Shanghai Disneyland will close in effort to contain coronavirus

Long recovery for a virus isn't just applicable to COVID, of course.

About two years ago I came down with something that I thought was a cold/flu that went on for weeks. Basically a chest cold type thing with revolving symptoms that just would not give up. It got to the point that I thought I might need some type of medicine/antibiotics/whatever to break it after a few weeks, so when I went to see my doctor and we discussed what was going on, he basically told me to prepare for another few weeks of recovery, that it was a long-duration virus that he was seeing in a few of his patients. Not the typical cold/flu, but some other virus with a crazy name which I can't remember. By the end, it was just over 2 months of trying to recover from that virus. Sucked.

That being said, doesn't surprise me that it can take so long to recover in some cases. As with any virus, some people recover faster/slower than others. I have a buddy that would get knocked out for weeks with a cold, where I tend to get over them in 2-3 days tops.

^ Similar story here. It was November of 2018, on a trip to Williamsburg. We were on our way back to DC, with a stop at King's Dominion for Winterfest. On the trip between Doswell and DC, I started feeling like I was coming down with a nasty cold. By the time we got to DC I was feeling really crappy. I got a dose on Nyquil from the front desk and went to bed.
The next morning I had a bad cough, feeling tired, headache and sore throat. The normal Dayquil/Nyquil/Theraflu had no effect whatsoever. It just lingered on and on. Lasted around 8-10 weeks. I eventually settled on Tylenol for the aches and Robitussin with Honey for the sore throat. But it took a long time to resolve.

Just throwing my hat into the conversation. I now know two people that have tested positive. For both of them, the only symptom (and only reason they even went for a test) was the total loss of smell and taste. For one, it came back after about 2 and a half weeks. The other just tested positive a week or so ago. Both of them follow all of the suggested protocols. One had flown about two weeks before testing positive.

Again, in my little personal bubble only with my own personal experiences - losing my ability to taste food for a couple weeks would suck. But it doesn't justify locking myself down.

Several of my husband's coworkers have tested positive. So far the worst any of them has had was symptoms similar to a really nasty flu. They all recovered in a timely manner and are back at work.

We just got the email at work that someone in the building has tested positive, anyone that was a close contact has been notified and will be exempt from work for the next two weeks to isolate, anyone else receiving this generalized email was not a close contact. Wash your hands, use the sanitizer, don't come in if you don't feel well, etc etc.

Given the numbers in Orlando I'm surprised it took this long, honestly. And given the whole asymptomatic thing I'm sure this isn't the first time or the only time it's passed through this building. I still don't feel any more or less nervous, anxious, worried, concerned, fearful, etc than I did an hour ago before the email went out. My biggest concern was/is that we will close again and the job security we all had the first time around in March and April won't be there this time. Had I been contacted as being a "close contact" I would have absolutely stayed home for 14 days and contacted everyone I have been in contact with in the last few weeks. But I can't say I'd have done it filled with fear.

My cousin's family all got sick. The first was a teenager who got very ill. Then the mom and dad. Dad ended up in the hospital for about a week and it took him a few additional weeks to fully recover. The last one got sick but never anything more than a mild fever for two days.

Another cousin got sick. It took a couple of weeks to run its course and she was very ill and scared because she lived alone. Her recovery has been slower. She's overweight and not a very active person.

My wife's coworker's daughter got sick and recovered pretty quickly, her coworker had some symptoms but isn't currently sick.

I don't want to spin the wheel of death myself or risk giving it to one of my parents so I am cautious but still active. I check my temperature every day and count the days between the last risky thing I did. My last risky activity was riding a bus with the windows open to kayak down the middle yough, that time has expired. :) I guess my short to Kennywood is the next countdown but I'm not too worried about that one.

I'm not sure why fear keeps coming up in the discussion (not so much here, but on the Internets in general). I'm not scared of buses, but I try to avoid stepping in front of them when they're moving, you know? As a white collar remote worker, I could generally describe the pandemic as not a big deal, because the rules of engagement are pretty straight forward: Avoid close contact with people, especially indoors, and when that isn't possible, wear a mask and wash your hands. This isn't hard to roll with, live social contact not withstanding.

On the other hand, if you're, for example, a teacher, and someone is suggesting a bunch of sweaty kids pack on a bus and then 30 of them sit in a portable classroom for 7 hours a day, that's pretty much the ideal set up for a "super spreader" event. The odds of getting sick and/or dying are only low if you can minimize exposure risk, and we seem to keep coming up with reasons that we're unwilling to do that long enough to really limit community spread.

eightdotthree said:

I check my temperature every day...

Speaking of taking temperatures, it didn't me take until now to figure out the difference between a rectal thermometer and an oral thermometer. I really had no idea!

It was the taste!

In all seriousness, that's really unfortunate about your extended family getting sick. I'm glad they are all getting better.

