I’m struggling to decide whether to treat it as something mild that I’m definitely going to get, or something really bad that I should be taking strong precautions against. Reading news isn’t overly helpful as it only shows extreme cases/views.
Have you had Covid, and what was your experience like? Do you have any lingering symptoms?
I on the other hand, haven't been so lucky. I've had shortness of breath ever since. I used to work on my feet 8+ hours/day... now if I go grocery shopping, I barely make it home and through putting the food away, and have to rest for a few hours.
I ran through a ton of test last year, for all sorts of issues, nothing out of the ordinary showed up, thus the conclusion that it's long Covid.
BUT
It fucked up my cognition profoundly for a month, and it was 4 months before I was back to normal.
It was like nothing else I've ever experienced.
This is not something to get if you are a knowledge worker and want to keep your ability to work.
I'm in my mid 30s.
I just got Covid again. Double vaxxed with Phizer. It’s pretty mild right now like a light case of cold. Nothing compared to January.
It seems like it’s going to keep evolving like any other virus of the family. Everyone is going to get it eventually. Hopefully it will evolve to be more and more mild(it’s goal is to survive the longest and not to eradicate us). What really surprised me with omicron is that stats show that natural immunity is not as good as the vaccines(Moderna and Phizer) so make sure you are vaccinated.
Was not as bad as getting the flu, for me. Which was much more painful and miserable for 10 days.
But what was worse was the fear. I don’t buy in to a lot of the fear mongering that’s done around this thing. I know it’s done to get people to take it seriously because there is a non-zero chance you will die. But the anxiety almost killed me. It was far worse than the illness itself.
Took me like 6 months to recover breathing capacity, probably same with ability to think. I still have troubles with memory after. Got many new Alergies and can eat only like 5 ingredients and drink only water (candida/mold grew when covid lowered my immune).
Peptide BPC157 helped me recover a lot (lower inflammation and heal some damage). Friend was recommending Cerebrolysin, semax, and selank for brain healing but didn't try it yet.
1st day of officially having covid was pretty bad, weakness and temperature.
2nd day, surprisingly, I felt great as if it was over.
3rd day was the worst day of the whole ordeal. It was like flu - muscle weakness, aches over the body, and temperature. I felt so weak I stayed in bed the whole day.
4th-6th days were getting better slightly but also oscillating. Some days were better and others worse, with no linear trend.
7th day - lost my sense of smell and taste. Noticed it first by drinking water. The only thing I could notice is the texture. I was eating oat meal and remember thinking that it feels like eating saw dust.
8th-12th days - slowly getting better and recovery, still oscillating from day to day.
13-14th days - temperature was back to normal and I felt healthy, except for lingering brain fog.
15th day - started taking big doses of Vitamins B, C, and D, drinking magnesium supplements and zinc.
17th day - brain fog went away (which I attributed to supplements). The only lingering symptom now was loss of smell.
18th day - had a "covid tongue" https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/covid-tongue which freaked me out at first, but after discovering it was related to covid it eased my mind.
20th day - the "covid" tongue disappeared and only loss of smell remained. Over the months the sense of smell started to slowly return. The first to return was the smell of urine (for some reason).
Currently - All is back to normal maybe except for the smells. I feel that my sense of smell hasn't returned fully yet. Thou that might be a psychological thing. I can smell things, but they seem to be not as intense as before COVID. But I cannot compare.
Summary - I didn't have any respiratory issues (no runny nose, no shortness of breath, no sore throat). For me it was similar to flu +/- some extra symptoms. The worst thing is that it takes about two weeks to pass. 2 out of 14 days it felt worse than having a flu, and remaining 12 days felt milder than a flu.
So far, the first bout was more intense which I suppose makes sense. 102+ Fever which broke in ~36hrs and other symptoms which felt a bit "different" compared with those of a normal cold/flu. Loss of taste/smell occurred toward the end and was the most worrisome but has since fully recovered.
