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    #26
    Found out this morning that nephew has had an antibody test which indicates that he's had Covid. His mum and dad were both ill with a bad cough in March/April so that seems the most likely time for him to have had it but his mum got tested and came back negative. I was hugging him at the Liverpool v Atleti game, so I'm beginning to wonder if that rash I had at the end of March was suspicious after all ...

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      #27
      No-one I know has caught the virus. My former boss was hospitalised on a business trip to UAE in March and although he tested negative the doctor put him under quarantine there because of his symptoms.

      I know a couple of people who weren't able to travel home for a number of months.

      I had a cold in January, but it was just a cold, no coughing, loss of taste or smell etc and only lasted about 48 hours.

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        #28
        A photographer I work with (remotely) was hospitalized for a few weeks after he (most probably) caught it while working at the Cheltenham Festival. Never one to miss a photo opp, he took some selfies while on CPAP which were featured in the Times and Telegraph.

        My wife, my sister, my brother-in-law, my nephew (the latter three living 200 miles away from us) and I had suspicious unusual debilitating illnesses in March. No tests for any of us though, even though my sister works in the NHS and my brother-in-law's a copper.

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          #29
          Friend currently in hospital confirmed positive (as outlined on the other thread). Sister in law of another friend also in hospital (in worse condition than the first mentioned friend). Currently in the limbo of experiencing every ache and pain as possible signs of infection. Had a bad headache last night which of course became potentially more than a headache.

          scratchmonkey of course

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            #30
            Are you not able to get a test then, ad hoc?

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              #31
              Not easily. You can get one on the state if you have symptoms but not otherwise. You can get one privately but at the moment there's about a ten-day wait (you need a negative test to go abroad to most places so with it being summer holidays those are in high demand)

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                #32
                Blimey, I thought the UK was poor on testing. You'd have thought there'd be routine testing of contacts pretty much everywhere by now. All the very best anyway - the not knowing must be horrible, but hoping you'll all be fine.

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                  #33
                  One friend has died. Stepmother of a friend has died. Two friends have had "Mild" COvid - i.e not hospialised in March. one is still having very serious heart issues the other is suffering from serious exhaustion.

                  I may have had it very mildly in April. breathlessness and exhaustion, rash . My doctor thought I had but an antibody test was negative.

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                    #34
                    Fortunately, no one.

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                      #35
                      Don't know anybody else who's had it outside of my immediate family group* that's had it, or at least known about it.

                      * - Still feel odd about it as on one hand, whatever happened to me is quite odd and lines up a lot with covid; on the other hand, there was a negative antibody test for what that's worth and additionally, there's the odd mental situation of feeling like since I can't be absolutely sure that I did, I still need to be properly mindful of my behavior (which I probably would need to be even if I did have it for sure, so there's that as well).

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                        #36
                        I spoke via Skype - work stuff - yesterday to a young medical student who is in his final days of self-isolation. As far as his symptoms were concerned he had a mild fever but the most notable was loss of smell, which had contributed to his losing quite a few kilos.

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                          #37
                          I don't know anyone here who's had it (in spite of my girlfriend's brother working in a hospital where there have been cases including at least one staff member), but my best mate and his girlfriend reckoned they might have had it in March. But today my girlfriend was talking to one of her colleagues (who also lives in the same building as we do). This woman is Venezuelan, and has a sister who, along with her husband and 11-year-old daughter, fled Venezuela at the start of this year (because they finally got the chance to do so) and went to Ecuador, arriving there right before COVID-19 did. As you might have read, Latin America's been hit hard, and Ecuador has been one of the hardest-hit countries in the region. Today my girlfriend's colleague heard that her brother in law has been in hospital since Wednesday and was moved to intensive care today, and the doctors have told his wife that they're not optimistic about his chances of coming out. Also today, she noticed symptoms similar to pneumonia.

                          Girlfriend's colleague – who was telling her sister to come here when she first left Venezuela, and then again after they got to Ecuador – is obviously in pieces. They've been living as refugees since arriving in Ecuador, subject to huge discrimination (from what we can gather Argentina seems to be about the only country in the region that Venezuelans can come to without suffering from this) and getting handouts from the UN (and money transfers from my girlfriend's colleague) to get by. I've told my girlfriend to make sure her colleague at the very least tries to ensure there's some way of her remaining in contact with her niece if the worst happens, partly because I didn't know what else to say that could possibly be of any use but mostly because I feel terrified on behalf of that poor girl.

                          And to think my biggest recent annoyance has been the discovery that the cafe a few blocks away where I used to practice pool a couple of times a week has gone bust.

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                            #38
                            The head pastor at my church had it really badly, but not quite badly enough to go to the hospital. That was early on. He caught it in New Orleans in March.

                            Other than that, I don't think I know anyone who has had it, let alone been hospitalized or died from it. I have a friend who is an ER nurse near Philadelphia and he's told me all the stories about how they're reusing masks, etc, but no problems yet.