I assure you I use an oral thermometer every time. 😂

It’s all good. They’re all well. I only knew about two of them until an article was written about them being the first cases in Westmoreland County (Feb 1).

Today, all of Europe has a 7-day average of 469 deaths per day, while the US has 792 (source). New infections are 4x in the US compared to Europe. Keep in mind that Europe has 2.25x the population.

Why do we suck at this so much? Much of it is our leadership, sure, but there's a whole lot of individual failure going on.

And we’re roughly the same size, meaning Europe is much more densely populated.

Jeff said:

Why do we suck at this so much?

Europeans have smarter sperm than we do?

We were batting this around much earlier in the thread, but here's some actual history:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2020/07/17/870483369/your-life-i...government

$10M is the approximate value of a life.

Remember the good old days when we thought this wouldn't happen again until the fall?

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/07/with-morgues-brimming-texas...or-trucks/

You can't put lipstick on a pig and make it attractive. This is an epic failure of leadership that starts at the White House. Trump's strategy (or lack thereof) has empowered governments to be ignorant (the Governor of Georgia suing the mayors of Georgia so they CANNOT require masks) and more so for individuals to be assholes (people screaming at store employees when they are told they cannot come in because they are not wearing masks).

Just imagine if we were under attack by a foreign government and the President simply said, "hey...the States can all figure it out for themselves". It would be perhaps the worst dereliction of duty a President could display. The virus is an invader yet the President and his government have no strategy...none...for doing anything about it.

Worse yet, the President is taking steps to aid the invader. Muzzle the CDC. Promote untrue propaganda that aids the other side. Distract the country so maybe we will forget that we were under attack in the first place. And, perhaps one of the most cruel acts of a President I've witnessed in my 50 years, try to force children into the fight by demanding that schools reopen risking unknown exposure.

None of what I'm saying is political. It is simply a criticism of leadership. Incredibly poor, dangerous leadership. In fact, it isn't leadership. I don't even want to use that word. What do you call the absence of leadership?

This.

And for a dose of positive news that is not at all based on graphs or science but provides me with a feeing of hope and optimism

Cleveland Clinic dismantles overflow area intended for COVID-19 patients they never had to use

If there was any doubt, we were talking two weeks ago about case spikes being a leading indicator to deaths. Well, we're there. Florida, Texas, Arizona and California are all seeing a spike in deaths. The Florida his is particularly dramatic.

There seems to be enough evidence that we can roll with this for six months with the standard mask and distancing strategy without filling morgues, and that doesn't entail shutting everything down. Why can't we actually do that?

A. 'Merica

B. I don't wanna

C. Mah-freedom

D. Woohoo party!

E. All of the above

Jeff said:

There seems to be enough evidence that we can roll with this for six months with the standard mask and distancing strategy without filling morgues, and that doesn't entail shutting everything down. Why can't we actually do that?

I've been hearing a lot about public health agencies switching to a "harm reduction" messaging strategy, which might help with this. The idea behind harm reduction is counter-intuitive at first: rather than telling people to avoid risky behavior, you instead try to stratify the risks, providing support for folks who are going to engage in risky behavior so that they can reduce the risks that they take on.

Two canonical examples of this comes from HIV/AIDS prevention. The first was a switch from telling gay men that they shouldn't have sex to the message that abstinence is safest, but if one is sexually active condom use reduces risk. The second is the creation of needle exchange programs for folks who used injectible drugs. Both were very controversial, because of the concern that this would increase risky behavior. But, both were very effective at reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS among the respective populations.

As an aside: some Canadian provinces have done something similar for opioid overdoses.https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1800216

An example of this for COVID would be: rather than have stores turn away folks who are not wearing a mask, to instead use public funds to provide stores with an inexpensive one to give out and invite them to come in if they are willing to wear it.

Another example has been this messaging around the levels of risk (ignore for now where amusement parks are placed...) https://healthnewshub.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NewsTexasRiskA...opyPDF.pdf

Jeff said:

If there was any doubt, we were talking two weeks ago about case spikes being a leading indicator to deaths. Well, we're there.

I feel like you were invoking me. I also don't see it. Unless you count a jump from 700 to 1000 deaths "a spike" - and all things considered, I don't.

We have nearly double the cases and about 1/3rd the deaths compared to the initial hit.

My argument all along is that the individual risk isn't necessarily being conveyed accurately - especially based on the early numbers and lack of nuance in looking at who was dying. I still feel that way. Now that things are become more widespread, the mortality rate (based on these charts and napkin math) has been effectively reduced by a factor of roughly six.

Yes, 1000 people died in a day. No, I'm not dismissing that.

Yes, I'm still flying to, spending a week in, and leaving my kid at Miami in 16 days. No, I'm not entirely comfortable with any of it.