How Is Covid-19 Impacting Life in Your City?

[10023]

Originally Posted by mhays

People with beards wear masks all the time. False point #10023 from 10023.

But it’s more uncomfortable, and generally not an issue in East Asia. Read more carefully.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by austlar1

N fully expect a big uptick in positive testing in the NE US in the next month or so. Increased hospitalization rates (and more death) will follow.

I find this pretty implausible. Everything is still shut down here.

We, right now, despite the lowest new caseload in the U.S., and despite <0.5% positive test rates, are still more locked down than any other geography nationwide. So basically Florida, Texas and Arizona at peak-Covid, are still far more open than NY, NJ and CT, at minimal Covid.

They STILL aren't locking down in places like Texas. Restaurant interiors are still open! In NY they've been shut since early March. Mask usage is still voluntary in most places. In the Northeast it's been mandatory since March. Malls, bars, museums, gyms, everything still shut, with no opening in sight. In Texas, these places never closed.

I think it's because we were hit so hard, so early, that people are find with an overabundance of caution. We went through hell, like Italy and Spain, and no one wants to chance a return.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by 10023

But it’s more uncomfortable, and generally not an issue in East Asia. Read more carefully.

A sociopath called 10023 just posted this: "And no, I’m not shaving off my beard so that I can wear a mask." I posted the fact that a beard doesn't preclude wearing one, and the falsehood of your excuse.

Forget what you posted YESTERDAY?

[austlar1]

[QUOTE=Crawford;8992528]I find this pretty implausible. Everything is still shut down here.


Well, of course you do, Crawford, but you find most everything you did not say to be implausible. Back to my main point, I don't think the NE will surge like it did early in the pandemic, but I do expect an increase in positive test results and an increase in hospitalization as a result of increased activity in that region. Positive cases are on the uptick in the Mid Atlantic region and Pennsylvania already. Something similar seems to be happening in Spain and possibly other European countries that have tried to resume some normal activity. I hope I am proven to be wrong, but I kind of doubt that will be the case.

[austlar1]

On a slightly different subject, I thought I'd just post this here and annoy Crawford at the same time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/n...-building.html

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by austlar1

On a slightly different subject, I thought I'd just post this here and annoy Crawford at the same time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/n...-building.html

Scary article for those that love cities. This woeful article almost sounds like a new "Dark Ages" is emerging. During the "Dark Ages" after the fall of Rome, the population of most cities in western Europe fell dramatically. Rome itself went from perhaps 500,000 to 50,000 as crime and central authority and things in general just went to pieces. Hopefully the article will turn out to be overly gloomy.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by CaliNative

Scary article for those that love cities. This woeful article almost sounds like a new "Dark Ages" is emerging. During the "Dark Ages" after the fall of Rome, the population of most cities in western Europe fell dramatically. Rome itself went from perhaps 500,000 to 50,000 as crime and central authority and things in general just went to pieces. Hopefully the article will turn out to be overly gloomy.

^ I think we will see a temporary dip in the viability and activity within cities, but as we've all discussed several times, I agree that it is temporary.

Lets not forget that when Rome fell.....it was a completely different situation. "Barbarian" tribes that Rome had staved off for centuries finally bested Rome when it has reached a weak point, and poured into the city.

Nothing of that sort is going to happen here. There are no barbaric tribes at the gate. Sure there are some criminals and lawlessness, but our military and law enforcement infrastructure are fully intact and have the capability (not sure about the will?) to restore order within 30 seconds if they have to.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ I think we will see a temporary dip in the viability and activity within cities, but as we've all discussed several times, I agree that it is temporary.

Lets not forget that when Rome fell.....it was a completely different situation. "Barbarian" tribes that Rome had staved off for centuries finally bested Rome when it has reached a weak point, and poured into the city.

Nothing of that sort is going to happen here. There are no barbaric tribes at the gate. Sure there are some criminals and lawlessness, but our military and law enforcement infrastructure are fully intact and have the capability (not sure about the will?) to restore order within 30 seconds if they have to.

