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COVID-19

Anyone have Covid-19 here? What were some symptoms?
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Avatar universal
My comment was deleted. I actually went through this. Thank you.
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Your comment was probably deleted because you said masks do little if nothing.  This is wildly untrue.  It is probably the most important protection we have right now if you can't socially distance 100% of the time, and this has been proven.  You also don't say whether you got tested or not, so we don't actually know you had covid, do we?  I'm wondering why you didn't test or haven't gotten tested for antibodies so you'd know.  I sure sounds like it's covid, and it sounds like you're some of the ones who are having long-term symptoms.  If you've had worse, I'd like to know what it was -- if you had pneumonia you almost died, and you're still suffering and may suffer indefinitely.  That's not a bad flu, that is gone when it's done.  All this is perhaps why it may be deleted again, MedHelp is pretty tight on what they allow to be printed on here and if the info is obviously incorrect or seems politically motivated it is often deleted.  Not saying this is a good thing, but it is how they run the site.  Hope you all have a full recovery some day.
Hi - the comment wasn't deleted.  We have an intermittent bug that causes some posts not to appear immediately, and maybe that's what happened in this case.  

While no one says that masks offer a 100% degree of protection, the available body of evidence shows that they can significantly reduce transmission, a far cry from "little if nothing."

We hope your family's recovery progress continues.
To add to the above, I heard from an epidemiologist interview today that if 95% of us wore masks whenever we were unable to socially distance the virus would be controlled, as it is in most of the rest of the world.  The head of the CDC also said that wearing masks is probably more effective at protection than a vaccine, because the vaccines currently under development don't appear to promise to be effective more than 50% of the time.  We'll know when they're out, of course, but he's got a lot more inside info than we do.  If anyone wants to see how well masks work, there is video from researchers showing how far a cough or sneeze travels without one indoors compared to how far it travels with one indoors and the difference is stark.
Avatar universal
Mother-in-law was hospitalized with a weird pneumonia upon return from a flight to London. We all had the worst flu ever (probably Covid) and still have mad symptoms. Things like seriously damaged sense of taste or smell, brain fog, congestion, rapid heart beat, and bad sleep with nightmares.

This occurred in February, and we still can't breath right. We are all either past the danger age (about 80 years of age) or have co-morbidities (like cancer and organ failure) in the extreme. No hospital for us, but we survived. It was like a bad flu. We've had worse.

Masks do little if nothing.
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675347 tn?1365460645
I may be wrong, as there are some people who are highly sensitive to some substances, but I wouldn't think the amount of quinine taken in when drinking Tonic Water within reason would be a worrying amount, and might well do a little good.
It might be a different story for someone who drank gallons all day long though...

I honestly don't think there is a "cure".  But I do think that depending on who you are and how your body responds, there may be a lot of natural relievers for the symptoms, and of course, vitamins  and minerals will give us a better chance and some strength.
I am a believer in vitamin D, viatmin C and zinc, for helping the immune system.