                            The economic impact is more immediate. The church is giving out a lot of money to people out of work. The upside is that this has spurred the local churches into trying harder to coordinate this kind of aid. That will have lasting benefits.

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                              #39
                              My friend was in the COVID ward of a hospital in St Petersburg for a couple of weeks but seems to be on the mend.

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                                #40
                                Late to this, but I have something worth contributing I feel so I'm going to respond anyway.

                                Originally posted by Balderdasha View Post
                                I am amazed that there are still people who don't know anyone who has been affected by this disease.
                                The infection goes in clusters, of course. And more socially than georgraphically. Once it's in to a particular social group, it spreads rapidly before anyone in that circle knows about it. But it has to get in first. There are going to be patches all over the place that have escaped the first wave, and some are lucky enough to live in those. Such as me it seems, not very many miles away from Balders. I don't know anyone personally who has definitely had it, let alone become seriously ill from it. I only know a few who have had to self-isolate, in fact. Some work colleagues have had spells off, but mostly not COVID it would appear. My sister as well, but that was for cold-like symptoms that cleared up within 24 hours - she had a minor cold. Her other half believes he had it back in March, he (and his brother, who was ill at the same time) showed a number of classic symptoms and were down for rather longer. But when he took an antibody test, that came back negative. Given the known unreliability of these tests, I'm still placing him in the "had the bug" category (and fully and quickly recovering from it), but no detectable level of antibody response would suggest no immunity is also true for him!

                                One work colleague did mention that a relative had died from it. But that appears to be the classic "under 6 months life expectancy" thing. This relative was already apparently only a shadow of the person they had been, and their time was moreorless up. COVID was just the, um, the final nail (that metaphor is a bit close to the bone here). And it brought to an end what sounds like it had previously been a long, slow, grinding demise. Hardly a blessing in disguise, and maybe my colleague is less sanguine when talking with his family about it. I couldn't judge that...


                                However, whilst I know personally of no-one who was seriously ill after being infected with COVID, I do know someone who became critically ill as a direct result of it without ever being infected! One of those hidden casualties you won't hear about in the death statistics.

                                I'm speaking out of school about someone else's medical history here, so I will try to keep the person involved unidentifiable. If they come across this post they will obviously know it's about them, but I'm hoping that someone else won't be able to join the story to a person. So let's call them I (not even their initial, it stands for the Individual). I has long suffered with serious anxiety related mental health problems. Bad enough to mean they haven't been able to work for years, possibly over a decade now. So serious at times they were unable to leave their house, that kind of level of ill-health. And these problems were getting no better, instead gradually worse year-on-year.

                                All that was going on whilst there was no objective reason for I to be anxious about life. But then SARS-CoV-2 happens along, and now there is a solid reason for everyone to be scared. For someone like I, already massively proven to anxiety and the like, the effect was magnified. They went from a sometime shut-in to 100% 24/7 one. And even that wasn't enough to stop the panic attacks. Medication was needed, but with no doctor to visit to see and understand how serious things were and also the medical aversion to prescribing Valium for sustained periods (for good reasons, but it would appear misplaced here), no additional medication was prescribed to control the situation. What was needed was a CNS depressant, I knew this, and absent (another) one on prescription I self-medicated with a commonly available option that they were already somewhat prone to partake heavily in (but not as far as I know previously to the point of abuse). I presume everyone can read between the lines there? OK.

                                How dangerous and unsustainable was this? Well, it had become clear two or three months ago that I desperately needed to go to hospital to break the cycle and sort themselves out. However, here is where the anxiety disorder kicks in hard. I was a lock-in. Their safe space is their house. A hospital is not their house. The mere notion of going to hospital caused a significant increase in anxiety and etc., etc. Being in hospital would mean very heavy sedation to cope, which is not a great idea for someone with rapidly escalating liver problems. What a mess. So I weighed it up and said 'no, I can't do that, there must be a way to treat me at home'. And, given they are an adult in retention of their faculties, making an informed decision, they couldn't be forced to go (even if the medics involved thought the informed decision was an incredibly dangerous and misplaced one!).

                                A few weeks ago things came to a head. I's physical condition had become so bad that Doctors were round the house again, and this time I was informed that rather than being weeks or days from death (which had been said previously), now they could keel over at literally any moment (there were some truly scary liver function numbers here, but that is such a deep dive into another person's medical history that I won't repeat them). Given the state they were in, the doctor apparently said they couldn't be confident I would be alive in 2 hours time! That, finally, was enough to convince I the situation was so critical, and so unresolvable if they insisted on staying at home, that an emergency admission was unavoidable.

                                The good news is the immediate crisis point has been passed. I has been through ICU to be stabilised, put on a treatment programme to ease them back from the very brink, and is now back out of hospital and home again. The road to (physical) recovery will be immensely slow, and gradual. And no-one is really talking about the long-term damage that the events of 2020 have probably caused. The road to mental recovery? Well, god knows. The medical profession has been trying for a long while to address that, without notable success previously. And some mental recovery is, of course, essential and urgent; the situation only developed due to mental ill-health. The word 'relapse' is always scary - this case gives a sense of why.

