Learning To Be Zen During The Plague

Just got an update on my recent blood donation - it was sent to a hospital less than a mile from where I was born in California. It kind of freaks me out in a way - circle of life and all of that - also makes me feel kinda good. And there is some discussion that people who suffered a severe cold in November in the states, might have already had COVID-19 - I did wonder about that cold I seemed to pick up when I was down in Oakland (where I was born) in November and couldn't get rid of for weeks. Anyway - stay well everyone.

 

Early this year everyone in my family got sick. My wife lost the sense of smell and taste for a while. She didn't think much of that at the time, but that's now one of the key symptoms of the coronavirus. All of this is before there was a diagnosed case in our state.

I've mentioned this before, but a co-worker is married to a doctor. She had treated several patients that clearly had a viral infection but when they sent tests to a lab everything came back negative. COVID-19 was not part of the test. Again, before anyone had been diagnosed here.

 

How would people have had this in the United States in November? I know my family is convinced that I had it in mid-February. I had the symptoms and after a couple of really lousy days that I barely got out of bed, I was okay aside from a lingering cough and sore throat. I ended up being sick again in March, which was when I actually got tested and that came back negative, but who the hell knows?

I'm definitely very far from Zen today.

 

It was spreading in China in November (the mainstream media is now reporting that the U.S. intelligence community was already freaking out about it in November), so anybody exposed to someone who traveled from that area of China at that time could potentially have been exposed to the virus.

 

I got my daughter Animal Crossing on the Switch.

She is very zen.

I’m cool, but the weather is great. I just hope pools open up this summer. I hope I can get a place at the beach in the summer. We will see.

 

Everything I've read/heard from reliable sources (like CIDRAP) say juit didn'tmp to humans until the third week of November. With the time it takes to spread, it is extremely unlikely it made it stateside before December.

 

All I know is that I had the worst, most lingering cold that I could ever remember in November and well into December. Covid-19, 18, 18.5, 2.0 - whatever. I'm just hoping it helped build up my immunities.

 

Same here ... I remember going out on a Friday night, I had a little bit of a cough but I shook it off like it was nothing, had happy hour drinks, went home, then woke up on Dec. 21 and absolutely could not breathe. My chest was so congested it felt like it was loaded with bricks. I had a fever for a bit but it subsided. It was three days before I could breathe normally and eventually -- three weeks into it -- I was prescribed with an inhaler because no amount of Tussin or Mucinex could break up the mass in my chest. I assumed it was bronchitis but now I really wonder about it. I had never been sick like that in my life. It wasn't the sickest I had been--the flu I got in 2014 was--but it was relentless and would not go away.

 

I had what I thought was the flu in mid-February. It absolutely knocked me on my ass for three days, then I was fine aside from some lingering soreness in my throat. I think I've mentioned that before one one of the threads. A few weeks later, my wife and daughter watched something on television that had a woman telling the story of her experience with COVID-19 and it was exactly like mine, so they insisted I had it. Nobody was testing for the virus at that time. The doctor did test me for flu and strep, which both came back negative.

Then in mid-March, I got sick again, not as bad, and that was when I did get a test for COVID-19 that came back negative.

 

Several pages ago, I said that my wife and I were spending time learning some civil engineering/structural analysis from a video course called "The Great Structures". We have finished those 24 lectures - - the course was very interesting and informative.

Next up is a course on Geology. This one is taught by a professor at West Virginia University and it is 36 lectures in length. We just finished watching the first in the series and I think this will be just as interesting as the previous one.

Gotta keep those neural synapses firing...

 

I went out of town for a funeral in late February. About the first of March I developed a dry cough and about two days later got a fever that lasted for three days, then the fever broke. I still had a light cough afterward for about 4 weeks. I figured it was the flu, what the hell, but now I wonder if that was the Rona instead. I really want an antibody test to know.

 

Why do you guys even think that it's COVID-19, or any coronavirus? You guys managed to get it without a widespread outbreak where you live?

Take a look around -- it's pretty apparent when COVID spreads in your area. Look no further than the nearest nursing home.

I got what I believe was flu for the first time in my life in February. I had joint aches and high fever -- which I've never gotten in an illness before.

Doctor was out of flu tests the day I went, so I never got definitive answer.

Did I manage to get COVID-19 a month before everyone else in Ohio? Or was it, you know, the flu?

You're far from the only ones posting similar. Facebook is full of similar stuff.

But the fact is: COVID-19 wasn't even detected in Wuhan until late December. Stuff can travel fast in today's age, but for you and the rest to have had it, it would have had to traveled lightning fast and not killed in your your area like in the hotspots we've seen.