This round feels like a bad cold or slight flu. Tonsils a bit more bothersome, some fever but not notable enough to bother taking my temperature. More sore than what I remember. I'm a founder, just closed our A and worked all week as usual (quarantined from home). Took no OTC medication either time other than vitamins and zinc.
Likely an unpopular view, but getting sick early on the in pandemic was the best thing that happened to me. I remember the anxiety and stress I felt early 2020. As soon as I got sick, it completely went away and I haven't lived with it since. *For those of similar age and health*, I personally believe the emotional and behavioral toll I witnessed friends and family suffer on account of media sensationalism caused far greater harm than having Covid would have.
As someone who also unfortunately lost a family member (who was not similar age nor health) and supports getting vaccinated, I definitely believe the risk from Covid is real. I would suggest you take the time to actually look at data, understand context and draw your own conclusions. I wish there was a stronger narrative around improving overall health and preventable "underlying conditions" instead of the constant fear mongering, division and politics rampant today.
Protect yourself as best you can, don't put others at risk and take solace in knowing worry has diminishing returns.
What's hilarious is I thought I had caught some very strange flu that wasn't COVID cause no one thought it was in America yet. I did go to the doctor to get tested for flu all came back negative. Also my whole family seemed to get sick. It was wildly different for each person.
Hopefully the new variant is as mild as they say. I'm still having Christmas with small amount of family. I'm triple vaxxed at this point.
Felt somewhat worse than a regular flu but in some ways I'm glad I got through it without getting too much worse for the wear.
The odds are that you'll have a mild case and it won't be a big deal. But the other end of those odds is death. So personally, I don't worry much about whether I get it, but I do try to follow the guidance for masking and distancing to help prevent spreading it for the sake of those who end up on the bad end of statistics.
I knew I had it on a Thursday after my partner was diagnosed the day before and I started feeling a bit off. Friday I started feeling worse, but it wasn't until the evening that I really started feeling bad. Saturday was pretty bad... I had a mild fever for about an hour, my head was killing and I felt too weak to do anything. Sunday was bad too, but I was starting to feel better. Monday I was bad feeling crappy but I was able to work and by the evening I was feeling mostly okay. For the next few days I had a mild cough, but that cleared up by the end of the week.
I didn't have to take any time off of work, though I was quite fortunate with my worst days falling on the weekend. I also have a pretty good immune system so I'm not sure how representative my experience is. I'm very rarely ill. I was actually surprised I felt so bad for two days, normally even with the Flu I'll only feel very bad for 24 hours or so, where as this was more like 48 hours.
It wasn't the worst thing I had that's for sure. I had glandular fever as a teen and that was worse by an order of magnitude in terms of fever, weakness and time to recover.
I've done an IQ test since having COVID, but mentally I haven't noticed any long-term effects. I've also had no long-term physical effects.
After recovering and testing negative, I suffered a bad road accident and at the ER they had to test me again for Covid although I provided the documentation about being fully recovered (and, I thought, immune) but I tested positive. They swabbed me every damn day for over a week and all times I ended up positive, although 100% asymptomatic. This unfortunately delayed the back surgery I needed asap and is likely the cause of other problems. Back to the Covid, as soon as I could I got the 1st then the 2nd vaccine shot (Pfizer) and probably will get the 3rd soon as they're shortening the intervals due to the Omicron variant which seems to be resistant to low antibodies values, hence the need to be freshly vaccinated.
Had it right after thanksgiving of this year. Two week deal. First week was the typical fever/flu symptoms, second week was brain fog and nausea coupled with a loss of taste and smell for about 2 or so weeks from start. Brain fog took 3 weeks to clear from the start.
I had shortness of breath but employed breathing exercises and later did some heavy lifting around the house and ended up doing some unexpected cardio. A more structured and disciplined approach would likely yield more measurable, positive results. No shortness of breath after three weeks from start.
Not a ride I’d want to go on again, but as other have reported, certainly didn’t live up to the media fear/hype.
Worth noting that I did employ a pascalian therapy in my approach (1). I was prescribed ivermectin, took large amounts of quercetin, vitamin c, d, zinc and so on. I think this probably led to me recovering so quickly and not experiencing any lasting side effects. This is totally anecdotal though.
