say it, but I’m actually jealous of people who have gone through and recovered from COVID-19. You can enter normal life again, you don’t need to have the fear, the rest of us are simply waiting because the chances of us getting it at some point is very high. I actually wonder if some controlled exposure might be a good thing, I can get it and (statistically) recover from it at a place away from my family, and then come back and be the one that does everything for everybody.
- seanmcdirmid 6y agoIt isn't clear yet that someone who gets COVID-19 can't get it again. In this case, fear comes from not knowing much about the virus yet: https://health.usnews.com/conditions/articles/if-i-get-coronavirus-can-i-get-it-again https://health.usnews.com/conditions/articles/if-i-get-coron... > Not every virus functions the same way, though, and extensive research into whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 generates enough antibodies to impart a durable immune response is unclear. But there’s plenty of reason to hope that a vaccine can be developed, and, in fact, clinical trials have already started. > For one, it appears that some people who get COVID-19 may not develop antibodies to the virus. Additionally, there are still many other uncertainties related to the body's immune response to this particular pathogen. And long term: > For example, is this virus going to behave more like the flu, which changes each year and thus requires a different vaccine formulation each year? Or is it going to be more like tetanus, which is a more stable virus. The tetanus vaccine typically covers you for about 10 years at a stretch.
- sabujp 6y agohttps://www.washingtonpost.com/health/the-coronavirus-isnt-mutating-quickly-suggesting-a-vaccine-would-offer-lasting-protection/2020/03/24/406522d6-6dfd-11ea-b148-e4ce3fbd85b5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/the-coronavirus-isnt-m...
- pengaru 6y ago> I hate to say it, but I’m actually jealous of people who have gone through and recovered from COVID-19. You can enter normal life again, you don’t need to have the fear, the rest of us are simply waiting because the chances of us getting it at some point is very high. Even if you have antibodies it's not going to be normal a life. There will still be social distancing expected and enforced, capacity limits at stores, many businesses closed, and you still need to exercise caution to not spread it unnecessarily just like everyone else.
- mikekchar 6y agoI've been struggling with health issues for the past 3 years. My heart races. My blood pressure spikes to dangerous levels. I get heart palpitations. I get pains in my chest. When it happens it's alarming and it's easy to fall into fear. I've gone to the hospital a few times absolutely sure I'm having a heart attack. But it seems that my heart is fine (as far as anyone can tell). I have a host of other problematic symptoms too, but for years nobody could find any real problem. It's easy to say, "It's a panic attack". It does not appear to be life threatening. But boy does it feel life threatening. The doctors all say, "We can't find anything wrong with you" (apart from you heart racing randomly, your blood pressure spiking to dangerous levels, heart paplitations and various other problems). But what if they missed something? It's pretty hard to gamble your life on this stuff. I was absolutely fine until one day I wasn't. Something must have changed. One of the problems with getting symptoms and not being able to diagnose the illness exactly is that you will never know. Pain in your chest. Difficulty breathing. Complete lethargy. It could be corona virus. It could be a panic attack brought on by worrying about the corona virus. You will never know unless you are tested (and even then it might not be right). My experience has been that sometimes I take comfort in imagining that I have some strange disease that nobody knows about. It certainly feels better to me than, "My nervous system is making me ill through stress that I don't know how to relieve". But, I've also found that if I believe I'm ill, then the symptoms feel worse as well, even though I get some psychological relief from the stress of experiencing the symptoms. The best way that I've come to deal with the problem is simply to believe that I will feel well again soon. I may feel bad now, but soon I will feel better. I may have an illness. I may not have an illness. It may be life threatening. It may not. Even if it is life threatening, there is nothing more I can do. So it is best to believe that I will feel better soon. This has helped me immeasurably, even though it is quite difficult to do. I recently (and as a last resort) had a sleep test. I averaged 52 apnic arousals per hour. In other words, at most I was sleeping for a minute or so at a time. They gave me a cpap machine and while I would be lying if I said all my symptoms are magically going away immediately, I do feel a lot better now that I've started to get used to the machine. But the reality is that your belief is powerful medicine in an of itself. Whether your are ill or not. Whether you have corona virus, or the flu, or whether you are just very tired and stressed: believing that you will feel better soon will help enourmously in my experience.