I'd agree about it being temporary though I do think that most of the "spring in its step" that urban American especially had regained recently will unfortunately be lost.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by austlar1

On a slightly different subject, I thought I'd just post this here and annoy Crawford at the same time.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/26/n...-building.html

I don't find the article inaccurate or annoying.

Why would a corporate HQ be occupied right now? There will be no corporate normalcy prior to vaccine and leadership change.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Let's see how well this comment ages... Prediction: Florida will be the worst outbreak in the U.S. when this is all over. It will be worse than New York.

We've hit another milestone on the road to prophecy:

Florida now has more coronavirus cases than New York

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Lets not forget that when Rome fell.....it was a completely different situation. "Barbarian" tribes that Rome had staved off for centuries finally bested Rome when it has reached a weak point, and poured into the city.

Nothing of that sort is going to happen here. There are no barbaric tribes at the gate. Sure there are some criminals and lawlessness, but our military and law enforcement infrastructure are fully intact and have the capability (not sure about the will?) to restore order within 30 seconds if they have to.

Not to mention that Justinian's campaign against the Ostrogoths to retake Italy for the eastern empire left Rome besieged and sacked multiple times over the 19 year campaign. The war decimated the Italian peninsula and left it severely depopulated. The same applied to Rome itself.

This left the Eastern Romans / Byzantines ill prepared for the invasion of the Lombards 15 years later.

At least under the Ostrogothic Kingdom the Roman way of life stayed much the same in Italy and the Ostrogothic Kings still went on with the charade that they were ruling at the pleasure of the sole Roman Emperor in Constantinople. The constant wars in the 6th century changed that way of life though.

[Pedestrian]

California vs. New York: One state's pandemic has been deadlier, but the numbers are more complex than case counts
Erin Allday
July 27, 2020 Updated: July 27, 2020 9:18 a.m.

Their journeys began at about the same time, but California and New York immediately diverged down two very different paths during the coronavirus pandemic.

California started in January, with travelers from China carrying a new virus into the Bay Area. New York was probably only a few weeks behind, its virus arriving from Europe.

From there, California’s trajectory was a gentle upward bend in case counts, a long plateau, and then — the surge. New York’s was the classic curve: a sharp climb in cases followed by a long and bumpy descent.

Last week, six months into this pandemic, their paths crossed. California passed New York with the most coronavirus cases in the United States.

That grim convergence occurred as the nation reached its own dark milestone: 4 million reported cases. California, as of Sunday, has about 452,000 cases, to New York’s 412,000. Florida passed New York over the weekend and now has about 425,000 cases . . . .

In March and April, New York consistently reported 10 times as many cases a day as California. By the end of June, California was outpacing New York by about the same rate. Last week, California reported about 65,000 new cases to New York’s 4,900.

But the numbers are more complicated than case counts. California has twice the population of New York, and its infection rate is half that of the Empire State — about 1,100 cases per 100,000 residents compared to 2,100 per 100,000. And New York has more than three times as many deaths — 32,600 to California’s 8,400, an indicator of how hard-hit the East Coast’s hospitals were early in the outbreak and how many more people died as a result.

The numbers are even more nuanced when California and New York are parsed into regions. The Bay Area, for example, has experienced a different epidemic, and is in far better shape, than Southern California. Some rural northern parts of the state have barely been touched by the virus. In New York, it has been Manhattan, along with the other four boroughs and their suburbs, that make up the vast majority of the cases statewide . . . .

In the beginning. The initial trajectory of their curves are fairly well understood. California, the first state in the U.S. to enact widespread shelter-in-place orders in mid-March, shut down ahead of its outbreak. New York acted a little too late.

By the time New York shut down, a large portion of the population in New York City was already infected, public health experts now believe. In the two weeks after Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s statewide shelter-in-place order, confirmed cases doubled every three or four days, and the hospitals were overwhelmed. When the outbreak peaked in the second week of April, more than 10,000 cases were being reported a day and about 1,000 people were dying.

California successfully quashed its burgeoning outbreak. After a gentle uptick in March, daily cases seemed to settle at about 1,000 to 1,500 for a while. They climbed a bit more in May, hitting more like 2,000 cases a day, but still looked stable.