It started with nasty tickling in the throat and couple of days later my voice become extremely hoarse and soft. No sore throat, no other symptoms at this point. Did not take a test because it was not typical for COVID. Managed to get ENT appointment only 3 weeks later. By that time I did the test and it came back negative. ENT diagnosed paralysis of the right vocal cord due to the loss of function of the nerve (no visible damage on the vocal fold itself). 3 typical reasons for this are nerve damage during surgery- did not have it, malignant or benign mass pressing against the nerve - excluded by CT, and nerve damage as result of the inflammation from the viral infection, which was given to me as a diagnosis by exclusion.
The mobility of the vocal cord and voice returned after 2.5 months over a course of a week. Roughly in the middle of it I lost the sense of smell and taste completely- just for a single day.
The worst part was the waiting. Was this the day that the numbers on the pulse ox would start dropping? Would I get some kind of blood clot? But it ended up being fine, as far as I know anyway.
I do worry that there could have been long term damage that has yet to manifest itself. A few others that we believe were all in the same transmission chain had similar experiences, though one of us had quite a bit heavier fatigue and shortness of breath that has since resolved.
After I recovered, I started looking into reinfection rates and ever since I've been surprised to see the intense push for people like me to get vaccinated. Even from early 2021, there was published evidence that reinfections were rare. Of course, with omicron who knows now.
The terrible part was losing my sense of smell and taste. I had my wedding a few weeks after. Couldn’t taste the wedding food. Went on my honeymoon to a 5 star resort in the Maldives with supposedly amazing food. Was barely able to taste anything.
Life was just grey without taste and smell.
It partially came back 6 months later. A little over a year later I 99% recovered.
This may sound silly but my wife’s farts are terrible smelling, but I couldn’t smell them until yesterday, even then they’re more acidic vs the standard putrid rotten egg smell.
I had a hard time with smoked whiskey until recently.
Training my nose by smelling vanilla extract seemed to help a little. Food is a huge part of my happiness and to lose that for a year was very depressing, the farts less so :)
Im in my late twenties
Asymptomatic. Not truly - in hindsight I had a bit of a cough and felt slightly off for a day or two - but nothing above baseline (I get coughs every couple of weeks)
Could have been a secondary or tertiary exposure though, I don't usually bother testing.
No shortness of breath (this was monitored daily) or loss of smell/taste.
got vaccinated a year later once vaccines were available.
now have it again, but it's omicron and it's different. much more mild for me, but so far appears like it's going to last just as long. breathing after even a small bit of laughter has been hard since I caught it the first time.
each time I cought it from a housemate who wasn't careful when they left the house, and came back sick, coughing a lot. in a house, if you're sharing the same air as a covid sufferer you're kinda screwed.
mid-40s male
What's really annoying is that my anti-vax relative and his family, who we have been in close contact with, have had no symptoms yet. Not wishing they get the virus, but I imagine it will only entrench their anti-vax views.
In fact it's made me question the effectiveness of the vaccines. I'll still get boosted.
The only reason I know I had Covid-19 is because of a client requirement to be either vaccinated (which was not available for me, I was working in the UAE and only residents could get it) or be tested every seven days.
First time was a few days of high temperature, shortness of breath and dizziness. Dizziness continued for a month before fading.
Second time was the same except no shortness of breath.
For me the dizziness was the worst I couldn't do anything standing up for a month. When I tried to push it I took quite a large fall.
Male, 27
Was Feb 2020, later in the month. I was doing a fair amount of domestic, and a little bit of International travel for business prior. As things began to heat up, it was obvious Covid was going global. Italy... I have friends there. It was horrible.
Got mails from them early on, "It's just a strong flu, no worries, ONWARD!"
Then... "Stay home, we are losing our elders."
:(
With all that happening, I wrapped it up and prepared to transition things to a remote service model. Was doing travel to setup industrial equipment personally and basically nail each one. Was a get what you pay for model, and we were offering a lot. Needed to be more of a get enough, and make the price right climate rapidly upon us!