- praeter 6y agoIf you don't get tested - the odds are you won't - the relief of recovery is quickly replaced with doubt, "was it really Covid-19?" And you must fearfully go on acting like it wasn't.
- californical 6y agoNot 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
- steveeq1 6y agoFor 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.
- californical 6y agoThe 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
- sabujp 6y agothe word mask only comes up once in the entire writeup, when he went to the hospital. Did he wear a mask at all times when outside his house?
- Barrin92 6y agoI think there's an interesting conversation to be had about the psychological nature of this pandemic. The author of the article is 39 years old, I'm quite surprised by the severity of the experience that he reports. There was a similar article in the NYT recently by a woman whose husband contracted COVID, had a relatively 'normal' pneumonia, but the article read like a war report out of an Ebola zone, allusions to Chernobyl the TV series, and COVID as a silent killer, and so on. Now I don't want to diminish the personal experience of anyone, but I'm still surprised how many people in their 40s, 50s, 60s who ought to have had personal experience with tragedy and illness seem to have serious psychological trouble coping with the simple fact that we're for a while living in a pandemic and that life has become somewhat more dangerous. It's not that I'm personally not worried at all, but there has to be some perspective. Life is more dangerous, but it's always somewhat dangerous. I wonder if it's, in particular, a phenomenon of affluent societies that haven't had to deal with serious stressors in a long time. If you've ever been to Israel and lived there for a while and you go to a wedding and five minutes later there's a bomb alarm and there's pretty much rockets flying your way all the time, and you observe how resilient people are in coping with danger in their life, observing a lot of cultural response here worries me a lot.
- sfj 6y agoI think older people are more worried about those they are taking care of than themselves. At least it's true in my case.
- wccrawford 6y agoI'm in my 40s and haven't had to deal with any really crazy situations like this. It isn't just that there's a possibility that 1 person I love could die from this, there's a possibly that any of them could. And the older they are, the more likely that they could die from it. On top of that, I can't spend time with them in the way that I would if I knew they were at risk. I have to stay away from them instead. It's the opposite of what I'd do if I knew a loved one was dying. I think I'm dealing with it better than most because I'm an introvert. But I watch other people around me being affected by this, and I can understand it. It's a lot of new, different stress all at once.
- pm_me_ur_fullz 6y agodoes anybody else feel like they skip straight to acceptance in circumstances over people have to ride the 5 stages of grief rollercoaster? I can accept the randomness of not being rewarded for doing the "right thing"
- exabrial 6y agoI think the risks shouldn't be downplayed, but the news media, aka advertising industry, frenzy over this pandemic is disgusting. Nobody that contracts this virus should fear death, yet that is what the mainstream media is selling and people are consuming: fear, death, uncertainty.
- GhostVII 6y agoIf you are elderly than you should definitely fear death. But yes if you are under 50 it's more likely you will be killed driving to the hospital than by the virus.
- dboreham 6y agoWait what? Assuming a 10 mile journey, the probability of death is 1.25E-7. CFR for 20-49 age group is 0.3% (probability 3E-3) So either my math is wrong or you are wrong by only 4 orders of magnitude.
- Xenograph 6y agoKeep in mind that CFR takes into account only those that are confirmed positive (which are mostly people who already have severe symptoms). That said, parent comment's math is still way off (see my sibling comment).
- dboreham 6y agoParent cited a postitive testing patient, driving themselves to hospital.
- Xenograph 6y ago> if you are under 50 it's more likely you will be killed driving to the hospital than by the virus. Apologies if this was intended to be hyperbole, but it is not true according to our current knowledge. Estimated fatality rate for adults 20-30 is 0.03%, 30-40 is 0.08%, and 40-50 and 0.16% [1] The probability of dying from one single vehicle ride to the hospital is several orders of magnitude less than 0.1% or even 0.01%. There are 1.25 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven in the USA [2]. Even if the hospital is 100 miles away, your odds of dying on the way there are 0.000125%. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019#Prognosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019#Progn... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...