The hospitals were never overrun. The state generally saw fewer than 100 deaths a day. Residents celebrated their “California miracle.” Early, aggressive action had saved the state from the fate of New York and countries like Italy that experienced disastrous outbreaks . . . .

“Even though we’ve flip-flopped in terms of the endpoint and daily new cases, it’s very different here. We were hearing in New York reports of bodies piling up, the social fabric was kind of crumbling. And I haven’t seen that here in California.

New York: the bell curve. An advantage of having a sharp trajectory up is it’s fairly clear when the peak has arrived. In New York, it was in mid April, when the state reported 11,434 cases on what would have been Tax Day. California saw 1,197 cases that day.

From there, the cases fell far and fast in New York. The state reported a daily average of 7,600 cases in April, and 2,100 in May. The average dropped to about 750 cases a day in June and 700 this month.

New York’s curve, now six months into this pandemic, is an elegant bell with a well-defined peak and a long, steady tail.

There’s no one reason why New York’s case count fell so dramatically, but infectious disease experts point to a few most likely explanations. There were probably very few gaps in New York’s shutdown, which primarily affected New York City, the driver of infections. Residents were scared — a few weeks into the outbreak almost everyone knew someone who’d been infected — and therefore obediently quarantined.

Another possible explanation for the drop-off is immunity. By the end of May, one-fifth to one-quarter of people in New York City are believe to have been infected, according to antibody studies. That’s not enough for herd immunity, in which a large enough portion of the population is immune that a virus can no longer find traction to spread.

But if groups of people prone to infection had higher rates of immunity, that could have dampened the outbreak, infectious disease experts said.

California: flattening the curve. California has never come close to that level of community disease. In the Bay Area, only about 1% of people were infected by the end of April, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. That was the result of flattening the curve.

The state averaged about 600 cases a day in March, then 1,400 in April and 2,000 in May. That’s an obvious increase with the benefit of hindsight, but at the time the numbers appeared flat, day after day. They were even steadier in the Bay Area. There is no doubt, public health experts said, that sheltering in place prevented the massive spike that New York had experienced.

But when it looked like the numbers had plateaued, and as the rest of the country began to reopen the economy, Californians grew complacent and impatient. People in many parts of the state begged for a loosening of stay-at-home restrictions. They also began to socialize again — visiting friends and family they hadn’t seen since March.

Cases began a notable uptick around Memorial Day, and then picked up speed. Californians thought they’d peaked in April, like New York — but it turned out the worst was still to come. The state reported an average of 4,000 cases a day in June — twice as many as May. And 8,500 a day so far in July . . . .

But California’s curve is deceptive, infectious disease experts say, because it’s taken different shapes in different regions. Los Angeles’s trajectory, which has been driving the state curve in recent weeks, was on a slow but steady ascent before a sudden spike in June. In the Bay Area, the curve was notably flat for a long stretch in April and May before trending up.

New York’s pandemic may have been deadlier and more destructive, but it was also more easily contained because it was centralized, Rutherford said. “When you talk about New York State, what you’re really talking about is New York City and the suburbs,” he said. “That makes it simpler.”

California held down its initial outbreak with a blanket shutdown on all 58 counties, but that wasn’t going to be appropriate for the entire state in the long haul, public health experts said. The reopening was blundered, in part, because there was no one approach. “Here, it’s like herding cats,” said Riley.

Both states can learn lessons from the other, infectious disease experts said. California looked to New York’s spike in March and April and knew to bulk up its hospital capacity while its case counts stayed manageable. That knowledge is paying off now as hospitalizations climb to new records.

And New York, perhaps, looked to California’s reopening and saw that a more conservative approach would be best . . . .

https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/a...o-15435610.php

I think the statement about the fact that northern and southern CA are two different worlds as far as this epidemic goes is key. In southern CA, in places like Orange County, they are still talking about opening up schools without required masks or distancing of the kids. In Imperial county, it resembles NY with the refrigerated semi trailers holding bodies, largely as a result of conditions to which the huge imnigrant farm worker population is exposed. But at the same time, San Francisco continues with about 7 cases per day per 100,000 population after briefly peaking at about 13 cases per day per 100,000 (even now, New York City is having about 4.1 cases per day per 100,000). In the Bay Area, there is no argument among governments about masking, distancing and the rest. We obviously have individuals who don't follow the rules but the rules themselves are strict and clear.

