People referring to covid as a cold

[ellie09]

On Monday I tested positive for covid. Felt horrible and took a test (even though you dont need to anymore), as I work in an office.

I have had covid a few times, as I have a really crap immune system. Ive also had several colds over the years which I tested negative for covid.

My DS came down with the sniffles last night and a cough. I rang his dad as he was meant to be staying at his dads, and he lives with his elderly mum. I told him the situation and that DS would be better staying home for a few days isolating with me (we dont know if its covid as he wont let me test him, but we can assume)

Ive felt utterly awful and like each time i've had it, my chest is in pain and it feels like someone's standing on my chest 24/7. There is a big difference between the times I had a cold, and covid (but I cant speak for others)

DS's dad brushes it off, tells me covids made up and its "just a cold" and that DS should still go round. I rang DS grandmother seeing as its her house and explained, she basically said to me, "yeah, you just have a cold, thats not real".

Is this a normal reaction now? People have covid and its just brushed off as a cold, therefore people are out spreading knowingly?

You spoke to the elderly person and they’ve said they don’t care 🤷🏼‍♀️struggling to see the issue. For lost people it IS just a cold.
At the height of covid my DM gave up isolating, she and her 80 plus year old neighbours just thought, bugger it, we’ve lived long enough! (They’re all fine by the way).
Some people lose money if they don’t work- there are no isolation payments anymore.

I know some people really suffer and I’d never knowingly pass it on. However, the majority of us are vaccinated and anyone can have it at any given time and could come into contact with someone who has it.

For most people it is a cold and making your child isolate for some sniffles is really unreasonable.

I think most people accept it. We just can't put our lives on hold for the vague possibility that we might make someone else poorly. Most people are fine with covid, the really poorly ones are the exception. Life goes on.

Covid is very real and anyone that thinks it’s is made up is simply lacking in the brain cell
department. Not helped by contracting Covid which has been shown to affect cognition.

Only ignorant people will say its just a cold. Maybe it is an easy fix for some people but for others of us, end up in hospital

AND whhilst i was in hospital with covid, i had a message from my SIL who said

'you have covid still??? wasnt that last week? When i had it, I went in to work'

Which belittled the fact she knew i was in hosp on oxygen - almost like she was accusing me of dramatising it - and for note, she went in to to work where she works at a day care centre for pre schoolers. I cant get over the ignorance and 'im alright jack' attitude right there

My DH, despite being fully vaccinated, died of it last year. So, some of us have been made to care. 🙄

Oh I am so very sorry :(

Technically Covid IS a cold. They are both coronaviruses.
I’m surprised people are still testing. I’ve had common colds worse than positive cases of CV19 when it was initially around
you sound selectively hypochondriac

Thank you. For most, it’s harmless now. But, not for all. ☹️☹️

This is a source of fascination to me. Why DO some people get hit so badly with it,yet for others it's just like a mild cold? I caught it in January 2022, and I can honestly say that I've had far worse colds! No cough,just a very slight temperature and feeling a bit weary for a week. I had been vaccinated twice so maybe that was why I was not badly affected.

Agree but no one’s asking anyone to put their lives on hold. That’s just in your head.

We don’t know what the long term side effects of Covid are. It’s well recognised that it’s not a simple ‘cold’ virus, it affects the whole body, has an inflammatory aspect to it that influenza doesn’t. Reading the PM reports on some of those that died is quite sobering. Equally the rate of MI for the first 6 months post infection was increased. There are differences and we don’t know what the long term effects will be.

Saying that, with vaccination the numbers of critically ill is now massively reduced but the uptake, even amongst the most vulnerable, is dropping too. It will be interesting to see what happens this winter.

It's the same with almost every single other virus though.

Why are most children fine with chicken pox but some die?

Why are lots of people very ill with flu but some are asymptomatic?

Why when an entire household catch an old fashioned "cold" are some much worse than others?

In fact why with all viruses do some people never catch it despite being in close contact with someone with it?

Why when me and my husband came down with an illness last Christmas on the same day, did he just have a runny nose and mild cough and I had a temperature for a week, agonising sore throat, cough that lasted for weeks that turned into a chest infection etc and was so tired for weeks?

