COVID-19 (Coronavirus) discussion

[beachBOYken]

Me and my dad have Covid, I caught it off my dad who tested positive first.
2nd time now for me, cold symptoms not that bad, just feel extremely weak.

 

[UTmaniac]

I don't feel as though I'm getting better and sometimes feel worse though. Last time I felt like this was when I contracted pneumonia. Breathless doing ordinary things. Constant ringing in my ears. Sinus's inflamed along with upper chest/throat with intermittent bouts of extreme fatigue. It's depressing me at times. Just hope I can show some improvement in the next three days

Feeling like your symptoms are getting worse a week after symptoms began, isn't a good sign.

That's what happened to me and I still have long covid nearly a year on. Breathing issues finally ended a few months ago, but still really struggle with symptoms including fatigue; massively reduced carrying strength; muscle/joint aches; brain fog; insomnia; headaches; tinnitus; acid reflux.

 

[Dr Jack]

Can't say I've bothered worrying with a lot of other variants but this one seems to be picking up pace now what the deal?

Looks to be about as far from the Omicron strain as the Omicron strain was from the initial strain in terms of mutations. There's no direct correlation between number of mutations and phenotypic differences, but if we use that as a guide, we'd expect that after six months prior exposure/vaccination would provide around 40% protection against infection, and about 70-80% protection against severe infection. It seems to be popping up at random in countries around the globe, so I think it's probably everywhere already.

Looks pretty worrying, to be honest. We're travelling to the UK in the second week in September, looks like that's going to be distinctly on the upswing of this strain. Yay.

 

[Dave85]

I'm curious to those who have had it numerous times and don't seem to care about the long term consequences to your health. How do you do it? This is a serious question, How do you not worry about it and that each new variant jump like the new one from omicron could be the one that takes you out. I'm really trying to be positive about staying positive and try to stay out of news etc as I will be totally honest it. is affecting my mental health and I try as hard as I can to ignore it and get on with doing things but its hard.

 

[Mint8]

I'm curious to those who have had it numerous times and don't seem to care about the long term consequences to your health. How do you do it? This is a serious question, How do you not worry about it and that each new variant jump like the new one from omicron could be the one that takes you out. I'm really trying to be positive about staying positive and try to stay out of news etc as I will be totally honest it. is affecting my mental health and I try as hard as I can to ignore it and get on with doing things but its hard.

Staying out of this thread would be a step in the right direction.........

 

[Dave85]

This is true. Not been in this thread for a good while and did not go back to read it

 

[McGray]

Staying out of this thread would be a step in the right direction.........

Just stay fit, eat well and enjoy yourself.

Soz, quoted wrong person!

 

[flea.rider]

high strength multi vits ..extra vit c .. eat and sleep well your golden ..

 

[Tony Edwards]

Dont forget your lucky heather.

 

[Malevolence]

Took a patient from ambulance triage to CT, then to X-ray the other day. After their scans I got them back to triage and the ED nurse told me that two minutes after I'd originally taken them their test came back positive and I was to take them to a side-room. Why couldn't they have simply waited two minutes before requesting and protocoling the scans? Now this person has been laying next to poorly children, elderly, frail patients and put me and the imaging dept. staff at risk of infection too.

 

[pimper]

Fairly sure I just had the new strain of COVID... about a week ago I started feeling rather cruddy.. tickle in the back of the throat, slightly bunged up nose etc. fast forward 24 ish hours and I felt really bad.. so I did a test, negative. So I carried on as normal. Spent the entire week coughing my guts out, losing my voice (still half lost now) feel almost recovered but still not 100%, general tiredness and groginess. Still no positive test. I wonder if the new strain is somehow not detectable with all PCR tests?

 

[xaldub]

Feeling like your symptoms are getting worse a week after symptoms began, isn't a good sign.

That's what happened to me and I still have long covid nearly a year on. Breathing issues finally ended a few months ago, but still really struggle with symptoms including fatigue; massively reduced carrying strength; muscle/joint aches; brain fog; insomnia; headaches; tinnitus; acid reflux.

Yup, I was the same. Hard crash during the 2nd week .... I'm now over the 3 year mark living with long covid.

 

[xaldub]

@pimper PCR or lateral flow test ? The latter aren't all that sensitive to the latest strains.

 

[Rroff]

Gone completely dead on the COVID side around where I live - don't know a single person with it. Even the local district hospital has slumped again to almost zero.

Fairly sure I just had the new strain of COVID... about a week ago I started feeling rather cruddy.. tickle in the back of the throat, slightly bunged up nose etc. fast forward 24 ish hours and I felt really bad.. so I did a test, negative. So I carried on as normal. Spent the entire week coughing my guts out, losing my voice (still half lost now) feel almost recovered but still not 100%, general tiredness and groginess. Still no positive test. I wonder if the new strain is somehow not detectable with all PCR tests?