- pm_me_ur_fullz 6y ago> I asked him about his experience, which was very much like mine. This was a different kind of encouragement than my friends and family could provide who did not share my experience. A little more useful than "it'll be fine"? eh? I honestly hate the empty empathy from people with no say in the matter. Its cultural and I think it develops into a mental issue of denial. Saying "you'll die if you don't breathe, I don't want that" is good enough, for me. People of some cultures would say that. Are we really worried about the patient losing the will to live without other people's hopium? Is that really a co-morbidity? Sorry if I sound salty, I just finished doing a bunch of interviews where other people told me it'll be fine and it wasn't and I already knew how random it is. These are binary events.
- vanniv 6y agoEmpathy often feels more genuine and less awkward than sympathy. It's actually really hard to express sympathy usefully. I always feel like a robot when trying. Yet once you've lived it, empathy is somehow natural
- EducandoLogic 6y agoHello , I have read somewhere the initial post of this thread and I am courious how he/she is going and a cuestion to all of you affected.... Did you ever had a pneumonia before COVID? Dont be afraid people! There are some news around the scientists that now are beeing paid to not ask cuestions, only a few do..... Be afraid of beeing forced or persuaded the get or take antiretroviral drugs combined with high doseage of Cortison,, as the "severe" cases are treated... Voices raise that they are treated to death, there are no scientific evidences that the letality of untreated cases would be higher,,, the staus quo looks to me the opposit way arround... These drugs, specially the antiviral, itslike chemotherapy... Dont fear ,fear is the problem I think, fear made that the whole scientific world didnt stop a second to think and overreacted, fatal errors are happing and there are interests that those happen... Lagarde once said,,,, the elderly are a problem... It that women of the money, cold as ice.. Cheers and healthyness too all.. english is not my motherlanguage and my keyboard is not of my team neither ,,,,,, there sre doubts about those tests that say you are positiv,, positiv of a cold or flu or pneumonia , yes, because those get teted,,, I bet we all are positiv,,, or negativ,, you know what I am trying to say? In Spain and Italy things dont match, medicines started to do science and its not well seen..... NO EVIDENCES , rather the other way round, THAT A UNTREATED sever "COVID" is as deadly as a treated, no evidences at all..... but the suspect thats the other way round......
- Der_Einzige 6y agoI cannot understand what you are saying.
- EducandoLogic 6y agoThen , if you arent a medicine, but german as I see,,, LINKERPRPAGANDIST ??!!, nur ein Verdacht,, so if , then read about retoviral medicaments,, NO science ,all they say is we assume that it avoided xz amount of people dying. Ther are no empiric studies.. its charlataneria concerning those meds and they are very toxic... understand now tiny bit the only one? Verdammt schnell bei der Stange, Hallo mit wem habe ich das Vergnuegen?
- 6y ago
- ashildr 6y ago> So I had a higher chance of dying from this disease than winning a raffle at a small concert. I know this is not the main topic of this article, but I’ll steal this sentence to convey the importance of taking precautions against COVID-19 to people who feel that it’s statistically irrelevant.
- cableshaft 6y agoHehe. Just before this started I was named a finalist in a board game design contest where there was enough entries that my chances of being selected as a finalist were just a little bit higher than the likely death rate of me getting Covid-19, with my higher risk factors. I'm using that as a bit of a self-reminder. If I can win that, then I can "win" (i.e. die) from Covid-19.
- steveeq1 6y agoIt's not "statistically irrelevent", but the risk is being overblown. There's a lot of availability bias being introduced by the media right now.
- vrinstan 6y agoI'm a lot skeptical on blogs like these nowadays. Do people really believe these stories now? At least here on HN people seemed a lot more concerned with facts than with feelings. Especially when talking anonymously on the internet on a fresh blog with two posts.