I also took some herbal medicines which I do know helped me through the worst of it.
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Just to be clear, what anyone wishes to do to themselves is fine.  What can be a problem is recommending things to others that might be either problematic or have no known use for the problem.  As covid is new to humans, we don't have anything we know works for it.  We're learning.   You can't know that anything you tried worked or not because to know that, you'd have to double blind it, which means you'd have to go back and get covid again in exactly the same circumstances and not take whatever you took and see if the results are different.  We have a lot of historical use of lots of very useful natural substances, but none for covid as it never existed in humans before.  So we're flying blind so far.  Almost every essential nutrient, and C, D, and zinc are all necessary for human life, helps in some way with the immune system.  The question here is, do they help with covid?  Tonic water is not an essential nutrient and doesn't help in any known way with the immune system, and isn't in sufficient quantity unless abused to do much of anything.  Again, quinine is a natural substance isolated from a toxic plant called cinchona bark.  That plant has been used for centuries by those trained to use it safely to treat malaria, and that is why quinine was isolated from it and turned into several drugs.  All of those drugs can kill you if you are susceptible to certain problems.  So you don't want to use enough tonic water to make it useful without some medical supervision just in case.  I do believe, as you do, that certain nutrients can shorten the duration of certain ailments, but can't say if they do that with covid as it is the strangest disease I've ever heard of.  Probably because it's new to humans.  It affects so many different parts of the body it's hard to know what to do or not do, so my advice with this disease would be, don't give any advice but if you want to experiment on yourself, that's fair.
And also, D doesn't help with the immune system in the same way that zinc and C do.  It's incredibly important but I don't know it to be something used to shorten the duration or intensity of a current illness unless that illness involved bone density.  But again, with covid, who knows?
1415174 tn?1453243103
I had two friends that got Covid19. One was 62 year old female who was obese and had diabetes. She first got a fever and sore throat. Then after a few days lost her sense of taste as well. Then 10 days after exposure she started getting respiratory problems. First was a dry hacking cough then two-three days after that she got shortness of breath which got worse the next day. She was admitted to the hospital. She was put on oxygen and then her oxygen saturation got too low and they intubated her. she was in the hospital about 10-12 days and finally released. She went home and had severe fatigue. She tested positive for about 2 months after infection. She now is still fatigued, but not as bad and has her taste back. Her husband is 65 and he only got a sore throat.
My brother works at a Walmart (night shift). His co-worker was a cleaner for them to remove possible virus. She contracted Covid. I don't know her age but I am guessing 40's? She got three weeks of fever, short throat and coughing and severe fatigue where she couldn't walk. After that she recovered.
regards, and stay safe.
mkh9
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Avatar universal
*DISCLAIMER - NOT A DOCTOR*

I highly recommend if you are worried about getting the virus to take preventative measures. I do this as I am an essential worker exposed to 100's each day and 1000's of people each week.

Vitamin D 100 mg
Vitamin C (1000 mg) use Emergen-C packets and mix. You could drink 3 a day for 3000 mg if sick or just 1000 mg for daily maintenance.
Zinc (Sulfate, Gluconase, etc.) 50mg
Tonic water with Quinine - You can do it several ways. Easiest and non alcoholic is take two glasses filled with 8oz of cranberry juice and Tonic Water . You are mixing up 50/50. That will get you 40mg of Quinine in your system. You could also drink Gin & Tonic. Make sure that you drink 16 oz of tonic water. I mix my Gin & Tonic with 2 oz of Gin then 4 or 5 oz of tonic water in a glass with ice.

The Zinc and Quinine would hopefully kill anything that enters your system before it blows up into a full blow episode. The Vitamin D would stop RNA replication. Vitamin C helps your system regardless but if you are feeling sick, you could drink 3 - 5 glasses of the Emergen-C for around 3,000 to 5,000 mg of Vit C. Your body will process the Vit C and convert to Hydrogen Peroxide or something similar which will kill virus and bacteria.

The Zev Zelenko combo to cure COVID is

HCQ 200 mg 2x daily for 5 days
Azithromycin 500 mg 1x daily for 5 days
Zinc 220 mg 1x daily for 5 days.

You notice the difference in the amounts for preventative and the cure version. I've seen variations of prophylactic measures by hospitals which are variations of what I listed.
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2 Comments
I hesitate to comment because you've suffered a great loss, but we all still bear a responsibility to offer factual info and not unproven info.  So far nothing has been found that cures covid.  Certainly not what's mentioned here.  The evidence on zinc, Zpak, and quinine is all bad.  Didn't work.  Lots of studies, none yet conclusive but bad enough to have an official suggestion not to use them unless under the treatment of a physician in a hospital setting.  Quinine is actually the product of a toxic plant that grows mostly in South America.  The amount allowed in tonic water is quite small, but if you increase it too much you run into the possible side effects of using a toxic substance without medical supervision.  Zinc is also toxic in large doses.  Vitamin D has no known use for this kind of thing, though you do need more of it if you don't go out in the sunshine.  Emergen-C can be useful, but you can avoid the sugar and flavoring by just taking Ester-C, but again, it won't cure or prevent Covid.  If this regimen worked, we wouldn't have anyone dying of covid.  I feel awful about your loss.  I hope you're coping with it in more productive ways than combing the internet for conspiracy theories -- fear and grief can do odd things to us.  All the best, and again, I'm only saying this to protect others.  What any0ne wishes to do in experimenting on oneself is fine by me.  Peace.
I'm with Pax on this. I'm really sorry for your loss, but in addition to what Pax said, HCQ has been proven to do more harm than good for covid. It's also taking it away from people who need it for other diseases, like lupus.

