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It caught me, I certainly didn't go out looking for the damned virus!
I'm fully jabbed so it's just a question of riding it out - sorry for the belated posting of UG2 but I chose my bed rather than my desk yesterday. Meanwhile, I'm back at my desk and I may have been working on something new .....
Shiraz
Comments
re: Damn Virus
Hope you feel better soon. Certainly looks like a new wave of it is going around
Relaxation of protections
To me it has always been stupid to relax protections just when things are getting better and there is still insufficient level of herd immunity.
Adulting is hard and I have stuck to masking despite it being annoying and frustrating to not being able to breathe as freely or talk clearly etc. Unfortunately it just shows how many people are true adults with true adult discipline and community of spirit to endure something that is uncomfortable for the sake of others and yourself.
I am in a relative minority of people who mask and I admire all those with the sense to continue to do so until there is a clear end to the pandemic.
I myself have a legitimate fear of it as a common cold for me will hang on to me like a month or more at times. I have a weak set of lungs no doubt.
The virus does that
My granddaughter came down with it at Thanksgiving. (Third Thursday in November) then, in January, her mother, (my youngest) came down with it. Now here in March, we suspect that my oldest has it (awaiting test results). All of them have had the full regimen of shots. My granddaughter and her mother caught when all the masking and social distancing was in effect. My oldest has been particularly cautious about avoiding contact with others outside the house.
I've been following Dr. John Cambell on YouTube. He's a UK based physician who's been monitoring Covid cases world wide. On one of his videos he pointed out that Scotland has the most stringent mandated protections in all of the UK and still has the highest number of confirmed cases.
I've been exposed twice now, that I'm aware of and not come down with it. I've begun to believe that it's simply the luck of the draw.
At any rate, take care of yourself. Dealing with the virus is no fun.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Here's a link if you're interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkjBi7dOTAg
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
John Cambell's videos ...
... are excellent. Calm and rational and extremely well presented giving all the references to the data he uses - mostly peer reviewed papers or national statistics. He knows his stuff.
R
There's a huge pile of data
There's a huge pile of data to work with, and it's hard to quantify most of it.
Dr. Michael Levitt, who is a biophysicist, not an epidemiologist (and he makes sure people understand that he's not an MD), did a breakdown on the Diamond Princess, near the beginning of SARS-CoV2. I'm trying to find the article again (it's lost in huge masses of Stanford and more recent stuff), but the short of it is that the exposure of the Diamond Princess staff, crew, and passengers was pretty close to total, but yet there was a reasonably high percentage of people that showed no signs of infection. That doesn't mean they weren't infected, it's just that they weren't showing it - the tools weren't available for real testing (viral shedding, etc) at that point.
I'm not thrilled with Dr. Levitt's attitudes towards infections, lockdowns, etc, but he has been a proponent of vaccines, and at least makes it clear that he's NOT a specialist. There's lots of information out there, but his main point was that based on that closed environment, it appeared that CoV2 had roughly the same penetration into a population as other viral types - I think roughly 70%. The reason influenza can ravage a population is that it mutates very quickly, and has so many variants (A and B strains, plus mutation), so even if you're vaccinated, you can catch an A strain, and then a B strain, because they've changed enough that the vaccine doesn't prime your system quite right. It's enough you don't die from it, but you get sick. Coronavirus mutates very slowly - that's why we've had so few major mutations of it in two years. It's good that vaccines will work for it, it's bad because it doesn't reach the 'viruses mutate to be less lethal' stage for a long time. (Another good reason to stop messing with the bats!)
If everyone had just STOPPED traveling for three weeks to a month, (with critical people just keeping their distance while doing transport) we'd have been over this, but humans are inherently selfish, and seem to love remaining ignorant - believing witch doctors over logic and facts. (It's not limited to this. Just watch how hard they've been trying to teach people about Ebola, and yet it's STILL a major problem in that region)
I've never had SARS-CoV2, to the best of my knowledge. I've had the vaccines - so have my daughter and wife. We still wear masks around other people. Even when they say "Oh, we're fully vaccinated, you don't have to wear that." I don't find them particularly cumbersome when they're made to fit the face.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Numbers of confirmed cases
Perhaps Scotland has so many confirmed cases because they are better at finding and confirming COVID cases.
Ontario, Canada's official case count got so much better (barring confirmed cases in hospital beds) for 2 months earlier this year when we were running short of test kits.
May your symptoms be mild
and the long term effects be nil. My household got it in early February, 2020. My only symptom at the time was mild laryngitis and very mild cold/flu like symptoms. COVID testing had just become available but they were only testing people who had recently travelled from China. One of my house mates wound up in the hospital under oxygen. The hospital insisted he had the flu despite the lab test turning up negative. It wasn't until 6 months later that we realized we had had COVID when the long term effects hit us.