Had a partner in trouble, begging, so I took one last trip mid Feb. Got them sorted, was safe. In fact, that whole trip was nothing but masks, guards at the hotel checking for room credentials to keep the numbers down, and massive distance from everyone! I remember feeling it all so surreal. Being a people oriented technical person, this hurt! I like others. My more introvert friends were in heaven, and we had some good fun with that:
DAY OF THE INTROVERT! (truth for a lot of people, I am sure)
But, I digress:
Fact is, coming back was when I got exposed. Airline snafu saw my flight changed, and I ended up in the same terminal with arrivals from Asia. And was stuck there for a long time. Enough to reconsider flying that day, but maybe I was doomed anyway. Who knows?
What I do know is 5 days later, it hit. I felt rough one morning, and called in sick, our nice and shiny new Covid protocol in place meant a no worries, work from home scenario anyway. I called in to basically say I just need the rest.
By that afternoon, I was hammered! It came on FAST.
I won't detail the whole course, but will say I had two solid weeks of hell. In the middle of that, at peak shitty, I had to sit up in our nice recliner chair doing deep, deliberate breathing for a couple nights! If you have ever run low, your body tingles, and for me it's lips start first, and you can just tell your body isn't getting what it needs. Had an oximeter on my phone and used it.
I saw 89 once, and it was low 90's for a few hours, but climbing every little bit. Coughing, hacking up gak, just staying awake, making sure I engaged the process fully. This scared me.
I've never been that sick. Have wanted to die type sick, but never, "shit, I could really die" type sick. Do not recommend.
Some have asked why I did not get checked in, and the simple answer was fear. We did not know how to treat this, and people were getting isolated, slapped into ventlators and all manner of stuff as the medical people proceed to learn how to handle this the hard way, one sick person at a time. Made a call, and basically learned if I was staying lucid, and was in the 90's, I was likely going to make it, so that's what I did with people watching me, but trying to stay away.
Whole family got it anyway. My wife lost taste and smell, but that did return completely. Younger ones basically were tired for a couple weeks and everyone had massive body aches!
And that's the rough part. As I was improving, I had to nurse them through, and they didn't have quite the rough time I did, thankfully.
All told, we lost a month together, just in the worst of shape.
There have been some symptoms that persisted for a long time, and the biggest one is general fatigue and some inability to focus when I might normally expect to power through. These are improving slowly, but I am still just a bit impacted to this day.
Now, you are going to read us telling our stories. I've got friends who had a runny nose basically. I've lost a couple friends to this too, one after 40 some days on a ventilator.
When I got my case, the death rates were about 12 percent!! Talk about a fucking dice roll!
Today, it's much lower, 0.5 percent'ish or about 1:200 or so. Still no joke, but not the fear session I had to struggle through for sure.
And it's gonna get lower as our understanding and medicine improve, and frankly as the virus continues to mutate and we all figure out how to live in a world plus Covid.
My advice?
Treat this with respect.
If you get sick, test! What I've decided to do is keep a couple of the better home tests that act on the core protein handy. If someone is sick, test once, then test again.
If positive, then isolate hard. What I did after the mess we struggled through was setup the camp trailer. If someone needs a place to get through it, they can crash in there, and it's fueled up, ready for someone to just use for a while. Figure out whatever that plan is now. That way, if someone needs to do it, things are ready and you will get the max benefit from having figure out what will be done and why and when.
I think almost everyone, if not everyone, will get Covid. Plan for when you get it, and that's gonna help with fear and all the anxiety. A good plan, healthy body, and trust in the medicine are the best tools you've got.
I had fever and runny nose for 2 days, and felt fatigue/lack of energy for 3 more days, I was like new afterwards.
But it took weeks to regain smell and taste like it was before, that was the shittiest part of Covid.
purely anecdotal but this was a far cry from the winter of death I was promised.
Edward Jenner used one disease to defeat another, with vaccina (cowpox) destroying smallpox (variola).
This reaction is possible.