Have you considered an antibody test? Many of them aren't accurate, but since both your parents had this, perhaps you did, too, and none of this is even necessary for you.

I wish you the absolute best.
Avatar universal
My Parents both had it. My Mom said the noticeable thing was loss of taste and smell. That's when you really know you have it. She had high grade fever for days on end and felt like crap. At some points it was harder to breath but she was able to get over it even with Diabetes

My father had COPD and developed Pneumonia from the virus. He was taken to hospital and put into medically induced coma to be intubated with a ventilator. He was brought back out but after 3 to 4 week battle, was unable to get back off the ventilator. They were going to re-intubate him and he declined further medical assistance. He passed away April 17th.
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3 Comments
I'm sorry for your loss. :(
How terrible for your father, and for you. I lost my dad a year and a half ago, and wouldn't wish that sadness on anyone. I'm glad your mother made it through.
wri7913. I am so sorry for your loss. Bless your Dad's Soul.
675347 tn?1365460645
I had the virus early April. For about two weeks I had GI disturbance (unusual for me) which I couldn't figure out.
Then on 2 April I suddenly went very cold. I took my temperature and it was barely above 35C (cold!)
Then it started to go up, hovered around 37.5 -37.8 then  went up more.

I felt like I was having some kind of asthma attack; kept trying to cough it out. Heart rate speeded up. I had no appetite. I drank hot herbal teas and took some medicinal herbs. The cough got a bit worse, and I used steam inhalations to loosen my chest.
I got heart palpitations, and some breathlessness.

I had no "cold-type" symptoms at all, and never lost my sense of smell or taste.

I called the medical helpline and they gave me a questionnaire to reply to. I was not bad enough to be hospitalised, but they tol me to keep in touch if I worsened and an ambulance would be sent.

I kept steady coping with the symptoms myself and was better off at home I thought.
I kept drinking lots of hot teas and taking the herbs.
After 4 days the fever broke and I felt much better.  Appetite came back.

I had some out of breath feelings for about 2 weeks but not so bad, and they gradually went away. Also more tiredness, and needed a lot of rest. I would lie and listen to music.

I still feel some very slight gut disturbance like a feeling of trapped wind sometimes, but apart from that everything is much back to normal.

I hope for anyone who catches this, you will have a  mild-ish version  as I think I had. It was do-able and not too scary to endure.
Wishing you all the very best.
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10 Comments
Just a question -- you don't mention getting tested either for the virus or for antibodies to the virus.  Have you been tested repeatedly to avoid the false negatives and false positives so you know for certain that's what you had?  I'm just curious as to how that part of it went down, as it appears we're all possibly headed for being tested.  I'm really glad you are better.
At the time they were only testing hospital admissions with acute respiratory symptoms., also there were no automatic tests for over 65's early April (as there are now.)
So the only way I was sure it was coronavirus is from the questions I was asked by the medical person  on  the phone, and my answers to them which apparently fitted the profile completely according to them.
Also it was the strangest thing I'd ever had, unlike any flu and nothing at all like a cold. Quite dramatic. And there were no other possible causes for such a sudden illness in my medical history.
I am waiting for the antibody test to  become more widely available here. It has 100% reliability apparently, so I prefer to wait for that. It's already available to selected medical response workers but not to the general public yet.
No, it's not 100% accurate.  Not test is.  Make sure you get only the FDA approved tests that are out there.  In the Administration's rush when they got desperate the FDA allowed anyone on an emergency basis to make an antibody test.  Most of them are horribly inaccurate, so they stopped that authorization but those tests already allowed are presumably still out there.  The same problem exists for different reasons with the test for the disease.  Only 3 tests are at 95% accuracy.  The one the White House uses, for example, is quite quick but may be up to 40-50% false negatives and the rest are at least 15% false negatives.  The problem with the antibody tests are false positives.  So when you do seek the test, make sure you ask the doc if they know which are the 3 good tests and if those are the ones that doc is using.  Again, it's just fantastic you are okay.  Stay that way!
Oh Ginger, I'm glad you are better!

