Being down with COVID suxx so hard :(

[Cheb]

I've always kept myself safe, never without mask or gloves, spraying vodka around like a maniac - I even was vaccinated (although with EpiVac Corona instead of proper Sputnik-V).
And still, somehow, the shit got me.
I thought at first it was just a flu (and express test in the polyclinic showed negative) - but no, the next day results of a commercial test came positive.
I tried resolving the problem at home (36.8 on average, eating lots of Arbidol) and who could know how this woullda ended - thank you, mom, for calling an ambulance on me, to take me to a CT scan.
Long story short, instead of a CT scan they stuck oxygen cylinder in my face, then it was a blur - until I found myself hospitalized, *finally* inside dat donut.
55% of my lungs were eaten.
Then it was a long, MINd-NUMBINGLY BORING week (or was it more?) breathing oxygen, iv drips, intravenous injections that set your ass on fire. Never lying on my back, more mind-numbing boredom, doctors and nurses in spacesuit-like full wrappings working tirelessly. Some old folks couldn't keep their hands to themselves - like pulling his urethra catetther out. Some got released, some got it so bad they ascended into intensive care.
My vein in my right arm is a real hero, passed so much saline solution, injections and blood tests. My belly is all like one big blueberry, after several belly-shots every day.

And let me tell you: each and every oxygen feed gurgles like a demented coffee brewer, because oxygen is bubbled through water bottles. Take five or so guys on oxygen and the room at night sounds like a kettle convention.

I am HOME. Thank you, doctors and nurses, I am weak like a wet kitten but I am finally home

[Neko-]

Well.. Glad to hear you managed to pull through. I know of people being hit harder (artificial coma and the like), but i also know of people that just had a bit of a headache and that was it.

It's a crapshoot basically, but good to hear you got home and have given C19 the proverbial middlefinger. Keep us posted on your progress back to normal health.

[Cheb]

Lots of acquaintainces lived through it already, with nothing more than mild flu sympthoms.
I probably dug my own hole here, by flaunting walking around with short sleeves through snowy weather -- a good strategy of building my body's resistance... But absolutely bad timing to strain my immune system like that. So I brought my defenses down myself... And the covid pounced.

[what an idiot ]

The yesterdays drive home was beautiful. They bunch up people they release by area, then deliver them home in small batches via off-duty ambulancies - of a ratty micro-van, in my case. The route from the park where the hospital is located, to my home, was incredibly scenic, taking us across the first soviet three-level crossing near where my old school is. Such a high estacade with such a great view. Through clear, sunny day the half-kilometer Ostankino tower dominated the sky shining like an enormous silver nail, always visible on one side or other.
Then our driver dropped the first guy, getting into yards to do that... Boy I felt his pain. Snow heaps, swarming pedestrian, cars coming from all sides with road sides parked over so dense there is no room to wiggle... He had to step outside several times shooing incoming drivers to drive backwards, he wiggled like a hero in his awkwardly long vehicle... It took us probably 20 minutes just to get back to the street.
Then he dropped me off, just where navigator pointed him, and i said don't go deeper into our yard, this place is fine. I wished him luck delivering that last old woman - and extricating her over the high step of the car at her destination. I'm a spry springy thing compared to her climbing ability and the microvan's step was really high.

P.S. Reading through the fifteen-page long report they gave me... Wow, I have so many organs I did now know I had?.. They surely had wheeled me to a lot of scanning, on a wheel chair with oxygen tank attached. Whee--- ultrasound - whee-back to bed. I even got underside of my knees ultrasonic-scanned right in my bed by a nurse with incredibly portable setup, I just realized my knees lowering and she was already off like a ninja.

Caution is the name of the game it seems: some guys were really, really fragile with history of drinking their liver into cyrrhosis, diabetes and other causes of concern.

Then, of course, there is price in microzieverts for the two CT scans. Sigh.

P.S. Still very sluggish and my English incredibly stilted.

[Neko-]

Haven't had covid yet (I think). Hell, never gotten myself tested. Not feeling ill means they want you to refrain from testing. Ever since this thing stated I have not seen a hospital from the inside.

Plus, with the amount of positive tests and the test-locations operating a max capacity, you're stuck in a line for a while before you can get tested, with a high probablility you're near people that actually have it. So it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in my book. Stand in line to get a negative test, catch it while waiting, and see the positive test coming.

