Coronavirus

Heard a headline on the radio today, multiple local schools closed due to outbreaks of "a contagious respiratory illness"... Completely unrelated im sure.

RSV has been surging across the country, that is probably it. It’s like a bad cold virus, but can be pretty dangerous in young kids and seniors.

news.yahoo.com/boston-university-researc...loped-195236897.html

This can’t end well. I only hope I’ll be chilling in a bunker for a while as the fires die down.

Why is Yahoo displaying a FOX "News" article?

And yes, it's terrifying but I certainly don't know if it's anything other than business as usual. I think scientists have been concocting horrible pathogens forever.

One wonders if the COVID pandemic has made a global ban on bio weapons more likely or due to the effectiveness in locking down economies, more likely to be used.

US Government is sending out another batch of free tests. You can order yours here.

www.covid.gov/tests

I tested positive for Covid today. I had a sore throat and got really tired on Tuesday. Woke up yesterday feeling like I had the flu. My sister is a nurse and she had Covid twice, so she urged me to get tested. I paid extra to get a fast turnaround on my test. But I am already feeling somewhat better today, so it seems to be a mild case.

COVID, if you've had your shots, is just a bad cold these days. Two of my team of ten, plus their partners, had it in the last fortnight, another two have had it three times, while my 88 yr old dad (he said it was just a bad cold for 10 days) and my 102 year old uncle survived it last year.
I've still not (knowingly) have had it yet, although I do work from home a lot and don't go to pubs and restaurants much these days.
Unfortunately there's a lot more much worse shit going on in the world these days.

I forced myself to eat three full meals yesterday, though admittedly two of the meals were soup and a vitamin-packed fruit smoothie. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling too warm and somewhat naseous, and never got back to sleep again. Walking a couple of blocks to the grocery store this morning felt good, to load up on more liquid foods. Although I am working from home today, I will need to take a break to mow part of my yard that has gotten a little shaggy during the drought. We are finally getting rain, today through Sunday, and more next week.

The first 12 hours were like a nasty case of the flu. The next two weeks were like a mild case of the flu. At no point did I lose my sense of smell or taste. Aside from losing nine pounds, I felt totally normal by day 16. Hopefully this is an indication that Covid has transitioned from pandemic to endemic and will basically be an ongoing but relatively minor threat like the flu.

I’ve had COVID twice. First time was March 2021 before vaccines were readily available and I was hospitalized overnight for breathing issues. My wife contracted it from me and her sense of taste and smell has never been the same. Almost one year ago I had it once more at the end of July last year. I don’t know how/if the virus will change and spread in the future. But it has changed everything since 2019. My wife works at home and rarely leaves the house.

How covid affects people so differently is one of its scariest aspects imo. It's a real dice roll.

I caught Covid on June 17th. I know that now because I went to a backyard cookout that day, and both of the hosts and several guests came down with Covid within days. Amongst other symptoms, I had a mild fever or at least elevated body temperature for a couple of weeks. For another couple of weeks after that, I occasionally experienced fatigue. I thought I was fine after that, but my hair started falling out three weeks ago, and apparently quite a few people have experienced hair loss starting two months after they caught Covid.

For my whole life, I have had a thick head of hair, but I noticed it starting to thin a bit in the front and center, starting around 2000. I went on Rogaine and have stuck with it for the last 23 years. My hair has continued to thin at a glacially slow pace, such that the only people who see it are myself and the lady who cuts my hair. Rogaine doesn't bring back the hair I lost, but does replace some of it with thin, wispy hair. However, it does slow down the pace of the hair loss enough that I am happy with the results.

This new hair loss is more rapid, and also happening all over my scalp instead of just in the front and on the top. Last week, I started taking a biotin supplement. I'm not sure if it is helping so far, but I am only taking 1000mcg (recommended daily allowance is just 35mcg). I have female friends who have experienced this condition, telogen effluvium, which is apparently not uncommon for women aged 30 to 60, and they take 10,000mcg of biotin to minimize the hair loss. So I plan to switch to a higher dosage this week. If my condition is indeed a side-effect of Covid, I can expect it to last somewhere from 3 to 9 months before probably returning to normal.

I look forward to getting the new Covid booster shot in early October.

I was at the gym last night, when I noticed a guy doing this loud noise that was sort of a combination of cough/sneeze/shout. He did it about twice a minute, and had his t-shirt pulled up over his mouth to apparently avoid spraying everybody within a ten foot cone in front of him. After hearing this several times, I felt that it sounded like a dry, unproductive sort of cough like you get with Covid, and I started to get mad about it. This guy was absolutely drenched with sweat, so possibly also suffering a fever. Yes, people sweat when they work out, but this guy was sweating like he was running a marathon, and he wasn't even lifting a significant amount of weight.

After 10 minutes, I felt like I could calmly confront him and recommend that he go home and drink some fluids, as opposed to punching him in the throat for deliberately exposing everybody to a disease. However, two other guys approached him first. I don't know what they said, but the sick guy left immediately.