Still Kicking

Day 12:
It has been twelve days in self-isolation, except for grocery shopping, a walk in the park and a friend stopping by I have been in isolation… I read a couple of books, listen to a book, watched YouTube videos, listen to “Old Time Radio” shows, I’m on Facebook too much, and I talked to friends on the phone. For an introvert it is heaven.

No, not really. I like to be with friends just like everyone else. But I am in the high risk group… a senior and a diabetic. I am not worried or scared, I’m just taking sensible precautions and keeping away from idiots who think that they are immortal. Yeah, they probably won’t die of COVID-19 but someone they give it might.

The infected young people can pass it along to the “at risk” population to seniors like me, or to my friend who is undergoing chemo. And the younger generation are also getting infected and need hospitalization.

New analysis breaks down age-group risk for coronavirus — and shows millennials are not invincible
STAT
By Sharon Begley
March 18, 2020
[...]
In general, the U.S. experience largely mimics China’s, with the risk for serious disease and death from Covid-19 rising with age. But in an important qualification, an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday underlines a message that infectious disease experts have been emphasizing: Millennials are not invincible. The new data show that up to one-fifth of infected people ages 20-44 have been hospitalized, including 2%-4% who required treatment in an intensive care unit.
[…]
In an alarming development, however, scientists in China are now reporting that the new coronavirus does not spare the very young. In the first retrospective study of Covid-19 among children in the country where the pandemic began, they count 2,143 cases in children. Of those, they report in the journal Pediatrics, more than 90% were mild or moderate, confirming earlier observations that children are at lower risk of severe disease. (That may be because the molecule that allows the virus to enter human cells seems to be less developed in children.)

But 6% of pediatric cases were severe and even critical, compared to 19% of adult cases. And in an unexplained finding, nearly 11% of the Covid-19 cases in infants were severe or critical, though no babies died. An important caveat, however, is that some of what doctors believed to be Covid-19 might have been another respiratory disease, including respiratory syncytial virus, which is known to cause severe illness in children.

The young people think that it is just like the flu but it isn’t, COVID-19 infects to lungs unlike the flu and can very easily turn into pneumonia. I had pneumonia back in the 70s when I was in my thirties and I can tell you that it is not fun. I still remember not being able to catch my breath and the feeling that you are drowning. The fever cause hallucination; I remember seeing people who were not there walking up and down in front of my bedroom door. After my doctor said that I could now go back to work after being out of work for eight weeks, I remember being out of breath just walking across the parking lot.

Just this morning I found out that a friend who already has breathing issues is hospitalized with the flu and the doctors are worried that she could also get the COVID-19 virus.

Please follow the CDC guidelines… keep your physical distance from people. The life you save might be a loved one.