                                But even if things can be reset back to where they were in January 2020, that isn't a solution. This has been an ongoing issue for years running into decades already. One very slight silver lining is that pride has been involved in terms of fronting up about how bad things were. The scale of the COVID-induced disaster has at least overcome that and key people around I are now better informed about the reality of the situation.

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                                  #41
                                  Originally posted by Sam View Post
                                  I don't know anyone here who's had it (in spite of my girlfriend's brother working in a hospital where there have been cases including at least one staff member), but my best mate and his girlfriend reckoned they might have had it in March. But today my girlfriend was talking to one of her colleagues (who also lives in the same building as we do). This woman is Venezuelan, and has a sister who, along with her husband and 11-year-old daughter, fled Venezuela at the start of this year (because they finally got the chance to do so) and went to Ecuador, arriving there right before COVID-19 did. As you might have read, Latin America's been hit hard, and Ecuador has been one of the hardest-hit countries in the region. Today my girlfriend's colleague heard that her brother in law has been in hospital since Wednesday and was moved to intensive care today, and the doctors have told his wife that they're not optimistic about his chances of coming out. Also today, she noticed symptoms similar to pneumonia.

                                  Girlfriend's colleague – who was telling her sister to come here when she first left Venezuela, and then again after they got to Ecuador – is obviously in pieces. They've been living as refugees since arriving in Ecuador, subject to huge discrimination (from what we can gather Argentina seems to be about the only country in the region that Venezuelans can come to without suffering from this) and getting handouts from the UN (and money transfers from my girlfriend's colleague) to get by. I've told my girlfriend to make sure her colleague at the very least tries to ensure there's some way of her remaining in contact with her niece if the worst happens, partly because I didn't know what else to say that could possibly be of any use but mostly because I feel terrified on behalf of that poor girl.

                                  And to think my biggest recent annoyance has been the discovery that the cafe a few blocks away where I used to practice pool a couple of times a week has gone bust.
                                  Update: I've just been informed that husband was discharged yesterday, his levels having returned to somewhere close to normal. Colleague's sister is also feeling much better.

                                  Phew.

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                                    #42
                                    There are now very few people I know well here who haven;t had it (or had someone in their family have it). Whole families coming down with it - one friend spent 3 weeks in hospital with very bad symptoms, while her mother nearly died and her father also spent time in hospital. Her husband had very minor symptoms, and one of their two kids also had it (but was able to stay at home). Met another friend today who had it a few weeks back, and his son did too. Again both fairly minor cases. One of my closest friends here spent a week in hospital, with his boss in the next bed. His boss died. There are other friends and families that have been affected quite badly. Barely a day goes by without learning that someone we know has come down with it (or is in hospital, or has just returned from hospital)

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                                      #43
                                      Sorry to hear that.

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                                        #44
                                        I don 't know anyone at all who has had it, which shows what an antisocial bugger I've become, I guess.
                                        I did have a flu-like illness (fever, dry cough etc.) in late Feb but an off the shelf antibody test came back negative, so I guess it was just flu.

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                                          #45
                                          A family friend of ours is in hospital in Wakefield with the virus, having had breathing difficulties that distressed him. He is in his late fifties.

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                                            #46
                                            My cousins' father is in hospital in Ottawa with it. He's in his eighties.

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                                              #47
                                              Only one from someone that I know. More stories of relatives of Mrs. Inca's coworkers and friends' distant relatives, but that's it.

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                                                #48
                                                A friend got it a couple weeks ago, she found out after being tested before going in and getting her kidney stones operated on.

                                                On a personal note, I'm still on blood thinners, as men of my age have a high risk of blood clots returning once you've had one. They've lowered the dose quite a bit and I have the option of taking an aspirin a day instead, although the blood thinners are apparently roughly twice as effective.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Mrs. Inca found out that the woman she worked with on Friday is positive. They were the only two people in their large office, they didn't spend any time within 6 feet of each other, wore masks the entire time they were in the office. They both use the elevator and the restroom, though not at the same time.

                                                  Of course Mrs. Inca has been around all of us all weekend and up until she was contacted by her coworker today. So I don't know if it makes any difference at this point, but she's staying inside our guest bedroom and has a testing appointment tomorrow. We're most concerned about her mom (we live with her parents), who had surgery on her lung a few months back.

                                                  Apparently her coworker knew she felt sick, but thought it was a head cold, and decided to go into work instead of using a sick day. She lost her sense of smell over the weekend and got a rapid test today.

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                                                    #50
                                                    The UK kinda-in-laws plus their son and his wife tested positive a month or so back but have recovered. They didn't tell their daughter as they "didn't want to worry her." She's now furious with them, "How will I ever trust what they say again?" Meanwhile the son's wife has gone to Dubai for a couple of weeks (quarantine?... what quarantine?) It's likely she was... is the carrier, as she'd been at a recent mother's group meeting (WTFF?) where other parents had been infected.

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