7 ms·

> - The disease is astronomically worse for elderly people. One study said that for young person, getting COVID was as risky as going for a ~200 mile car drive

> - The disease is astronomically worse for elderly people. One study said that for young person, getting COVID was as risky as going for a ~200 mile car drive but as a 90 year old it was as risky as flying a WWII bomber mission Interesting comparison. So here we're talking about the risk of dying from Covid-19. What about the risk of becoming seriously ill? What I'm curious is about is the percentage of people (younger or otherwise) who either develop no symptoms or develop symptoms so mild as to not be attributed to the virus. Do such people exist?

lol768 6y ago
There's also not enough discussion about what happens after recovery. I was pretty ill in March (and, to a lesser extent, in April), which necessitated some time off work. Testing availability in my country was useless at the time, so I have no formal confirmation as to what it actually was. The govt also intervened, preventing my order of a private sector antibody test being fulfilled, so who knows. The experience after recovery for me, though, was anything but straightforward and I really struggled with lasting fatigue, breathlessness and just general exhaustion. I was only able to work half-days for a decent chunk of time. I still don't feel 100% now. My GP thinks it was likely Covid-19 and offered a diagnosis of post-viral fatigue after some tests. I'm 23. Statistically, this should have barely affected folks in my age group. It's not an isolated case: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-53056785 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-she...
- mercer 6y ago
  It's been exactly the same story for someone I know. They had a mild-but-less-mild-than-usual flu in March that was 'strange' in all the ways covid-19 is said to be. They had 'issues' like yours well into April and still don't feel 100%. No official diagnosis though.
- _bxg1 6y ago
  I've been reading lots of reports like this from young people. One person in their 20s ended up with lasting asthma when they'd never had it before. A couple have needed lung transplants. This category of outcomes is honestly much scarier for me.
- charwalker 6y ago
  Right. I have some pre-existing breathing issues that, even though I'm an otherwise healthy adult under 30, would probably lead to my death if I catch this. Not wearing a mask seems disrespectful to the hundred thousand + dead in the US alone. If you don't wear a mask, and I get sick, I might die. That's such an easy thing to do to prevent passing the disease on by 70%. Good luck with your recovery.
ageitgey 6y ago
> What I'm curious is about is the percentage of people (younger or otherwise) who either develop no symptoms or develop symptoms so mild as to not be attributed to the virus. Do such people exist? Yes, absolutely. Many countries such as England do community infection studies. Essentially they pick a random sample of people and test them every week to see many people have the disease, even if they don't know it. In the England study, they report that ~70% of positive tests involve people who didn't report any symptoms ever. That implies there are lots of people who had it who didn't know they had it. > Out of those people that tested positive for COVID-19 over the study period, only 23% (95% confidence interval: 15% to 32%) reported experiencing one or more of the various symptoms at the time of their test. Out of those who reported testing positive, 33% (95% confidence interval: 23% to 44%) reported experiencing symptoms at any point in the period around testing positive. This was at the time of the visit, or at either the preceding or following visits. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/12june2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... Of course, the question is do these people get counted later in other ways - i.e. what percentage of them would show up in antibody surveys? That is currently a difficult question to answer with a high level of certainty for several reasons. Right now, we don't know for sure what level of infection causes you to develop detectable immunoglobulins, we don't know how long those stick around, and we don't know how much our immune system leans on T cells instead to fight COVID which don't show up in the existing antibody tests at all and are much more difficult to test for. And it's also worth pointing out that it's not clear that asymptomatic infections are as infectious as symptomatic infections. So don't assume they are equal. A recent study showed that asymptomatic people could shed the virus for 3 weeks, but it's really hard to know if that's active virus that could infect someone or not. There's a lot more research to be done. See https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/22/thoughts-on-antibody-persistence-and-the-pandemic https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/22/th...
- gizmo 6y ago
  > it's not clear that asymptomatic infections are as infectious as symptomatic infections Yes it is clear (they're not)! Superspreading events are caused by people who are clearly symptomatic but don't act responsibly. Most spreading in total happens via nonsymptomatic or presymptomatic people, because covid19 is a coronavirus and that's how coronaviruses work. No point in pretending this is some kind of big unknown. If you don't believe me, let's look at this story of army recruits. Those who tested positive were isolated, those who remained tested negative and trained together with masks and social distancing. Result, 8 days later 142 out of 640 tested positive. https://outline.com/dK2TWd https://outline.com/dK2TWd
RaceWon 6y ago
>> What I'm curious is about is the percentage of people (younger or otherwise) who either develop no symptoms or develop symptoms so mild as to not be attributed to the virus. Do such people exist? My spouse and I both work in a hospital. She got covid and so did one of our two siblings. Neither of them had any symptoms (spouse is in her 50's, our sibling is twenty plus.) I never got it nor did our other sibling. I also don't have antibodies. Go figure... it makes no sense to me. As a side note: we are not in patient care, however when this was at it's early peak here in the States--I don't know how the nurses, aides, and doctors were able to do their jobs everyday. It was fricken scary walking through the halls and passing workers dressed in plastic; what with all the unknowns at that time, and the news reports of death throughout the world. Those workers deserve respect if not outright awe and a Huge Cash Bonus... Huge.
- chosenbreed37 6y ago
  > My spouse and I both work in a hospital. She got covid and so did one of our two siblings. Neither of them had any symptoms (spouse is in her 50's, our sibling is twenty plus.) I never got it nor did our other sibling. I also don't have antibodies. Go figure... it makes no sense to me. I know it's anecdotal but it's interesting that your spouse contracted the virus but you did not. I'm assuming you live together. But then again I imagine it is quite common for one person in a household to catch a cold whilst everybody remains unaffected...I'm not equating covid-19 to the common cold. It came to mind as something that appears to spread in the same way.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
    Also not everyone who gets it will notice and they may not even generate antibodies. If the innate immune response (as opposed to the adaptive response) is strong enough the patient can get infected and recover without ever generating antibodies.
- valarauko 6y ago
  >My spouse and I both work in a hospital. She got covid and so did one of our two siblings. Neither of them had any symptoms (spouse is in her 50's, our sibling is twenty plus.) I never got it nor did our other sibling. Apologies, but the text makes it seem like your spouse is also your sibling.
ericd 6y ago
Anecdotally, I know at least one person in their early 30s who was seriously ill for a month. He got turned away from hospitals and testing, but he couldn’t sleep well for about a month because he had to consciously think about breathing. Saying “it‘s as dangerous as a 200 mile car ride” obviously doesn’t really capture the full picture.