You sound a lot like some good friends of mine, who had it in early April. I don't think you are in the US, but they are, and ran into similar issues with testing. Their doctors were convinced they had it, and they are going to take the antibody tests (they may have already - I haven't heard).

I'm glad you're feeling better!
@paxiled, the antibody blood test developed here in UK at Porton Down (I belive it's with Roche pharmaceuticals) is reported as 100% reliable. But as far as I know not widely available to everyone yet. I think to some health workers....not sure but will call my health centre next week to check.
Yes I am grateful to have got through and to be pretty good right now. I still have a lingering symptom but it oesn't feel too bad and my energy/appetite, etc are fine. I am in my late 60s too.

auntiejessi, you are so kind,. Thank you. I am doing okay. I hope your friend made a good recovery and you are also well?
Yes, my friends are doing much better now, ty :)

I'm fine so far. I'm higher risk for complications, so I've been quarantining since March. I'm very lucky that I am able to work from home, so other than some doctor's appts, I haven't been out. I don't have big plans to do so anytime soon. Cases are still rising in my state, so it's a good thing I like where I live lol.

Regarding testing,  no test is 100% accurate.  Molecular tests are about 98% sensitive and maybe 100 percent specific. But the problem is when they collect the sample the person may not get the exact area where the virus is in the nasopharyngeal area
This leads to false negatives.  There are quite a high number of false negatives.  Mostly due to collection errors.  Also, when someone is positive they need to have two molecular tests in a row be negative to be considered clear. I think they test about a week apart. Also, if the person had been positive, they can still shed dead virus (non-infective) and the molecular test will still pick that up as a positive.  That is because the molecular test can see even parts or pieces of the virus. I hope this makes sense. As for antibody tests they are much more inaccurate.  This depends on if the sample is collected at the time the person has developed antibodies.  It takes about a month to start developing long lasting types of antibodies (called IgG)   But they can collect a sample at two weeks and you might have developed the IgM (early) antibodies  . Also antibody tests are not that sensitive to start with. Some are 70% sensitive and up to maybe 90% or more if all conditions are perfect. More likely they are less than 90 percent.
mkh9
While you're right about all of that, it's not the whole story.  The main reason the tests are so inaccurate is in large part gov't failure.  Instead of the FDA going through normal approval for antibody tests, they panicked and let anyone sell one to the public.  Most of them don't work.  Doesn't matter how well the test is done, only 3, I believe, work, and those are estimated to 95% accurate.  They went through the normal channels.  The FDA has allegedly been cleaning this up and getting bad tests off the market, and hopefully this is being done.  As for the initial tests, there was indeed initially a problem getting the swab far enough in to record properly.  Supposedly everyone has gotten better at it by now.  But again, the gov't allowed a lot of tests to be used that are just really bad tests.  The one the White House uses is a very quick test by Abbot Labs, but it has from 20-50% false negatives.  Abbott says the test isn't being properly done by labs, but it really doesn't matter, it doesn't work and shouldn't probably be used by anyone.  So again there are just too many different tests out there and some of them plain don't work.  So you're right, in general medicine is much more imprecise that we are led as patients to believe, but in the case of covid we have an additional problem of gross corruption and incompetence.  It's an unfortunate thing that we don't usually see in an emergency, which is politicization of a disease and its treatment.  But it is the case and is why the US is one of the few places in the world that hasn't been able to get any control at all of it.  Brazil is another and for the same reason.  Mexico might be becoming another.  It is sad.  
Let me add, my wife decided to go visit her elderly parents, who she hasn't been able to see for a long time because of this virus and had to cancel it because the disease is everywhere and she doesn't want to feel guilty for the rest of her life if she infected either them or herself by seeing them or me when she returns.  We should be past this by now, most of the rest of world is.  Again, just very sad.
you were not tested for the virus, so i wouldn't say you had the virus.
Avatar universal
I’ve known a few people who were completely asymptomatic. They were only tested because family members they lived with were positive. Others have said sore throat, cough, fever, malaise, etc. I’ve heard and read individuals having a complete array of symptoms, differing from each individual person. It seems it mimics the common flu.
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....his experience of Covid-19 featured a new and disturbing symptom every day, akin to an “advent calendar”.  https://www.medhelp.org/posts/Coronavirus/Article-about-long-tail-form-of-Covid/show/3055598
188761 tn?1584567620
Tom13345, I am sure no one here or you have been infected with the virus. Don't worry much, stay hydrated, eat foods that boosts immune system and get some exercise at home in the morning. We are all going to be okay. Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future. :)
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mike_no, " Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future".  I like it.  Thank you for the reminder.  MOST people, even if they have the virus DO recover.  
973741 tn?1342342773
I found a great resource I'll share with you.  https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2020/03/coronavirus-covid-19-identifying-the-symptoms.pdf  It's a PDF that shows each type of illness, covid 19, flu and cold and what types of symptoms each have.  

