"No ordinary slightly unfit people get sick of this from what I read, it's always athletes and people in the prime of their lives. I'm going to scoff a whole box of biscuits a day, the odds seem to favour that approach better after all."
You only need to read this thread to know that that statement is not true, @KiaKi.
I am not an athlete, nor am I in the prime of my life. I am an unfit, overweight housewife, and as I said in my earlier post on here, I ended up in hospital, on oxygen, unable to maintain oxygen saturations over 90% without it.
I've been out of hospital just over 2 weeks now, and I am still exhausted if I do anything, and breathless on the least exertion. I have lost my sense of taste and smell, and that has largely not returned. And I am not seeing any real improvement in my condition - apart from the fact that I can now maintain oxygen saturations over 90% on room air - but we are checking my sats several times a day, and I am not often managing to get over 95%, which is not that good, frankly.
And when I was in hospital, the staff told me about the second wave, where they had so many patients waiting on ambulance trolleys, to get into the covid assessment unit, that there were no ambulances on the road, and the ambulance manager was over at the unit, begging them to get some people off trolleys so he could get some ambulances back on the road.
I was nursed in isolation - what is called barrier nursing, which is a set of protocols that aim to stop the infection leaving the patient's room - all the equipment I needed had to stay in there with me, and would need deep cleaning when I was discharged. Anything that left the room needed deep cleaning - even the trays that my meals were brought on. I used disposable plates, bowls, cups and cutlery, all of which was disposed of into the bin in my room - and not an ordinary bin - everything from this bin went for special disposal, as infected waste. When my bed was changed, the dirty sheets went into a red, infected linen bag in the room, which was tied up, and then put into another red bag held open by another staff member outside the room.
Staff who came in, wore aprons, masks, visors and gloves. If they needed anything from outside the room (if they forgot to bring something in, for example) they had to go to the door and call another member of staff to fetch it - or they had to strip off and throw away the PPE, wash their hands, leave the room, fetch whatever they needed, don another set of PPE and then come back in.
I am a qualified nurse, and I can tell you that hospitals do NOT employ measures like this for trivial infections. This is how seriously the hospitals are taking Covid.