lol768 6y ago

There's also not enough discussion about what happens after recovery. I was pretty ill in March (and, to a lesser extent, in April), which necessitated some time off work. Testing availability in my country was useless at the time, so I have no formal confirmation as to what it actually was. The govt also intervened, preventing my order of a private sector antibody test being fulfilled, so who knows. The experience after recovery for me, though, was anything but straightforward and I really struggled with lasting fatigue, breathlessness and just general exhaustion. I was only able to work half-days for a decent chunk of time. I still don't feel 100% now. My GP thinks it was likely Covid-19 and offered a diagnosis of post-viral fatigue after some tests. I'm 23. Statistically, this should have barely affected folks in my age group. It's not an isolated case: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-53056785 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-she...

mercer 6y ago
It's been exactly the same story for someone I know. They had a mild-but-less-mild-than-usual flu in March that was 'strange' in all the ways covid-19 is said to be. They had 'issues' like yours well into April and still don't feel 100%. No official diagnosis though.
_bxg1 6y ago
I've been reading lots of reports like this from young people. One person in their 20s ended up with lasting asthma when they'd never had it before. A couple have needed lung transplants. This category of outcomes is honestly much scarier for me.
charwalker 6y ago
Right. I have some pre-existing breathing issues that, even though I'm an otherwise healthy adult under 30, would probably lead to my death if I catch this. Not wearing a mask seems disrespectful to the hundred thousand + dead in the US alone. If you don't wear a mask, and I get sick, I might die. That's such an easy thing to do to prevent passing the disease on by 70%. Good luck with your recovery.