[iheartthed]

^Can't read it because it's behind a paywall, but seems like they didn't consider the possibility that it had indeed been in NY for a longer period of time before being detected than was the case on the West Coast. Early on, testing criteria didn't allow people with symptoms to be tested unless they were known to have traveled to a hotspot overseas, or had contact with someone who had tested positive. It is possible (and likely) that the West Coast detected it very early, while New York detected it very late. If that is true then it explains why California got it under control early. It also might explain the difference in mortality rates...

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

^Can't read it because it's behind a paywall, but seems like they didn't consider the possibility that it had indeed been in NY for a longer period of time before being detected than was the case on the West Coast.

That's not a possibility, that's long-accepted fact. Death rates in NY started rising in late January and the virus was already in the NY area around Thanksgiving. People were already dropping dead in droves before anyone in the U.S. knew what was happening.

Remember the initial narrative? Washington state was the hotspot, and it was coming from China? We were already four months too late at that point.

I think there are four main reasons the Northeast hasn't seen an upsurge - 1. Nowhere else got hit has hard, so people are still extra cautious; 2. Everything is still closed; nowhere else in the country has had such a severe shutdown; 3. Something close(ish) to herd immunity; I don't know any family that hasn't been at least indirectly affected; 4. The most susceptible people are already dead.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

^Can't read it because it's behind a paywall, but seems like they didn't consider the possibility that it had indeed been in NY for a longer period of time before being detected than was the case on the West Coast. Early on, testing criteria didn't allow people with symptoms to be tested unless they were known to have traveled to a hotspot overseas, or had contact with someone who had tested positive. It is possible (and likely) that the West Coast detected it very early, while New York detected it very late. If that is true then it explains why California got it under control early. It also might explain the difference in mortality rates...

I posted just about all the important parts because it is behind a paywall.

It is extremely unlikely that it was in the community in New York before it was in California unless you want to believe it didn't start in China but somewhere else. Genetic analysis of the prevalent virus indicates that the prevalent strain on the east coast and as far west as the Rockies is the strain from Europe whereas on the Pacific coast it is the strain from Asia. That suggests the west coast virus came straight from Asia, which makes sense because of the close connections and frequent travel between west coast Asian communities and Asia itself whereas the east coast has more travel to and from Europe. Thus it seems as if the virus came to the US west coast and to Europe from Asia, then spread from Europe to the east coast making it extremely unlikely it was spreading in the east earlier than in the west.

What we know is that California took "lockdown" measures before New York did--in fact, when both Mayor deBlasio and Gov. Cuomo were urging people to go to movies and other events with crowds. The first known US case was in Washington State on the West coast but it does seem likely there were infected people on both coasts before we recognize the infection in this individual:

On January 19, 2020, a 35-year-old man presented to an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County, Washington, with a 4-day history of cough and subjective fever. On checking into the clinic, the patient put on a mask in the waiting room. After waiting approximately 20 minutes, he was taken into an examination room and underwent evaluation by a provider. He disclosed that he had returned to Washington State on January 15 after traveling to visit family in Wuhan, China. The patient stated that he had seen a health alert from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the novel coronavirus outbreak in China and, because of his symptoms and recent travel, decided to see a health care provider.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191

From January 21 through February 23, 2020, public health agencies detected 14 U.S. cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), all related to travel from China. The first nontravel–related U.S. case was confirmed on February 26 in a California resident who had become ill on February 13. Two days later, on February 28, a second nontravel–related case was confirmed in the state of Washington .

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6922e1.htm

Again, on the west coast.

The New York Times explored all this is an article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/u...ntibodies.html

To quote a bit of it:

In San Jose, tissue sampling from a woman who died on Feb. 6 revealed that she was probably the first known person in the U.S. whose death was linked to the coronavirus — a strong sign that the virus may have been circulating in that part of Northern California in January.

But was it part of a large, previously unrecognized outbreak?

Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, theorized that perhaps the woman, who worked for a company that had an office in Wuhan, was one of only a small number of people who contracted the virus at that time and that transmissions probably petered out for some reason. Otherwise, he said, the region would have seen a much bigger outbreak.

“With that kind of early introduction, we should be seeing thousands of more cases,” Dr. Rutherford said.

Dr. Sara Cody, the health officer for Santa Clara County, said local, state and federal officials were continuing to try to answer those questions.

There are other, less concrete signs of earlier infections. In Florida, where the first two official cases were announced on March 1, a state database now lists coronavirus cases in patients who may have had symptoms as far back as January. But the cases are all under investigation, and no one has confirmed that any of those patients had the disease that early . . . .

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by Crawford

That's not a possibility, that's long-accepted fact. Death rates in NY started rising in late January and the virus was already in the NY area around Thanksgiving. People were already dropping dead in droves before anyone in the U.S. knew what was happening.

Remember the initial narrative? Washington state was the hotspot, and it was coming from China? We were already four months too late at that point.

I think there are four main reasons the Northeast hasn't seen an upsurge - 1. Nowhere else got hit has hard, so people are still extra cautious; 2. Everything is still closed; nowhere else in the country has had such a severe shutdown; 3. Something close(ish) to herd immunity; I don't know any family that hasn't been at least indirectly affected; 4. The most susceptible people are already dead.

Genetic analysis of the COVID-19 strains in NY show it arrived in January (from Europe) and spread fast.
https://www.genomeweb.com/sequencing...t#.Xx-5ap5KguU

[SteveD]

The following words are by a neighbor of mine up the street who contracted The 'Vid about a month ago, has since tested negative, but today a month down the road is still experiencing a panoply of issues and symptoms...I'm sharing with her permission:

Today I have had Covid for at least one month, possibly for as long as six weeks. I did not die, or need to go on a ventilator, or spike a dangerous fever. I am young, fit, and healthy. According to everything we thought we knew this spring, and according to my employer's HR still, I should have been fully recovered two weeks ago, after I tested negative on the 16th.
Over the past month, I've experienced a pretty wide range of symptoms. Not all at once--often they came in one at a time, like in kung fu movies where the bad guys wait their turn to fight. Some of them I haven't had for a couple weeks. Others are newer. It certainly didn't run the standard "fever, cough, fatigue" pattern we've all heard a million times by now.
First I had horrible body aches, mostly in my shoulders, forearms, and lower back. They were distinct from the pain of a pulled muscle (I know this because I actually did have a pulled muscle at the time, lucky me). It was more like an ache in the bones, like when a broken bone is almost finished mending.
Then I felt extreme fatigue. If you've asked how I was doing this past month, I probably told you that I've been sicker but never more tired. There was a solid week or so where I slept almost around the clock. As recently as last week I slept for almost 18 hours at a stretch. Even after the fatigue subsided I still slept more than usual. It's only been in the past few days that I've been able to get up at my usual hour and stay up to my normal bedtime, and only yesterday that I wasn't tucked in bed for hours prior to that, just resting.
Then the fever started. Luckily, it was never a high fever--at worst it was a degree and a half above normal. Basically, high enough to notice, but low enough to prevent serious damage. This lasted for almost two weeks straight, a continuous low fever.