- garganzol 6y agoTo those scientific minds who enter the symptoms of Covid-19: if you find a desire and ability to experiment, you may find the courage to try a light ozone generator in a mostly closed room. Healthcare systems of many countries are cornered by these assumptions: 1) light ozone generators cannot do a thing because they produce tiny concentrations of gas 2) the ozone is toxic. While both of those statements are somewhat true, here is the thing. The dangerous side of Covid-19 is its ability to target lungs in a fraction of patients. While this is a dangerous situation, it also makes it potentially susceptible to inhale treatments. Now back to ozone. It is basically a recombined atoms of oxygen, but instead of ubiquitous O2, ozone is O3. As you might expect, it has higher oxidizing ability. Human can safely breathe ozone as long as its concentration goes below 0.2 mg/m3. Ozone is not only a breathable gas. It also has an ability to disinfect. For example, it deactivates the viruses by over-oxidizing its surfaces. Regarding the concentrations. It was shown that to kill 90% of SARS-CoV you would need an exposure of 20-112 mg / m3 during one minute. Which sounds like a lot but bare with me. A disinfection with ozone has an accumulative effect, pretty much like with UV or radiation. For instance, a home ozonator (ozone generator) typically produces a concentration of 0.02 mg/m3. It would not kill the virus in a minute. But it will start to do so in 17 hours of exposure (20 mg/m3 / 0.02 mg/m3 / 60 min/hour = 16.6 hours). Ozone can be generated in several ways. One of those is by exposing the air to UV-C. This is a preferable method for virus situation, because not only the desired gas is generated, but also because UV-C light has an ability to disinfect the air and surfaces by itself. A win-win. Please note that UV-C may be critically dangerous to skin and eyes. To overcome that problem, UV-C lamp should be placed in a black or UV insulating box, where only a small laminar flow of air produced by the fan is exposed to UV-C. The suggested power of such a lamp would be something < 10W where 3W looks like a sweet spot for a 18 m2 room. Now to effects: tiny fractions of ozone would cause a small sedative effect. If the breath is difficult then you may find a tiny amount of O3 more supportive comparing to conventional air mixture which is already a big bonus. In 17 hours or so of exposure, you are going to feel better, as the consumed concentration is already promises to deactivate a substantial amount of exposed virus material (like 90%). The good things do not end here, as deactivation rate is exponential and in 34 hours you are going to get 99% of exposed virus material deactivated. Now to the not so good things: ozone is slightly toxic and you would not be able to use it for too long. 3 days of presumably safe concentration is already close to a stretch. It not only damages viruses and bacteria, it also over-oxidizes human cells which leads to their eventual damage. It is usually felt like a soar throat. The important points to consider when trying to implement the experiment like this: 1) safe O3 concentration 2) no direct human exposure to UV-C 3) room should be on a smaller side, as it is easier to control (8-20 m2 is a sweet spot) 4) the room should be mostly closed, do not ventilate the room more often than once or twice per 24 hours for short periods of time like 5-10 minutes; note, that you still need an air to breathe, so a "mostly closed room" would not mean a "scientifically firmly closed room". Did I try this extreme idea myself before publicly suggesting it? Yes, I did. Though for more conventional viruses like seasonal flu. I was never officially diagnosed with Covid-19, but I'm pretty confident I went through it in the middle of February when nobody had a test yet. The idea may sound controversial to the most of population nowadays. But it surely is effective on viruses as I've experimented with it for 7 years. I am putting this publicly to spark the minds of researches, including professionals. This is a low hanging fruit so I'm surprised to admit that nobody had tried it before in scientifically controlled environment, with control groups and stuff. DISCLAIMER: If you do this you do it on your own risk. The large dozes of ozone and UV can be extremely dangerous and may lead to fatal consequences or even death. This is not a scientifically proven treatment of Covid-19.