ageitgey 6y ago

> What I'm curious is about is the percentage of people (younger or otherwise) who either develop no symptoms or develop symptoms so mild as to not be attributed to the virus. Do such people exist? Yes, absolutely. Many countries such as England do community infection studies. Essentially they pick a random sample of people and test them every week to see many people have the disease, even if they don't know it. In the England study, they report that ~70% of positive tests involve people who didn't report any symptoms ever. That implies there are lots of people who had it who didn't know they had it. > Out of those people that tested positive for COVID-19 over the study period, only 23% (95% confidence interval: 15% to 32%) reported experiencing one or more of the various symptoms at the time of their test. Out of those who reported testing positive, 33% (95% confidence interval: 23% to 44%) reported experiencing symptoms at any point in the period around testing positive. This was at the time of the visit, or at either the preceding or following visits. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/12june2020 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... Of course, the question is do these people get counted later in other ways - i.e. what percentage of them would show up in antibody surveys? That is currently a difficult question to answer with a high level of certainty for several reasons. Right now, we don't know for sure what level of infection causes you to develop detectable immunoglobulins, we don't know how long those stick around, and we don't know how much our immune system leans on T cells instead to fight COVID which don't show up in the existing antibody tests at all and are much more difficult to test for. And it's also worth pointing out that it's not clear that asymptomatic infections are as infectious as symptomatic infections. So don't assume they are equal. A recent study showed that asymptomatic people could shed the virus for 3 weeks, but it's really hard to know if that's active virus that could infect someone or not. There's a lot more research to be done. See https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/22/thoughts-on-antibody-persistence-and-the-pandemic https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/22/th...

gizmo 6y ago
> it's not clear that asymptomatic infections are as infectious as symptomatic infections Yes it is clear (they're not)! Superspreading events are caused by people who are clearly symptomatic but don't act responsibly. Most spreading in total happens via nonsymptomatic or presymptomatic people, because covid19 is a coronavirus and that's how coronaviruses work. No point in pretending this is some kind of big unknown. If you don't believe me, let's look at this story of army recruits. Those who tested positive were isolated, those who remained tested negative and trained together with masks and social distancing. Result, 8 days later 142 out of 640 tested positive. https://outline.com/dK2TWd https://outline.com/dK2TWd

RaceWon 6y ago

>> What I'm curious is about is the percentage of people (younger or otherwise) who either develop no symptoms or develop symptoms so mild as to not be attributed to the virus. Do such people exist? My spouse and I both work in a hospital. She got covid and so did one of our two siblings. Neither of them had any symptoms (spouse is in her 50's, our sibling is twenty plus.) I never got it nor did our other sibling. I also don't have antibodies. Go figure... it makes no sense to me. As a side note: we are not in patient care, however when this was at it's early peak here in the States--I don't know how the nurses, aides, and doctors were able to do their jobs everyday. It was fricken scary walking through the halls and passing workers dressed in plastic; what with all the unknowns at that time, and the news reports of death throughout the world. Those workers deserve respect if not outright awe and a Huge Cash Bonus... Huge.

chosenbreed37 6y ago
> My spouse and I both work in a hospital. She got covid and so did one of our two siblings. Neither of them had any symptoms (spouse is in her 50's, our sibling is twenty plus.) I never got it nor did our other sibling. I also don't have antibodies. Go figure... it makes no sense to me. I know it's anecdotal but it's interesting that your spouse contracted the virus but you did not. I'm assuming you live together. But then again I imagine it is quite common for one person in a household to catch a cold whilst everybody remains unaffected...I'm not equating covid-19 to the common cold. It came to mind as something that appears to spread in the same way.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
  Also not everyone who gets it will notice and they may not even generate antibodies. If the innate immune response (as opposed to the adaptive response) is strong enough the patient can get infected and recover without ever generating antibodies.
valarauko 6y ago
>My spouse and I both work in a hospital. She got covid and so did one of our two siblings. Neither of them had any symptoms (spouse is in her 50's, our sibling is twenty plus.) I never got it nor did our other sibling. Apologies, but the text makes it seem like your spouse is also your sibling.

ericd 6y ago

Anecdotally, I know at least one person in their early 30s who was seriously ill for a month. He got turned away from hospitals and testing, but he couldn’t sleep well for about a month because he had to consciously think about breathing. Saying “it‘s as dangerous as a 200 mile car ride” obviously doesn’t really capture the full picture.