Is coronavirus actually as bad as this claims? Surely we'd of heard more about that?

[YellowEllis]

I was finally becoming relatively relaxed, but I find this very alarming?

gotta laugh that she thinks a virus, the simplest form of life is 'highly intelligent'
maybe compared to her it is?
Or is she hinting at a conspiracy with the 'designed to kill'?

People focussed on the dying, saying mostly only old people die, but didn’t think about what the illness would be like or what the long term health effects could be

The post you have screenshot certainly doesn't come from anyone who understands virology. Viruses are not intelligent, they have no capacity for decision making. They are an endo-parasitic replicating machine. They are basically a little package of genetic material in an envelope. They are inert until they are able to enter their host's cells and begin the process of replication, followed inevitably by cell lysis to spread the infection. I am in my 40s, I had covid, and recovered in less than a week, as did my DH and our DD. In the majority of cases the patient recovers with no ill-effects and may not even have noticed that they had anything other than a cold or flu. If you are elderly or otherwise vulnerable, it can be life-threatening. Very few people under the age of 40 (fewer than 50) have died with no (known) underlying health issues.

@ArcheryAnnie

I wouldn’t be too dismissive of post viral issues. It took me well over 18 months to recover from glandular fever when I was 20. I could barely walk for 6 months and spent probably about 16 hours a day asleep. I wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol for three years either because it damaged my liver.

It doesn't help that there are daft people calling the cautious ones concerned for the safety of loved ones "dementors". Name calling and attempting to be funny is rude and rather stupid when there is a real threat.

I imagine their smug attitude would change if they lost someone. The lack of empathy from some on this site is actually quite shocking.

@YellowEllis

I was finally becoming relatively relaxed, but I find this very alarming?

That's the point a lot of posters have been making on the many threads on here that shout that "only 40 people under 45, without an underlying health condition, have died". Death isn't the only bad outcome.

Hi, Moondust, Thank you and you're right. I've not looked beyond the headline mortality for 'flu and I've only a little insight into COVID evolution.

Before the research you mention, I've seen some assertion about COVID 'weakening' as if this were a reliable process but I recall from my active research days that although some virus' 'weaken, some are stable and I vaguely recall it's rare but possible to have a virus mutate with both increased infectivity and mortality even though from a teleological 'design' perspective, killing more of the host isn't be a good idea.

I've seen some research about COVID drifting into different strains but haven't looked if this is beyond 'trivial' drift in sequences that don't substantially alter the virus and progression of the disease. I saw some analysis of the arrival to the UK with c1300 occasions, the majority of which were from Western Europe (mostly Italy, Spain and France?) and less than 1% from China with 'original' COVID. I think this used sequence information on drift but could be wrong as I didn't make the time to read it.

I wonder if it's possible the COVID mortality might increase over time, not with changes in the virus but rather with the results of the damage to major organs leading to death in a hopefully very small sub-set of the survivors in the medium term.

It clearly can be bloody awful. But then so can a lot of things. Those with long lasting damage are hopefully in the minority and the chances of ending up like that are probably comparable to the chances of getting ill with a million other things.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be taking it all very seriously though. Most of us can limit our chances of getting it and we should be accordingly careful.

It's a new disease so the world is till learning about it. The long term effects wont be known for - unsurprisingly - a long time.

I dont think you'll find any hospital doctors in the "it's just flu" camp.

Treatments are improving, I'm aiming to put off getting the virus as long as I can because it's unpredictable. However most young people will be fine. so depends how young you are how much you need to worry. Worry is always best directed into what can do I to reduce the risk - so keep away from people when you can, sanitiser when you cant and wear a mask if it helps you feel better.

My good friend's best friend - a research academic - suffered brain damage from a severe case of covid-19. She is 47 and was previously in good health. She is now cognitively impaired and likely never to work in her field again. She and her wife had just adopted a child. These cases are not the norm, but they are nevertheless very real.

Anyone that doesn't need inpatient hospital treatment is classed as "mild"

Yes. This is a very good article on definitions of mild illnesses somatosphere.net/2020/mild-covid.html/ What a lay person calls mild and what clinicians count as mild are very different.

This graph scared the bejesus out of me. One thing I will say is that if the virus has peaked, some of the other endemic diseases will now overtake it again. Otoh if the second wave is worse, we're stuffed. public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2637725/

It seems to be in keeping with what my multiple ITU/anaesthetic/adult medicine friends are telling me.

My brother, a very fit 35 year old had it in March. Didn’t need hospitalisation but he was lying in bed for two weeks straight. Very tired. It’s now June and he still gets very tired and he isn’t quite right. This is a guy who was running half marathons before. His wife also had it but hers lasted a week. And she seems to have escaped long term repercussions.

But yes, people don’t just recover from ICU and go straight home. There is often a recovery period in between.

