Coronavirus: Avoid social gatherings for the next few days
Seattle, 12th March: As per the reports, a coronavirus patient in Seattle has shared information and his experience while suffering from this disease on social media which has gone viral.
His story is as follows:
First how easily you can get it: According to that patient, who is in his mid-thirties, he believes he caught it when attending a small house party at which no one was coughing, sneezing or otherwise displaying any symptoms of illness. It appeared that 40% of the attendees of that party ended up sick.
[bs-quote quote=”The media tells you to wash your hands and avoid anyone with symptoms. I did. There is no way to avoid catching this except avoiding all other humans. 40% of folks were all sick within 3 days of attending the party all with the same/similar symptoms including fever.” style=”style-8″ align=”center” color=”#dd0000″][/bs-quote]
Second, the symptoms appear to be different depending on your constitution and/or age. According to that patient, most of his friends who got it were in their late 40s to early 50s. For them it was a headache, fever (for first 3 days consistently and then on and off after 3 days), severe body aches and joint pain, and severe fatigue.
“I had a fever that spiked the first night to 103 degrees and eventually came down to 100 and then low grade 99.5. Some folks had diarrhoea. I felt nauseous one day. Once the fever is gone some were left with nasal congestion, sore throat. Only a very few of us had a mild itchy cough. Very few had chest tightness or other respiratory symptoms.”
The total duration of illness was 10-16 days. The main issue is that without reporting a cough or trouble breathing many of them were refused testing. He got tested through the Seattle Flu Study. This is a research study in Seattle and they have been testing volunteers for strains of the flu to study transmission within the community.
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A few weeks ago, they started to test a random subset of samples for COVID-19 infection. They sent his sample to the King County Public Health Department for confirmation; however, he was told that all of the samples that have tested positive in the research study have been confirmed by Public Health.
As of Monday, March 9th, it has been 13 days since his symptoms started and more than 72 hours since his fever subsided. The King County Public Health Department is recommending to stay isolated for 7 days after the start of symptoms or 72 hours after your fever subsides.
“I have surpassed both deadlines so I am no longer isolating myself however I am avoiding strenuous activity and large crowds and I obviously will not come near you if I see you in public. I was not hospitalized. Not every country is hospitalizing everyone with a COVID-19 infection and in my case, and in many other cases, I didn’t even go to the doctor because I was recovering on my own and felt it was just a nasty flu strain different from the ones I have been protected from with this season’s flu vaccine.”
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“I know some folks are thinking that this can’t/won’t impact them. I hope it doesn’t but I believe that the overall lack of early and pervasive testing damaged the public’s ability to avoid the illness here in Seattle. All I know is that Seattle has been severely impacted and although I’m better now I would not wish this very uncomfortable illness on anyone”.
The person narrates his experience in combating the disease by doing one thing that he believes may have saved him from getting worse respiratory symptoms is the fact that he consistently took Sudafed, used Afrin nasal spray (3 sprays in each nostril, 3 days at a time and then 3 days off), and used a Neti pot (with purified water). This could have kept his sinuses clear and prevented the symptoms from spreading to his lungs.
[bs-quote quote=”This is not medical advice: I’m simply sharing what I did and correlating it with the fact that I had no respiratory symptoms. The two could be entirely unrelated based on the viral strain and viral load that I received.” style=”style-8″ align=”center” color=”#dd0000″][/bs-quote]
Hand washing doesn’t guarantee you won’t get sick, especially when people without symptoms are contagious and could be standing right next to you in any given social situation. You more likely than not will not die, but do you want to risk spreading it to a loved one over 60 or someone with an immunity issue?
Stay tuned to Baaghi TV for more information.
