The number of people who are being sent to ICU/critical care as a result of COVID-19 who only present the most trivial of respiratory cases as an underlying issue is troubling. The spread of "oh, it won't kill you" across social media has been nothing short of absolutely infuriating to me and I've literally gotten into arguments and went off on other family members for their unending stupidity.
Anyone who is continuing to trivialize the issue
seriously needs to fucking stop.
Last night, I read through
this Twitter thread from David Lat, a seemingly prominent social media voice with regards to the law -- he posted his experiences as someone who not only tested positive with COVID-19 but also spread it to someone else.
The other person who caught it was his husband. His symptoms? Practically nothing.
His story was posted on the 17th of March. He talks about his general health, saying that he has exercise-induced asthma -- a lighter case than regular asthmatics as it actually takes significant work for him to require his inhaler. Now he's in critical condition, fighting for his life while on a ventilator. He's run multiple marathons, and does weekly exercise including 25 miles of walking and multiple high-intensity interval training classes at his gym.
This legitimately rattled me. I've got a tank of an immune system, and studies are apparently supporting the fact that O-blood type individuals experience even less in the way of symptoms. I've got O-negative blood, and have no issues with asthma. This means that if I catch this shit, I'm almost certainly going to feel like I'm an asymptomatic carrier, since this shit had to of course proliferate right around the time of seasonal allergies.
Kayla is immunocompromised. My mom is a smoker. Breathing issues run in the family. I've gotta go into office half-time as a result of the job that I am doing specifically. I'm not okay. It's hard to go throughout the day not reading this shit, but I'm really wishing I could just tune it out.