I don't want to sound like an alter ego of Moondust but it's not surprising someone might gain some understanding of other areas of expertise over the course of a career. Provided they knew the boundaries of their knowledge and context and were friendly with Dunning and Kruger, their advice might be reliable with deference to people with domain expertise. I'd need to check but think I might have given advice on HR and employment law as well as creative writing.

My mum is 64, a heavy smoker and overweight. She had it and was asymptotic. It’s not all doom and gloom.

As an ICU nurse she isn't going to see many non-serious cases though, is she? She sees the worst cases and seems to be thinking that's what they're all like

Well, no, because as an ICU nurse she is not dealing with patients on a long term basis, so what she says is very clearly not limited to her own direct experience. She is talking about the experience of her colleagues, and indeed about training and information-sharing that is happening generally amongst medics. I am quite sure that she is writing from a position of knowledge.

'Designed to kill' stood out to me.

I really wish that everyone would just agree to wear masks and social distance ie 2m from people rather than either (a) be too terrified to leave the house or send their children to school or (b) think it is baloney and can't wait to hit the crowded pubs and clubs. It is a fecking awful disease, and we don't know where it is heading, but it is now under control and will stay that way if EVERYONE buys into being careful a while longer.

My experience is that my dc and I had it months ago and we are still affected - in a minor way, but it involves our chest hurting and bad circulation from time to time, and it is so minor our lives aren't impacted now but we just have no idea what is happening in our bodes to cause these symptoms at the moment.

I really dont think wearing masks and keeping distances most of the time is such a hardship.

Rant over.

Dd has a health condition which means a simple cold takes weeks and weeks to get over. So yes, even if Covid 19 is ‘just a virus’, I worry about it’s impact for her.

These are the words of an exhausted US ICU nurse. The wording wasn't well chosen; “designed to kill” implies the hand of man...(the conspirators theorists don't need more to go on). I share her sentiments about how awful this virus is and what it does to the human body though. Many of my patients have gone on to have serious lung damage, and required ECMO etc, it also causes a lot of renal problems, clotting problems....I was an ICU nurse during the swine flu pandemic too, and certainly the covid patients illnesses followed a more complex course. I have colleagues that had milder form of this disease and have still not been well enough to return to work. It is important to remember that in most cases it is a mild illness though.

I don't know if that is a nurse or not, but she didn't say anything we didn't know about.

We've had a problem from the start with people not appreciating what the virus does. We have one camp that believes that everyone will have an experience like that 'Nurse' describes and that there's no hope.

The other camp thinks CV is a cold and the government (and everyone else) are making a fuss over nothing.

Obviously both camps are wrong since it can be either.

With something like this you hope for the best, but you have to plan for the worst. So when planning precautions you need to assume that everyone who gets it will suffer horribly. You need to listen to every bit of medical advice and jump through all the hoops designed to keep you safe.

Then when you are sure you have done everything you reasonably can you need to remind yourself that you'll probably not even get a cold out of it and relax. There's no advantage in driving yourself crazy worrying about it as long as you have done your best.

There are some strange aspects of this particular tweet that surprise me from a nurse, but some of what it said is certainly true.

Friends of mine who are medics and can be trusted have been saying similar, and reporting seeing many young and fit people incredibly sick. There is a massive issue with people who are not really recovering even though they have not died. You might remember the doctor who treated Boris Johnson said covid could well be this generation's polio in terms of long term effects. I have also heard first hand from doctors working in ICU that the clotting is like nothing they have ever seen in decades of working as medics.

We also don't know the long term effects after mild illness. I hope there will not be any but some worrying suggestions have been made by relevant specialists.

It is also true that many have entirely misunderstood what is meant by 'mild case'. Someone who had pneumonia and is still struggling months later, but was not hospitalised, would be classed as mild.

Normally I would not like to say any of the above to someone who has health anxiety, but since this is a public forum I don't want to lie. Keep in mind though that there are definitely many cases, maybe more than we even suspect, where people experience no symptoms or symptoms we would genuinely call very mild. Also that there are many other things we risk all the time that could damage or kill us, but we are used to that risk and don't dwell on it. So you don't necessarily need Covid cases to be at zero before you can feel comfortable to resume more normal activities. The cases the tweet mentions are at the severe end of the spectrum and you'd be very unlucky to end up in that position.

I don't know if I have had COVID, but I did lose my sense of smell completely for several weeks and had very minimal other symptoms. If it was covid, then there may be long term effects I don't yet know about, but it was incredibly mild at the time. I am over 40, overweight and quite unfit with an underlying condition. Depressing description of self there but not untrue sadly.

The only people I know who have had confirmed cases have had it mildly - a temperature lasting for a couple of days and mild flu like symptoms. One a healthy person in 60s and one in 70s with underlying condition. I wonder if we will learn why some get it so much worse than others.

@MilerVino that graphic is very interesting and demonstrates the dim-wittedness of the 'more people die of flu' crowd at the beginning of this year.

A colleague had it in April. Six weeks later he had a stroke. They don't know that it was a direct result of the covid but they have suggested it was.