We’ve Done COVID-19 ALL Wrong

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A piece of conjecture on My Part: We’ve Done COVID-19 ALL Wrong.

Let me explain:

On the morning of November 24^th, I walked the one plus mile to the gym. As I walked, I experienced a tightness in my upper chest, like someone tightened a belt around my upper torso. The tightness didn’t impede my breathing. My Apple Watch reported my vital signs were well within my normal limits. I wasn’t perspiring profusely. I wasn’t nauseous. In short, nothing suggested a coronary event.

At the gym, I queued up a 30-minute low impact ride on the Peloton app, and I rode without issue until the nine-minute mark. My breathing was normal. My pulse normal. But the tightness continued, and I finally did the almost smart thing: I stopped and walked back home.

Once home I took two Tylenol. Within minutes, the tightness in my chest disappeared. Within an hour, however, I had new symptoms: body aches, slight temperature, and periods of chills. Later that afternoon, I experienced gastrointestinal symptoms. Not diarrhea exactly, but definitely not my usual gut.

My sleep became difficult. Periods of night sweats, more body aches and pains, borderline headaches, light headedness, and a wicked case of morning vertigo. I never have headaches. I only ever had vertigo during two prior bouts of food poisoning—one in 1987 and another in 2012.

Three days later, my symptoms disappeared. We went out for Thanksgiving dinner. The next day, the symptoms returned with the exception of the tightness in my chest. That never returned. No coughing to speak of.

This on-again, off-again pattern continued until January 6^th.

By the way, my spouse experienced her own set of symptoms alongside mine. We both had the gastro thing going on, but she had a minor, occasional dry cough.

Meanwhile, 1,250 miles away in Texas, our niece had flu-like symptoms she couldn’t shake. A high school English teacher, she swims in a teenage petri dish during the day. Nights and weekends, she swaps that petri dish for one shared by two teen stepdaughters, a toddler, and a husband who runs a food truck and catering business. Frustrated at the long running nature of her symptoms, she was tested for the flu. Nope. She didn’t have the flu but some other virus instead.

By the way, did I mention my spouse, our niece, and stepdaughter temporarily lost their sense of smell and taste?

I have an extensive medical education all gained from the university of WebMD, or so my spouse is fond of telling people. In my middle years, I neglected to have regular annual physical exams. However, as both a hypochondriac and what a friend once described as a heightened level of self-body awareness, I always presented myself to healthcare professionals whenever—and I do mean whenever—I believed something was wrong.

[Note: I won’t tell you the story about the time I self-diagnosed hypertension and imminent renal failure. My physician informed me the pains in my lower back might be attributed to a kidney issue, if I had the physiology of an ape. And my blood pressure was actually great—no hypertension. But I won’t go there. Too embarrassing.]

So, here is my latest (mal)informed medical diagnosis: I was an early victim of the corona virus. So was my spouse. Our niece and one of her stepdaughters, too.

We’ve been self-quarantined since February 27^th. First, because of an in-hospital, out-patient assay of my prostate and a five-plus day period of wearing a catheter. But a week later, because of the pandemic.

What if I never had to be quarantined to avoid infection by the virus, because I already had it? Same for my wife, our niece, and her stepdaughter?

For my spouse and me, the “damage” of self-quarantine is limited to ordering everything for delivery to our home and some extraordinary decontamination lifestyle changes we’ve all been compelled to adopt. We are retired. Have been for years. Our niece, however, is in the prime of her work years. Yet, her schools have been closed for weeks, and she’s teaching her students via distance learning.

Our niece reports that everyone in her school, and school district, suffered through the flu along with her non-flu-like virus. While she was tested for the flu, most of her fellow teachers and students were not. Nevertheless, they all followed conventional wisdom, self-medicated with OTC drugs, and gutted out their respective illnesses. Some probably did have the flu. What if some, maybe more than some who also were not tested for the flu, did NOT have the flu? What if they, too, had the corona virus.

Early media coverage of the pandemic suggested the corona virus did not make its presence known in the continental U.S. until mid-to-late January. Subsequent reporting suggests China’s efforts at media control obfuscated the fact the corona virus was active in parts of China as early as August-September. What if the corona virus was here in the U.S. significantly earlier than any of us first believed? What if the corona virus hid behind the regular flu season? What if those first infected weren’t tested for the flu and treated their illness as if it was the flu?

What if some of our fellow citizens have already died of the corona virus—and not the flu—and those deaths were reported in the nation’s mortality statistics as “death by flu”? 

What if too many of us are now in self-quarantine who do not need to be? What if our “national plan” for managing the corona virus didn’t call for a nationwide shutdown of our economy, but a selected stay-at-home regime for those with no prior infection?

Corona virus testing in this country—in fairness, not just our country alone—has been an abysmal failure. The first set of tests for the active infection took too long to process and were poorly distributed. Only countries with strong(er) authoritarian tendencies have done better. Today’s reports from the White House Corona Virus Task Force tell us only a million tests have been administered and over 160K of those tests have yet to be processed and the results analyzed.

Until recently, little public effort and resource has centered on testing for corona virus antibodies—the telltale signs of those previously infected.

We’ve been flying blind in this country. No one knows how widespread the corona virus is or has been. Indeed, only recent media reports have described the full range of symptoms associated with this virus. Too many of us were previously told our reported symptoms were atypical of the corona virus. Now we know that wasn’t true. 

[Note: let’s hear three cheers for those with a heightened sense of self-body awareness and a self-awarded degree in medicine from WebMD University!]

No one in charge of the response to this pandemic—at the federal level—seems capable of correcting the programs of testing for the active virus. Even if they could, the virus is so well entrenched, healthcare facilities and healthcare workers so taxed and overworked—or soon will be—that testing is reserved for some first responders and those already hospitalized. If you’re at home and you manage to get a test for the active virus, and you prove positive, you’re told to stay home. If you actually do become quite ill, and not everyone does, then call your healthcare provider and follow the instructions you receive.

In the meantime, our economy is in a state of freefall. We’re taking on massive debt which may prevent us from a collective, economic belly flop, but may be insufficient to keep a depression and longer-term massive unemployment at bay.

What if the resources and collective will we need to summon should be focused on after-the-fact testing instead? What if we could identify who already had the corona virus? Knowing who’s already survived is now more important than who’s now ill. Those ill with severe symptoms are, more or less, making themselves known. Knowing who’s ill today, but not seriously so, doesn’t add that much value.

BUT, if we knew how many of our fellow citizens have already been infected, then we might be capable of managing this whole mess a lot better than we are today. We might even be able to get some of us—maybe a lot of us—back to work earlier. We can’t undo the damage our current pandemic “plan” may have already caused.

BUT, we can do a lot better than we are today.

We NEED to test for corona virus antibodies today! Let’s make this the national priority. No more flying blind.

[Note: I didn’t mention the President once. There’s no need to at this point. That’s why we have elections. That can come later.]

Copyright 2020, Howard D. Weiner