Why the last time that I had covid he didn't get it despite not staying away from me at all?

It's just viruses doing whatever they do and every human being different.

None of this is unique to covid.

It's the same with everything though. One person gets the flu and it fucks them up, for the other it's mild.

There are so many different individual differences.

Wasn't vitamin D3 or lack of considered a big factor in the severity of covid?

Wasn't obesity considered a risk factor? That was probably due to various different reasons too. Some obese people are malnourished which presumably could affect how it affects them, some obese peoples bodies are chronically inflammed, maybe to a low level but add in a virus and it could escalate quickly.

Also if someone is under a lot of stress that could lower their immune system...and even cortisol in the body can affect different people in different ways, when my cortisol went out of control I had loads of symptoms from it, when my friends was she lost loads of her hair. That was probably one of the only symptoms I didn't have.

There are so many factors and individual differences at play. There could be an malnourished obese person who is suffering from chronic low level inflammation and also deficient in vitamin D3 and suffering from stress, and yet they got it when it was mild....who knows why? Maybe just luck, maybe there was some other protective factor going on in their body that other people with the same issues didn't have.

@kkloo and why really fit people were badly affected. I was pretty fit when I got LC. Talking to occupational health at my trust, I wasn’t the only one.

Jesus, triggered much?

I care about it. It turned my beautiful, extremely healthy 18 year old daughter into a disabled shell who has rarely left her bed for two years after suffering heart damage. It killed DH’s uncle last month. For some of us, it’s still a fucking “drama” and we’re still living with the fall-out.

A lot of it was also genetic with Covid. You would hear sad stories about a few people in the same families dying. Hopefully a bit more research is being done on this.

Depsite our age difference both me and my Mum (and brother) all had the same symptoms with Covid - mainly an overwhelming tiredness coupled with insomnia- yet no cough/sore throat or other symptoms. Just pure exhaustion. It’s a very strange virus.

Agree but no one’s asking anyone to put their lives on hold. That’s just in your head.
What are you asking then?

According to the UKHSA statistics collected for public health surveillance, as many as 200 people per week in the UK are still dying with covid as the cause for death on their death certificate.

I don't think that many people are dying from colds.

I had it last month and was told to come into work as it is just a cold.
I lasted 2 days and then it just floored me.
No cough just aching, tired and temperature
Doctor was furious that I was told to come in

Lots of elderly people die from various viruses all the time.

I was extremely fit and healthy when I got the flu pre-pandemic. In my 20s, never sick. The flu messed me up completely and I would say I got long-flu.

No idea why but my best guess was that my immune system was low at the time because I was under an extreme amount of stress. Very major serious things had been happening at the time and I seemed to be managing ok despite that and then got the flu and that started a long period of hell.

I do think that both long flu and long covid are partly psychological, when I got the flu then all of the stressors I was dealing with became much harder to deal with, then you're worrying you're never going to feel better, and you're not training or doing the things you previously did to keep you healthy, then you're getting more and more stressed about the symptoms and it makes them worse and so a vicious cycle is created.

I've seen healthy people have a bad run of illness for maybe a couple of weeks and the effect it has on them mentally when they can't train or do what they want to do or they don't feel better even though they were sure they would after another days rest or another good nights sleep so illness does start to affect some people psychologically quite quickly, but some are lucky.

I think Boris Johnson said this at the start of the pandemic when the isolation rules were being discussed.

*According to the UKHSA statistics collected for public health surveillance, as many as 200 people per week in the UK are still dying with covid as the cause for death on their death certificate.

I don't think that many people are dying from colds.*

Bear in mind - covid is overrepresented vs other rhinovoruses,,adenoviruses, coronaviruses, simply because testing for it is widely available. Patients in hospital aren't routinely tested for other things in the same way.

A high proportion of deaths with covid are very elderly & other people in poor health. Covid is a factor but tbh in many cases, if it hadn't been covid, they would have been at risk if dying from something else.

Unfortunately we don't have any information about the demographic distribution of deaths or the state of these peoples' health because covid surveillance has dramatically reduced over the last few years. I'm personally not happy making assumptions about it.