Sometime around this point, I began to notice that I couldn't hold my arms straight out in front of me, or reach up over my head, or lift anything bigger than a cup. In fact, there were several times when I had to use both hands to drink from a glass, like a toddler, or the president. It wasn't like when you have a muscle cramp or start exercising without a warm-up--I'd reach out to pick something up like normal, and suddenly some unseen force would just say NO and my arm would collapse. Holding them out in front of me like Mr. Burns was just about the only way I could get things done for awhile. That's almost gone now, hopefully.
Coughing, sore throat, and headache have come and gone intermittently this whole time. Never particularly bad, but always hovering around ready to fuck up my day.
I never lost my sense of smell or taste, and I only lost my appetite for a couple of days in the beginning. I've been eating and hydrating normally for almost a month. I generally gain weight pretty easily--if I'm eating sugars and carbs and not exercising, as I have this month, I can count on a steady weight gain of a couple pounds a week. Instead, I've lost six pounds. I am guessing that fighting this is burning a ton of calories. I've also lost every bit of what little muscle tone I had before. It's not like I used to be super ripped or anything, but I didn't look like a small sack of deflated balloons before this either.
In the first half of the month, I almost never felt short of breath. That's changed, and it's now become my dominant symptom--occuring AFTER I tested negative. This is the third day in the past week I've had to stay in bed all day because I absolutely can't catch my breath. This morning I woke up, picked a few veggies, fed the dog, and then immediately went back to bed. Unless I suddenly feel better I doubt I'll get up for longer than half an hour today. I feel otherwise fine, but because I can't breathe properly I can't get anything done.
I have good days, of course. Yesterday was a good day. I felt totally fine. I tended the garden, cleaned the house, walked the dog, did a little craftwork, finished reading a book, got some work done on my manuscript, made fajitas. But the good days never last. I haven't had more than three in a row for the past month.
I have no idea when this will stop, or when the good days will outnumber the bad, or even if I'm done experiencing new symptoms. I have a mild case, I have never been acutely ill with this, and yet it's taken a month from me and is poised to take another at this rate. I have an appointment Thursday to order brain and lung scans to see if I've sustained permanent damage from an illness that hasn't even required a doctor's visit or anything beyond OTC medication.
How can I possibly commit to doing anything like going to work full time, or maintaining my home, or caring for children or infirm loved ones? Right now I can't even commit to picking up my dry cleaning on a given day. How am I supposed to get viable accommodations and proper medical care if policies are built around the notion that mild cases always clear up in two weeks and a negative test means that you're fine? How are younger people and healthy people supposed to protect themselves if everyone is telling them that the virus can't really hurt them and that things like schools can reopen safely?
If we had a vaccine tomorrow and everyone could and did get it immediately, we'd still be in for the long haul in terms of the economy and public health because of people like me alone. This isn't even taking into account the possibility that, like chicken pox, covid could produce new symptoms in recovered patients years or even decades down the road.
Wear a fucking mask, santize, don't go anywhere you don't absolutely have to.
I wish everything wasn't so fucked.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by SteveD