I'm not that particular about things, but I keep my distance, keep myself warm (you didn't do that ) but I refuse to wear a mouthmask if I can get away with it. Doctors office I'm probably using it, but in shops or the mall itself... no. But I am trying to take my own responsibility in what is 'safe' and what isn't... So far, so good I suppose.

Keep us posted

[Cheb]

and the test-locations operating a max capacity, you're stuck in a line for a while before you can get tested, with a high probablility you're near people that actually have it. So it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in my book. Stand in line to get a negative test, catch it while waiting, and see the positive test coming.

This.
And coughing around with their masks off - after getting their rapid test positive. [shudder]

Everything is overwhelmed so hard - I got directions to a teleconferencing consultation website, post-release, but the system would not recognize my phone and when i managed reaching the tech support they told me they only do pneumonia cases now, with anything else being redirected to the thrize-swamped polyclinic again.

It's like flood.

P.S. Ever through the flood they reached me, if just a brief phone call. I confirmed I have normal temperature, am feeling fine and am taking my prescribed medicine.

[Té Rowan]

I'm not that particular about things, but I keep my distance, keep myself warm (you didn't do that ) but I refuse to wear a mouthmask if I can get away with it. Doctors office I'm probably using it, but in shops or the mall itself... no. But I am trying to take my own responsibility in what is 'safe' and what isn't... So far, so good I suppose.

Where I live, it is easy to maintain two metres at most times. I will use a mask at the other times — post office, grocer's, et al. AFAICT, the whole scene works to reduce more illnesses than just COVID.

[Spica75]

I am HOME. Thank you, doctors and nurses, I am weak like a wet kitten but I am finally home

Well thank goodness for that at least.
Of those i know, worst one was my eldest brother and he got it February 2020, unlucky with some of the people he bosses being some of the ones having been to Italy on job conference and bringing the crap home with them.

It was kinda tragicomic(and rather nuts) early on when the health authority website tried to keep track of where they had traced infections to and for several weeks the numbers from China was less than 1%, while a bunch of job conferences among the usual winter skiers getting sick in Italy and Austria amounted to nearly half the cases...

And Russia was unlucky enough to be prudent by being one of those taking precautions the earliest, which then caused a severe backlack when, like here, it spread from central and southern Europe instead.

P.S. Ever through the flood they reached me, if just a brief phone call. I confirmed I have normal temperature, am feeling fine and am taking my prescribed medicine.

Get some extra vitamin D, it pretty obviously helps at least to some degree.
Also, try black tea on a daily basis. Not a huge thing, but apparently it generates stuff that reduces bloodvessel clogging.

And be careful, depending on your luck, recovery varies from slow to snail stuck in glue pace. My brother didn't have to go to hospital but he's still not nearly as spry as before he got sick. Almost 2 years later.


#####

Where I live, it is easy to maintain two metres at most times. I will use a mask at the other times — post office, grocer's, et al. AFAICT, the whole scene works to reduce more illnesses than just COVID.

There's the standing joke here about how "once this is over we can finally get back to 5 meters distance"
Exaggerated but still fun.

Personally, as i have very few things i must do, i basically just go shopping when i know there's few people around and handle as much other things as possible through phone and email.


#####

Haven't had covid yet (I think). Hell, never gotten myself tested.

Not easy to know and the testing, even at best, is nowhere near perfectly accurate. Myself and my mother -probably- had it lightly April/May 2020, but at the time, testing just wasn't available and by the time it was, there was no point checking.

Plus, with the amount of positive tests and the test-locations operating a max capacity, you're stuck in a line for a while before you can get tested, with a high probablility you're near people that actually have it. So it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in my book. Stand in line to get a negative test, catch it while waiting, and see the positive test coming.

