rona moved in: ilx0rs with the bug report on their progress

hope you feel better soon, stet, and thanks for taking the time to share how it's been for you.

Ditto--I did not read that as a mean question at all, and I don't think Josh was exactly fishing for names. All three ILX'ers have been very candid, when able to post, about what they've been going through. I think so many of us are mystified and terrified by how this thing gets transmitted. I'm guessing the question was meant more as a general at-work vs. at-the-supermarket kind of thing. I read yesterday about a guy in Ontario who's 30, perfectly healthy, and doing everything he was supposed to be doing, and thinks he got it because he stopped for five minutes to talk to a friend while jogging, maintaining the six-foot rule. Those kinds of stories are baffling.

Candid, and extremely helpful.

yeah we're all paranoid and scared to varying degrees, i am also always curious about that when i hear about someone getting it, bc i am terrified of getting it and curious if they could have gotten it in a way that i am also vulnerable to. if ppl dont want to share thats fine but its not a grossly out of bounds Q imo. in any event it might be moot, after a certain point (perhaps we're there already) itll basically be impossible to guess how anyone got it anyhow.

thinks he got it because he stopped for five minutes to talk to a friend while jogging

Jogging >:(

(xpost) That's more or less what I said to a friend two weeks ago who was fighting pneumonia, thought he probably he had it (he didn't), and was worried he might have passed it on at work: that worrying about that is pointless, because, even two weeks ago, everything was at a point where anyone could have gotten it anywhere. So yeah, even trying to answer that question is probably moot. It's still something that's on my mind anyway every time I read stories like that Ontario guy.

ftr I was thinking about asking what josh asked myself. I'm just selfishly curious to hear if anyone who got it can't trace it a face to face interaction, because there's still so much uncertainty over whether it can be transmitted through surfaces or hang around the air.

no judgment because so many people are still being forced or highly pressured to break social distancing for their jobs

Or other reasons that aren't like, going to an illegal kegger

I get that it's a delicate question for some but fwiw please feel free to ask me where I think I got it should I start posting to this thread from the other side.

I wasn't intending to be judgmental at all. I've just found every story from anyone unfortunate enough to catch this as useful and illuminating as they've been horrifying and scary, and thought it would be further helpful to learn if someone, say, had stayed home isolated for 14 days and still somehow got it, or went to the store only once with mask and gloves and got it, or had a partner with very mild unconcerning symptoms who nonetheless passed on a more serious case, and so on.

No yeah same. I'm doing my best, but we're going to have to go to a couple of stores tomorrow and it starts all over again. Also at this point going to the home improvement store for some construction stuff is getting to be a matter of my partner's mental health. He's not capable of sitting still and is also going through something incredibly stressful in his non-virus-related life right now, and him going off to do projects is the only way we don't both melt down, but it's hard to reconcile that with "Is it worth risking our lives?"

idk how anyone would know how they contracted it? it can be up to two weeks before you show symptoms

It's mere speculation, which doesn't make it any less interesting. But that's just me.

amazing account stet. scary. Thank you for sharing. Wild how you had no fever!!

I have zero idea how i got it. My wife and I came down with it at the exact same time though, so I reckon there was a common source.

i never figured out how i got mono in university

i left my wallet in el segundo

It lives for 72 hours on surfaces - I think it’s much more likely anyone gets it from absentmindedly touching something or cross-contaminating their gloves than talking to somebody two metres away who isn’t sneezing, coughing or furiously spraying saliva while they speak. I came down with it at the same time as Stet, btw, but very mildly and it was gone in a week. Maybe his viral load was greater than mine, maybe it’s because he’s a man, or maybe it was just bad luck. But thank goodness one of us was well enough to deal with our energetic six-year-old, particularly when *he* came down with chickenpox. Props to parents managing childcare and bad rona at the same time.

was going to ask how you were, M! and F. I genuinely don't know what we'll do if we both get it even moderately - the kids will go feral...

Oh god, and pox too?! before all this kicked off I was going to try and see if my 2yo could get poxed before I think about going back to work...