I have an appointment Thursday to order brain and lung scans to see if I've sustained permanent damage from an illness that hasn't even required a doctor's visit or anything beyond OTC medication.

She should receive a full cardiac work up as well to evaluate for any structural heart disease.

[Handro]

Originally Posted by SteveD

The following words are by a neighbor of mine up the street who contracted The 'Vid about a month ago, has since tested negative, but today a month down the road is still experiencing a panoply of issues and symptoms...I'm sharing with her permission:

Today I have had Covid for at least one month, possibly for as long as six weeks. I did not die, or need to go on a ventilator, or spike a dangerous fever. I am young, fit, and healthy. According to everything we thought we knew this spring, and according to my employer's HR still, I should have been fully recovered two weeks ago, after I tested negative on the 16th.
Over the past month, I've experienced a pretty wide range of symptoms. Not all at once--often they came in one at a time, like in kung fu movies where the bad guys wait their turn to fight. Some of them I haven't had for a couple weeks. Others are newer. It certainly didn't run the standard "fever, cough, fatigue" pattern we've all heard a million times by now.
First I had horrible body aches, mostly in my shoulders, forearms, and lower back. They were distinct from the pain of a pulled muscle (I know this because I actually did have a pulled muscle at the time, lucky me). It was more like an ache in the bones, like when a broken bone is almost finished mending.
Then I felt extreme fatigue. If you've asked how I was doing this past month, I probably told you that I've been sicker but never more tired. There was a solid week or so where I slept almost around the clock. As recently as last week I slept for almost 18 hours at a stretch. Even after the fatigue subsided I still slept more than usual. It's only been in the past few days that I've been able to get up at my usual hour and stay up to my normal bedtime, and only yesterday that I wasn't tucked in bed for hours prior to that, just resting.
Then the fever started. Luckily, it was never a high fever--at worst it was a degree and a half above normal. Basically, high enough to notice, but low enough to prevent serious damage. This lasted for almost two weeks straight, a continuous low fever.
Sometime around this point, I began to notice that I couldn't hold my arms straight out in front of me, or reach up over my head, or lift anything bigger than a cup. In fact, there were several times when I had to use both hands to drink from a glass, like a toddler, or the president. It wasn't like when you have a muscle cramp or start exercising without a warm-up--I'd reach out to pick something up like normal, and suddenly some unseen force would just say NO and my arm would collapse. Holding them out in front of me like Mr. Burns was just about the only way I could get things done for awhile. That's almost gone now, hopefully.
Coughing, sore throat, and headache have come and gone intermittently this whole time. Never particularly bad, but always hovering around ready to fuck up my day.
I never lost my sense of smell or taste, and I only lost my appetite for a couple of days in the beginning. I've been eating and hydrating normally for almost a month. I generally gain weight pretty easily--if I'm eating sugars and carbs and not exercising, as I have this month, I can count on a steady weight gain of a couple pounds a week. Instead, I've lost six pounds. I am guessing that fighting this is burning a ton of calories. I've also lost every bit of what little muscle tone I had before. It's not like I used to be super ripped or anything, but I didn't look like a small sack of deflated balloons before this either.
In the first half of the month, I almost never felt short of breath. That's changed, and it's now become my dominant symptom--occuring AFTER I tested negative. This is the third day in the past week I've had to stay in bed all day because I absolutely can't catch my breath. This morning I woke up, picked a few veggies, fed the dog, and then immediately went back to bed. Unless I suddenly feel better I doubt I'll get up for longer than half an hour today. I feel otherwise fine, but because I can't breathe properly I can't get anything done.
I have good days, of course. Yesterday was a good day. I felt totally fine. I tended the garden, cleaned the house, walked the dog, did a little craftwork, finished reading a book, got some work done on my manuscript, made fajitas. But the good days never last. I haven't had more than three in a row for the past month.
I have no idea when this will stop, or when the good days will outnumber the bad, or even if I'm done experiencing new symptoms. I have a mild case, I have never been acutely ill with this, and yet it's taken a month from me and is poised to take another at this rate. I have an appointment Thursday to order brain and lung scans to see if I've sustained permanent damage from an illness that hasn't even required a doctor's visit or anything beyond OTC medication.
How can I possibly commit to doing anything like going to work full time, or maintaining my home, or caring for children or infirm loved ones? Right now I can't even commit to picking up my dry cleaning on a given day. How am I supposed to get viable accommodations and proper medical care if policies are built around the notion that mild cases always clear up in two weeks and a negative test means that you're fine? How are younger people and healthy people supposed to protect themselves if everyone is telling them that the virus can't really hurt them and that things like schools can reopen safely?
If we had a vaccine tomorrow and everyone could and did get it immediately, we'd still be in for the long haul in terms of the economy and public health because of people like me alone. This isn't even taking into account the possibility that, like chicken pox, covid could produce new symptoms in recovered patients years or even decades down the road.
Wear a fucking mask, santize, don't go anywhere you don't absolutely have to.
I wish everything wasn't so fucked.

Sounds awful.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Crawford

That's not a possibility, that's long-accepted fact. Death rates in NY started rising in late January and the virus was already in the NY area around Thanksgiving. People were already dropping dead in droves before anyone in the U.S. knew what was happening.

Remember the initial narrative? Washington state was the hotspot, and it was coming from China? We were already four months too late at that point.

I think there are four main reasons the Northeast hasn't seen an upsurge - 1. Nowhere else got hit has hard, so people are still extra cautious; 2. Everything is still closed; nowhere else in the country has had such a severe shutdown; 3. Something close(ish) to herd immunity; I don't know any family that hasn't been at least indirectly affected; 4. The most susceptible people are already dead.

There is nothing but speculation to support the notion that the disease was in New York before January. It probably was circulating in China in November and there is some travel between NY and Wuhan so it might be possible to find an Asian strain case in New York derived froma traveler from that early but it evidently was not widely transmitted in the community there because that strain did not become the strain undergoing widespread community transmission in NY or anywhere in the east like it did on the west coast.