Yikes. That's really awfully badly handled. They didn't do it that badly here even from start! (and it wasn't exactly like they did everything right here either, but THAT badly... sheesh, it's just a matter of setting up functional routines, even if it's just putting marking tape on the floor to show minimum distances in cue)


#####

As an aside, it's worth noting that i was far from the only one in the 90s speaking up about how the huge increase in masstravel by air was setting us up badly for something like this, it was just a matter of time.
Also worth noting, my eldest brother acted to set up routines and precautions to minimize spread where he's bossing(a few hundred people and uh, around 5k computers or something(it used to be at least 4 times that before bro took over and started smacking some common sense into the structure)), in early February 2022, and what was the response in the rest of the company? Oh yeah, several bigwigs tried to smack him for it, some as late as May. Now, his actions have become standard procedure(and the bigmouths got their own smackdowns instead), as his section was the only one to not have any major outbreaks after. But it was an amazing showoff of how stupidly shortsighted some people can be.

Interestingly, he has noted that there's zero chance of going back to "office-work" like before, essentially, as long as they're close enough to where they need to be while on call, it was found to actually work better with more or less work at home, with only a single person manning the office.

And i'm rambling, i should probably go to bed before the sun starts coming back up again.

[Té Rowan]

There's the standing joke here about how "once this is over we can finally get back to 5 meters distance"
Exaggerated but still fun.

Funny you should say that. That is my preferred minimum spacing.

[Neko-]

Yikes. That's really awfully badly handled. They didn't do it that badly here even from start! (and it wasn't exactly like they did everything right here either, but THAT badly... sheesh, it's just a matter of setting up functional routines, even if it's just putting marking tape on the floor to show minimum distances in cue)

They're not doing that bad here like you seem to make out of my comment.

People are mostly slotted in time slots to spread the amount of people at any one time. However, with the amount of people wanting to get tested that means max-capacity is reached fairly quickly, and thus that waiting in line is kind of inevitable.

And while a bit of distancing is observed as much as possible, with that many people near one another, and knowing the probability that someone is infected (based on the high infection numbers being reported) it's kind of a given you're in a high-risk position to actually catch it.

But like I said, I never got tested, so never stood in those queues... I'm only going from what I saw on TV and via snippets on social media.

[Cheb]

Get some extra vitamin D, it pretty obviously helps at least to some degree.
Also, try black tea on a daily basis. Not a huge thing, but apparently it generates stuff that reduces bloodvessel clogging.

And be careful, depending on your luck, recovery varies from slow to snail stuck in glue pace. My brother didn't have to go to hospital but he's still not nearly as spry as before he got sick. Almost 2 years later.

I'm drinking a lot of black tea, including triple black tea - which finally managed to stop the long-running diarrhea.
I thought I was fine to play one match of MvM (a six-player tower defense mode of Team Fortress 2) - and i was doing okay, until the last wave when enemies felt like they accelerated to impossible flickering speeds and I was suddenly light-headed to the point my vision completely blurred out.
I apologized to the team and logged the fug out of the game and spent next hours just lying down.
Am apprehensive how I would do at work now, often involves pretty intense php coding and things have to be done soon.

Vita... [facepalm] I am eating prescribed pills meticulously, according the chart -- but I completely forgot to keep taking vitamins
Took a tablet right away.

P.S. What's weird, I played a long casual match of Capture the Flag yestarday, with absolutely no ill effects. But that was as a pyro and pyroes do not need to aim.
I wonder if MvM is just that more intense - with playing a sniper requiring tons of concentration and rapid aiming at endless hordes of bots. You aren't pulling your weight as a sniper if you do not hit the heads and only the heads. Hmm...
No TF2 for me for at least a week. Nope.

[Spica75]

They're not doing that bad here like you seem to make out of my comment.

People are mostly slotted in time slots to spread the amount of people at any one time. However, with the amount of people wanting to get tested that means max-capacity is reached fairly quickly, and thus that waiting in line is kind of inevitable.

And while a bit of distancing is observed as much as possible, with that many people near one another, and knowing the probability that someone is infected (based on the high infection numbers being reported) it's kind of a given you're in a high-risk position to actually catch it.

No, that's exactly the thing i was pointing out, that kind of risk is simply unacceptable, because it's just a minor organisational matter that can be taken care of relatively easy.

For example, around here, they had one single clinic set up to take care of all the C19 testing in the area, spending a comparatively miniscule amount of money on purchasing some "party tents" and some military surplus tents to make sure there was always plenty of waiting space but still being able to maintain distances, and then setting up the clinic itself so that people either stepped right into the room for testing and then left the same way(using repurposed emergency exits and reorganising the inside), or via a "one way" entry - hallway - testroom - exit route, kept empty except for one person at a time, keeping interaction and risk of exposure both for staff and between patients to an absolute minimum all the time.
Similar stuff in most places.