To fight the risk of damage from COVID I've been taking 4,000 IU of Vitamin D daily. I also take 120 mcg of Vitamin K2 daily to counteract some of the bad effects of taking that much vitamin D. It appears to greatly reduce the severity of COVID symptoms. Here are my notes on why I started doing this:
You might want to TAKE 5,000 IU of VITAMIN D DAILY to reduce the chance of COVID killing or harming you. Take 200 mcg of Vitamin K2 with it. (For a 70 kg body weight person.)
https://drsircus.com/general/vitamin-d-ivermectin-better-sol...
Here is some of the information I found in an article at https://borsche.de/res/Vitamin_D_Essentials_EN.pdf :
No one has ever paid for a large study of the benefits of Vitamin D because it is so inexpensive that they would never recover their expenses. But some doctors have done private studies, funded with their own money. These studies are not the placebo-controlled double-blind study with 10,000 participants that are commonly used to get drug approvals. But they still indicate a lot.
- This article talks about a study of 780 COVID patients. It observed that patients with deficient vitamin D levels are 10 times more likely to die.
- At vitamin D concentrations < 20 ng/ml a very large number of patients succumb to the pneumonia triggered by Covid-19, i.e. they die.
- At concentrations > 30 ng/ml the majority of patients survive
- At concentrations > 34 ng/ml all of the patients survive
- The population of Massai & Hadza (i.e. traditional living people) of East Africa and wild chimpanzees of Central Africa have vitamin D concentrations around 45 ng/ml. At this concentration COVID-19 would likely have as much effect on a population as a severe wave of influenza.
- The population of typical European countries probably need to take around 5,000 IU of Vitamin D per day to achieve this blood level.
"For a healthy level of more than 45 ng/ml at 70 kg body weight, 5,000 IU vitamin D3 + 200 mcg vitamin-K2, which cost about 7 cents per day, are sufficient. The authors explicitly point out that each vitamin D supplementation must be accompanied by sufficient vitamin K2. This certainly prevents the rise of the calcium level in the blood, which is often seen as a risk for the supply of vitamin D"
Clouds and silver linings
6 months before Covid I had blood tests for other reasons and turned out to be very low on vitamin D - 17 nMol/L or about 7ng/ml. I was put on huge amounts of vitamin D (50,000 iu) which increased my levels by a factor of 12x, just in time for covid... I don't know if this is why I have not (knowingly) had covid, but it may have helped. It didn't seem like a good thing when I tested so low, but in retrospect... I take 2000 iu daily to keep my levels up.
Sunshine
My office desk looks out to the SE so has brilliant sunshine all morning, plus I regularly walk, but I've just ordered a pot of 2000ui tablets and they will arrive tomorrow. Meanwhile my symptoms are diminishing so I'll retest tomorrow.
Thanks everyone for the kind works and advice.
Shiraz
Window glass
Window glass blocks UVB which is what you need to make vitamin D... Also it only needs a thin layer of clothing to block it.
Northern Europeans produce
Northern Europeans produce vitamin D the fastest, but also _lose_ vitamin D the fastest. It's stored in fat, yes, but the body loses it rapidly.
My doctor prescribed 80,000IU a day for a week, then down to 5,000 IU, because I was apparently massively deficient.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Vit D
My pot of 2000IU Vitamin D arrives today, I'll add it to my nightly pill round
Shiraz
For the first three to five
For the first three to five days, take closer to 10,000 IU. Especially if you've spent lots of time inside, you're probably deficient, and that'll help rebuild. My doctor had me using 80,000 IU for a week. I guess my blood test was pretty bad.
I'll get a life when it's proven and substantiated to be better than what I'm currently experiencing.
Maybe
That’s why I’ve dodged the bullet, I’m out producing the stuff for @ 20 hours a week during the winter months, more in summer so my levels are always pretty good.
Of course I’ve got fairly good cardio fitness even if bits of me are ready to fall off - I am that rusty old sports car, the transmission is a bit iffy sometimes, the door catch is a bit iffy but fuel consumptions not bad and it’s fairly reliable. Of course it would work better if it was looked after better, more regular maintenance for example.
Hope you feel better soon,
Mads
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Maintenance
Thanks Maddy.
I've been at my desk every day since diagnosis and have kept up to date with my non-writing work, including issuing a few invoices. On the writing front I sent 1300 words to a collaborator over the weekend - fewer than normal but I have taken an afternoon nap once or twice! All told, it's nearly business as usual, with the only difference being that the furthest I'm going is the washing line in the back yard!
I normally walk a few miles a day, with a five or six mile walk once a week, by the end of this month I'll have my legs out (nearly) every day plus short sleeves so that will help.
In an unexpected twist, today I squeezed my way into a lovely purple skater frock that I had previously thought was too small!
Shiraz