H B wrote:I have a question. Using Beau's buddy Lance's experience...how can people get the virus and not know it? ...snip....
edit - I just read Jamie's post from "Greg"..that pretty much explained it...I guess it is all about 'viral load'.
I just talked to Lance. He is healing well, now about 3.5 weeks since his first symptoms. He has never been tested, so he doesn't really know what he is "getting over". His wife, a nurse, has said that he had either COVID-19, a bad case of the flu, SARS1, etc.... Her point being that we will never know if Lance had COVID-19 as she was NEVER going to take him to a hospital to find out. To quote her:
"Hospitals are the most dangerous places on Earth right now. In addition to every other well understood disease, there is COVID-19. If you have COVID-19 you have a very good chance of picking up the flu or pneumonia while you're hanging around the place. It is still close to peak flu season. People seem not to understand that you can have all three diseases at the same time. One virus doesn't say: "Oh, this body has been occupied by COVID-19 so I won't go in there.
I hear it all the time: 'I thought I had the flu, now you're telling me I have bacterial pneumonia too!'
Folks need to realize that as soon as you have one disease, you're weakened. Once you catch three at once, you're probably not going to make it."
I've observed the same thing. Folks say: "I had the flu." When they have no freaking idea. They were never tested. The same thing is happening with hundreds and probably thousands of folks like Lance. They have a flu-like disease. It could be the normal flu, it could be COVID-19, it could be one of the other coronaviruses floating around which we call the common cold. Almost no one says: "I had some random flu-like thing, but I wasn't tested, so it could be anything." which is what Lance has said after being tutored by his lovely wife.