- dustinmoris 6y agoI am in my early 30s and I also had COVID-19. My wife is a doctor and she caught it at work. She and 7 other doctors (8 in total) all fell ill in the same week. This was about 3 weeks ago. My wife had a bit of fever for the first 2-3 days (~38C), and she mostly suffered from a bad headache for about a week, and a cough (mild) for about two weeks and a sore throat (mild) for the first few days. After a few days she also lost her taste and smell of food which all came back on day 12 roughly. She is also in her super early 30s and never had shortness of breath or other issues with the lungs. After 7 days she even returned to work as her body has fought off the virus by then (even though some symptoms might remain like a cough). I contracted the virus from her obvioulsy whilst she was quarantined at home for 7 days. After 5 days I also started to get my first symptoms. It started with a lot of fatigue, a sore throat and really high fever. During the first two days I had >39C fever, lots of shivers, cold sweats, and just feeling terribly tired. Whilst that sounds terrible it was not anything different from what I experienced from previous flus. When my fever soared I felt totally shit, but as soon as the paracetamol kicked in and my fever declined I was feeling better and was even able to do minor tasks at home. My sore throat lasted for about a week, it first got worse and then disappeared. I also developed an annoying dry cough after 5 days which stuck with me for about a week. Today I have a mini cough left a bit, but that is normal again, just like with a normal cold a cough can stick with someone for weeks after being completely fine again. My fever disappread after the first 2 days. I also had terrible headaches, which were the worst and lost my smell and taste, but no shortness of breath. I was actually documenting all my symptoms every day and I'm thinking of uploading it to YouTube. Overall I have to say if there was no stigma with COVID-19 I would have not even lost a second of a thought thinking that I was seriously ill. It was honestly a really mild flu after all. The actual flu which I had earlier this year was much worse if I'm honest. Not even two weeks after I got my first symptom I was working out in my garden and doing some mild cardio exercises again. Normally when I get a cold it affects my sinuses which means that I can't do cardio for at least two full weeks as I always struggle to breath through my nose for quite some time, but COVID-19 doesn't normally give you a runny nose and it didn't give me one indeed which means that in my case COVID-19 was even much nicer to get than a regular cold. There's a lot of bad stigma and panic around COVID-19, but after all it's just a new repiratory coronavirus, just like colds and the flu your body should be able to fight if off normally without any real issues, unless you already have some serious problems. It's important to remember that COVID-19 is not a lottery or survival by luck. It is a mild illness if you are a healthy and relatively young human being. It does discriminate against fragile, old and people with a pre-existing conditions. If this wasn't true then we would see a much more evenly spread death rate, but we don't because to most people who are fine this is barely an illness. There's only two types of people who die from it: - People with a pre-existing health condition - People with a pre-existing health condition who don't know about it yet because no doctor has diagnosed it yet
- juanre 6y agoI am going through pretty much an identical situation, except that a doctor prescribed antibiotics over the phone (assuming that the chest pressure and shortness of breath are due to the bacterial secondary infection) and I seem to be getting better. The uncertainty has been eased by a little gizmo to measure the oxygen saturation in blood, which I got on amazon for £75 as soon as it was obvious that I could not breath well. I am probably fine as long as the saturation is > 92% or so. Of course I have doubts about the reliability of a medical device off amazon, but it seems well done and, interestingly, it gives my mind a piece of seemingly objective truth to latch on. [Edit - saturation level that will make me go to the hospital]
- nradov 6y agoBlood oxygen saturation measurement techniques are pretty simple and well understood. Even the cheaper devices are usually accurate within a few percent. But if my level was getting to 85% I would head straight to the ER.
- cableshaft 6y agoYeah, I heard a lot higher number myself. Here's a study I found online about it: "Conclusion: Among outpatients with pneumonia, oxygen saturations <90% were associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Our results indicate a hospital admission threshold of <92% would be safer and clinically better justified." https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/3/325/305087 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/52/3/325/305087
- juanre 6y agoThank you both. Note taken and comment edited.
- skc 6y agoAt this rate I'm fast approaching the point where I would rather have an infection positively confirmed and roll the dice that is heavily loaded in my favor. Not knowing if you properly decontaminated that last batch of groceries is nerve wracking.
- mdgrech23 6y agothat's an interesting take. The words be careful what you wish for come to mind when your reading your comment.
- gdubs 6y agoI 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 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.
- ilaksh 6y agoI just have to wonder, the number of people in this thread who claim to have had the virus but never got tested. People are just way too sure it was that one virus. There are other viruses that can cause similar symptoms.