I have been slightly unwell but I am sneezing and have a runny nose which makes it most likely a common cold.  Upper respiratory in nature. Corona is lower respiratory and patiens seem to almost always have a dry cough and fever and sometimes develop shortness of breath.   Check out the chart and tell me what you think.

Are you not feeling well currently, Tom?
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3 Comments
Was that just a cold, specialmom? Were you okay? I hope you didn't come down with the virus. I have only just seen this thread 2 days ago. Take care and my best wishes.
Those are definitely not the symptoms most covid sufferers have, Mom.  Those are the ones that those with the bad cases have.  40% of those with it are completely asymptomatic, though weeks later they might suddenly get some problems as the immune system goes nuts.  Of the rest, most have very mild cases that might include a sore throat or some nausea or just a loss of taste and smell.  I was very close to trying to get a test a little over a month ago when I got a strange feeling in my head and a mild sore throat.  Definitely covid symptoms.  But tests aren't easy to get and getting one isn't all that safe, because to get one you have to go where those who have it also go.  So I went on the CDC website and found as step by step guide that led me through what I was feeling.  It ended up a bit amusing, saying, we're sorry you're not feeling well, we hope you feel better soon.  But it still bothers me some to think that if we want everyone to get a test and in most places we're discouraged from getting one, it seems a contradiction.  But I've also heard from some experts that testing isn't the be-all and end-all, that social distancing and isolation of those with symptoms and contact tracing is more important.  Who knows?  Anyway, I didn't get a test and it went away, and not I think what it might have been and what you might have are spring allergies, depending on where you live.  Here they are very bad, and a lot of people are sneezing and have runny noses and stuffed heads all the time but it happens every spring and fall here.  What can you do?
When I had it I didn't get sore throat, or loss of taste and smell. I got gut upset first (not knowing I had it then!)
Suddenly I got really dramatic respiratory symptoms  -nothing like any allergies or cold  ....or even any flu I'd ever had.
Bitter cold (almost hypothermic) on a mild day.
Heart racing.
Temp. went up and up, to a high -ish fever (almost 101)
A feeling like I was breathless  and a bit like an asthma attack.
Loss of appetite and some mild nausea.
Tremors and shivering in the night.
Rapid weight loss -though I only had poor appetite for about 3 days. In a week I lost so much weight.
Really dramatic and sudden. Then after a few days and the fever broke, only some slight breathlessness which didn't last very long.
It was nothing like any kind of cold.

Now I still feel a mild lingering symptom almost  2 months on: a lower belly bloating which gets worse as the day goes on, which I never had before coronavirus.  I think this hit my GI tract worse than my lungs.
But no other symptoms thankfully. I am very grateful.
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