There was a variant of the flu that was identical to that which went around mid to late last December where I am got quite a few people at work - somehow I dodged it and got COVID instead (though I don't generally get flu - colds and apparently COVID but I rarely catch it when confirmed flu is going around)... I felt kind of bad because every time I phoned into work to confirm I was still sick (silly practise IMO) whichever manager I got sounded sicker than I was.

 

[Tykey]

I'm 6 days into an illness i suspect is covid, it'll be a 1st time for me afaik. Reason i suspect covid is i've lost my sense of taste for the 1st my life (never happened with the many flu's i've had). My brother who i caught this from lost his taste sense too. In addition i had a really unwell feeling (more so than previous respiratory illnesses) couple of days whereby i never ate whatsoever and slept loads. My mother has it too, she's 75 and had a covid booster vaccine in April, but she's come down with it much more mildly, i assume because of the booster.

I have got some of those free covid test kits the NHS used to give out and i've tried testing but can't do the nose swap; when i try my nose becomes extremely irritated and itchy and i sneeze - any tips to get past it?

 

[Rroff]

Nominally if you lose your sense of smell or taste with a cold or flu it will be due to congestion and start to return after about 3 days. With COVID it can take anywhere from 8 days to 8 weeks for senses of smell or taste to start to return - I believe due to COVID infecting and the body then killing the cells involved in the senses.

You'll often find with COVID you'll completely lose the ability to taste about 50% of flavours while the other 50% you can sense but all have a similar, abnormal, taste - usually a metallic one. With a cold/flu usually you can still kind of taste flavours but they'll have a kind of cardboard taste to them.

This is what makes COVID somewhat concerning compared to most previous diseases of this nature which are usually contained to infecting the respiratory tract. COVID can infect all kinds of parts of the body - if it infects cells in a part of the body where you have a pre-existing health condition due to lower capacity of those cells that can be very bad news where you are either in a race to recover enough capacity and/or or it finishes off what is left of that capacity making your existing condition worse or fatal. For example if your body is struggling to produce enough insulin normally and then COVID infects and results in the death of those cells.

Looks to be about as far from the Omicron strain as the Omicron strain was from the initial strain in terms of mutations. There's no direct correlation between number of mutations and phenotypic differences, but if we use that as a guide, we'd expect that after six months prior exposure/vaccination would provide around 40% protection against infection, and about 70-80% protection against severe infection. It seems to be popping up at random in countries around the globe, so I think it's probably everywhere already.

Looks pretty worrying, to be honest. We're travelling to the UK in the second week in September, looks like that's going to be distinctly on the upswing of this strain. Yay.

A mutation at N234Q is the one to watch for IMO and even then it requires a fairly complex combination of changes to produce something outside of the range of what we've seen so far with this disease - potentially looking at a variant which takes the body around 3x longer to fight off and with moderate to high resistance against the protection from vaccines and efficiency of antivirals, etc.

 

[Tykey]

Thanks ^.

I've just done another test (managed to persevere with the swab), it's positive, i've lost my covid cherry unfortunately.

 

[Rroff]

Thanks ^.

I've just done another test (managed to persevere with the swab), it's positive, i've lost my covid cherry unfortunately.

In my experience the NHS tests aren't as easy to use or as good at picking up the newer variants as the FlowFlex ones - but the FlowFlex ones cost a bit.

I was actually quite impressed how much with the FlowFlex ones they'd iterated on the NHS kit as in someone actually put some thought into it which seems increasingly lacking in products today, kind of depressing that is for a product in this context.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

Looks to be about as far from the Omicron strain as the Omicron strain was from the initial strain in terms of mutations. There's no direct correlation between number of mutations and phenotypic differences, but if we use that as a guide, we'd expect that after six months prior exposure/vaccination would provide around 40% protection against infection, and about 70-80% protection against severe infection. It seems to be popping up at random in countries around the globe, so I think it's probably everywhere already.

Looks pretty worrying, to be honest. We're travelling to the UK in the second week in September, looks like that's going to be distinctly on the upswing of this strain. Yay.

Not to worry our glorious govt has decided its all over and no-one other than the really vunerable needs jabs anymore. So thats all sorted then. Rejoice, rejoice.

 

[Hagar]

Not to worry our glorious govt has decided its all over and no-one other than the really vunerable needs jabs anymore. So thats all sorted then. Rejoice, rejoice.

I think that pretty much the entire world treats the Chinese virus in much the same way now.

I expect that @Mr Jack is more concerned with the travelling than the arrival over here?