I’ve heard about 80% have mild symptoms and the other 20% have severe symptoms that require hospitalization, maybe intubation and possibly death.
But for the 80%, what does that mean? i’ve heard two different things.
The 80% just have a cold and runny nose, or are asymptomatic
Many of the 80% have a severe flu that wipes them out for three weeks, but because they never need to go to the hospital it is considered ‘mild’.
So does anyone know the actual breakdown of symptoms of infected people? Or is it impossible to know because the confirmed cases are likely only people who fall on the severe end of the spectrum, and the people with mild symptoms aren’t being tested?
I would also like to know the answer to this. I don’t think most people with just a cold would even get tested for coronavirus, which would make that statistic kinda suspect, IMO. How would they know if those people don’t get tested? Leads me to think that the 80% experience symptoms severe enough to get tested, but not necessarily hospitalized (IE: under self-quarantine). Just a guess though - I defer to someone else!
Everyone should monitor the CDC website for factual info.
Here is what they say…
Reported illnesses have ranged from mild symptoms to severe illness and death for confirmed coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases.
The following symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure.*
[ul]
[li]Fever[/li][li]Cough[/li][li]Shortness of breath[/li][/ul]
If you develop emergency warning signs for COVID-19 get medical attention immediately. Emergency warning signs include*:
[ul]
[li]Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath[/li][li]Persistent pain or pressure in the chest[/li][li]New confusion or inability to arouse[/li][li]Bluish lips or face[/li][/ul]
I take that to mean anything other than those emergency warning signs are mild symptoms.
In Australia they’re currently doing contact tracing whenever they catch a new case, meaning lots of people are being tested just because they have had close contact with an infected person. Obviously this is going to pick up mild cases and asymptomatic cases pretty well. I’m not sure what the scheme is in other places like South Korea but they’re clearly casting the net pretty wide, given how many people they’re testing.
The Diamond Princess testing turned up half of the cases being asymptomatic. I’d love to know if the “80% mild” stat is “80% of all cases” or “80% of symptomatic cases”, because clearly this would make a big difference!
Yeah, generally speaking a runny nose and sneezing is not COVID, it’s a cold. You generally don’t run a fever when you have a cold or if you do it’s a mild one. COVID produces a fever up to 103F commonly. It’s a lower respiratory tract disease so you’ll have a cough and hopefully a phlegmy productive cough. You will feel like hammered shit and feel fatigued. When it gets serious, though, it means you aren’t getting enough oxygen due to your lungs filling up with fluid, hence the bluish lips and chest pain and difficulty breathing. It’s also serious when your fever goes higher than 103F and stays there, putting you in danger of febrile seizures and possible brain damage.
What they’re really worried about is people getting so sick that they require a ventilator because their own muscles aren’t strong enough to keep them breathing through the fluid in their lungs. There aren’t that many ventilators to go around because most patients don’t need to be intubated, especially not long term. This illness can go on for weeks so a patient needing a ventilator until it subsides is tying up a ventilator for weeks while other patients are also unable to breathe properly. This is where the healthcare system bogs down the worst, when there are too many severe cases and decisions have to be made, like taking the 90 year old off a ventilator in order to put a 40 year old on it instead. There’s really no other alternative to a ventilator, since you can’t detail three people per patient to bag them around the clock. For weeks. In addition to all the other care a ventilator patient requires.
This is why it’s crucial for people with symptoms to immediately get home and stay there–you might have just a mild case and be okay but the 30 people you infect while running around sick might all end up needing ventilators and that means most of them will die.
In addition, there’s a critical shortage of personal protective equipment and respirators, which means health care workers are gonna get sick and not be available to help all the patients. Ventilated patients require a respiratory therapist to maintain them and if they all get sick it’s gonna suck hard because the average nurse does not do ventilation–airway maintenance is RT stuff and they’re specialists. Friend of mine is an RT and he’s sweating this–it’s gonna get bad for those guys if this blows up as badly as it could do.
If you normally have some shortness of breath, due not to lung problems but to mitral regurgitation, and you do develop some fever and cough, how do you judge what to do?
I suppose, actually, the answer to that would be to call my doctor. But if I did come down sick, it might be three in the morning and I might just get automatically told to go to the emergency room; which seems like it would be a bad idea if not actually essential to do so.
And that’s the problem with this shit–it’s not exceptionally lethal in and of itself, but it’s got a long incubation period, is highly infectious and a goodly percentage of those affected don’t get really sick or die but they do shed virus like a mofo the entire time so they’re out there zapping the really susceptible. Which is why China quarantined millions of people trying to interrupt the infection rate and why Italy is currently closed.
I’ve heard quotes that anywhere from 20-50% of Americans may eventually catch the virus.
If 4% of them need ventilators, that is 3-7 million people who end up on ventilators with maybe a couple million dead.
Plus with hospitals trying to keep the virus patients alive they will be short on staff and equipment to deal with other health issues like strokes, heart attacks, car accidents, etc.
'Zactly. But, to do a better job answering the OP, here’s a description of what a “mild case” of corona virus looked like–but note it took a month for her to stop showing signs of infection. She could have been passing it along to hundreds of people in that time period if she hadn’t tested positive and been monitored for virus load all along. If we don’t step up our testing game this is gonna run all up our asses.
What we’ve just been advised in the UK is to self-isolate for 7 days IF you have a new and persistent cough and/or a temperature of 37.8C (? roughly 103/4F). These are considered the “mild” symptoms that most people would clear within the 7 days. Only those that get worse should contact the national helpline for guidance on getting to medical care. Those with just those mild symptoms should stay away from doctors’ and hospitals’ waiting rooms.
How long do serious cases need to be ventilated for, on average?
If it’s ,say, two weeks, then if ventilators are all at max usage all year, that’s about 4 million people been helped by them.
Of course, that’s dependent on effectively spreading out usage over the course of the year, and doesn’t account for whatever their normal rate of usage is for things that aren’t coronavirus
Generally, yes. Killing your host isn’t great for continued multiplication, nor are strong, visible symptoms.
But its not universally true, and who knows how fast that could happen. This one has a pretty good way to find new hosts already, so there might not be much evolutionary pressure to tone down symptoms.