And based on backtracing of infection vectors, the number of people here getting infected while visiting healthcare has been extremely low, so it clearly works. Especially compared to the regions that were slow to get similar organisation in place, where it notably did happen before they took care of it.

So, simple, even cheap fixes, things that could be done with no preparations in less than a week. Reducing the risks you mention as well as those for staff, by something like >95%. Here it was done before the first half of 2020 was over even by the slowest of regions, if this is still an issue wherever you're at, then YES, it IS THAT BAD.

There's a lot of bad things i could say about how it's been handled here, but at least in regards to THAT, i can say just about all regions did a very good job and none did badly even if some were slower than they should have been.

[Spica75]

I thought I was fine to play one match of MvM (a six-player tower defense mode of Team Fortress 2) - and i was doing okay, until the last wave when enemies felt like they accelerated to impossible flickering speeds and I was suddenly light-headed to the point my vision completely blurred out.

Ok, that's when you know to take easy!

Am apprehensive how I would do at work now, often involves pretty intense php coding and things have to be done soon.

Probably not well at all for some time yet, if you can't play a game, you probably can't work either. Depending on how you work, until you get better, either aim for short workdays or lots of short pauses during the day, like a minute or two every 10 minutes or so.

I wonder if MvM is just that more intense

Definitely huge difference between various games or even game modes.

No TF2 for me for at least a week. Nope.

Common sense. You have it.

[Cheb]

On a hilariously embarrassing closing note: I was sitting at my computer feeling more and more dizzy, my forehead sweaty, wondering why I was so unwell... Until my inner voice told me: "That one kilowatt heater cooking you up... Turn it off, Luke"

Indeed a radiant heater was landing all its energy on me at full power. I turned it on the previous day because there was a temporary failure of the central heating -- and then I forgot it was plugged into the same power strip i use to turn on my tangerine tree's lamps. I turned the tree on for the day... Oops.

The tangerine three - I ate a tangerine in 1997 and planted one of its seeds. Now the baobab jr is roughly 2 x 1.5m, stymied for years by a too small pot. Needs extensive thorn trimming at times because not only is tangerine sort of iron wood (durable like steel wire) it grows exactly one thorn per each leaf. Needs a lot of work to stop this tree from being a bramble hazard. At times I wonder why didn't they have accidents on the Going Merry -- like, with Usopp falling into Nami's copse and out of the other side scratched all over like he was mauled by cats. Or is she clipping the thorns too?

[Té Rowan]

On a hilariously embarrassing closing note: I was sitting at my computer feeling more and more dizzy, my forehead sweaty, wondering why I was so unwell... Until my inner voice told me: "That one kilowatt heater cooking you up... Turn it off, Luke"

All we have here are the central heating system's water radiators so I do not have to worry about blowers or spirals cooking my face off.

The tangerine three - I ate a tangerine in 1997 and planted one of its seeds. Now the baobab jr is roughly 2 x 1.5m, stymied for years by a too small pot. Needs extensive thorn trimming at times because not only is tangerine sort of iron wood (durable like steel wire) it grows exactly one thorn per each leaf. Needs a lot of work to stop this tree from being a bramble hazard. At times I wonder why didn't they have accidents on the Going Merry -- like, with Usopp falling into Nami's copse and out of the other side scratched all over like he was mauled by cats. Or is she clipping the thorns too?

At least Mum's hibiscus plants are not as wild and thorny as your tangerine 'bramble'. They do look pretty when in bloom with theor yellow, pink and red flowers.

[Spica75]

The tangerine three - I ate a tangerine in 1997 and planted one of its seeds. Now the baobab jr is roughly 2 x 1.5m, stymied for years by a too small pot.

I'm just impressed you've managed to handle it well enough to keep it going for 25 years.

On a hilariously embarrassing closing note: I was sitting at my computer feeling more and more dizzy, my forehead sweaty, wondering why I was so unwell... Until my inner voice told me: "That one kilowatt heater cooking you up... Turn it off, Luke"