Screen limits went out the window, obviously :D

Yipes re Stet and Madchen -- glad you're both through it, more or less.

Potential surface transmission is one area where I'm not doing all that I should. I have a routine worked out when I bring back groceries where I put everything away, wash up, and then--since I'm usually buying in advance--try not to use those items for two or three days. But I'm sure I've lapsed there.

for real, unless you have had exactly one moment of outside human contact in the last two weeks, it's nearly impossible to figure out

I've yet to have an unbroken two week stretch -- it was two weeks between grocery store visits, but I've had carry-out dropped on my front porch twice in the last couple weeks. very careful with packaging, putting food in new containers, etc. but unless I keep completely to myself for more than a couple weeks it could be any point of contact

<3 to stet, Madchen and Tracer.

Saturday 4 April - Friday 10 April
That stonking headache appears to have been the parting gift from Covid-19. The last lash of the Balrog's whip. Since then I've felt progressively better each day. When I made bread the other day i actually smelled it baking, which was wonderful. Coffee tastes better. And tonight I had a beer for the first time in two weeks. Well, a few sips. The entire beer felt extraordinarily large.

The lovely Emma B was real bad, though. High fever and flattened. We hear a lot about 'Day 10' and that was the day it happened to her. I had never seen her as bad. Unable to get out of bed. Flushed and hot. Zero appetite. I was scared. She was scared. We were trying not to show it. And that remorseless headache I mentioned, the one that moves in like some kind of military hardware and parks its extensible grips right into you - she got it too. And it didn't let up for three days.

Finally, yesterday, she had no fever. At all. We'd booked an appointment at a GP surgery in Stratford that's doubling as a COVID clinic. We walked down there with our masks and gloves etc and hung around on a side street, like the text she'd gotten had instructed. We called them. They said they'd be right out. We were standing right in front of the entrance to an apartment building. People kept going past us. I had to think I wouldn't like living there. All the COVID patients just hanging about like junkies! Finally a couple of nurses came out in derisory PPE equipment - it looked like they had half a white bin bag each - and gave Emma a blog oxygen test and a lung capacity test, right there on the pavement. She passed them both with flying colours. That was the best I'd felt in a long while. We hugged for a long time.

This morning, unexpectedly, she vomited. She didn't see it coming at all. She feels fine now and her appetite's back. Still no fever. But it was alarming.

This week we've watched:

- Hot Shots
- The Naked Gun
- Just Boys (6 part series on iPlayer)
- War Games
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- and me and Emma have watched about 10 episodes of Cheers.

The boys want to be either professional filmmakers or professional ping pong players. They alternate. They're using a terrible programme called HitFilm, written in Java I'm pretty sure, it regularly slows the machine to a crawl or crashes it.

All the ping pong tables near us have closed.

Our lives have become very repetitive. A bit of schoolwork in the morning, games and videos until lunch, then various remote lessons - piano, French - or talking with a grandparent. Then getting outside for exercise. Then back home for dinner and a movie. We're lucky that we have a back garden. But we're starting to feel a little loopy. The biggest thing though, obviously, is that we're getting better.

Excellent.

wow. So glad to hear you're on the up. That must have been a scary time. You might have said already but were you taking anything (and did it help)?

Fantastic to hear

Also good luck to the gazaraos, stet, madchen and all

I say tomorrow night we all stand by our doors and applaud Tracer ... and the missus.

We were taking paracetemol (acetominophin) at max amounts every day, that’s it. I haven’t had any in days, and Emma stopped today.

It’s worth saying we both still feel dehydrated all the time. I certainly don’t feel like running or working out anytime soon. It’s taken a bit of a toll.

I’ll keep an ear out Tom :)

Thanks for all the love! <3. I don't know how I got it, but the week before I got it I was really only at work, so I'm guessing it's from there somehow. Was washing hands and being cautious, but apparently not enough.

I forgot to even mention the headaches, wow. And the upset stomach on the way in. That day 10 thing is weird but definitely real – it was a bastard.

One reason I hope this stuff might be useful is just to give people something to judge against if it happens to them. A few nights in when it was getting unpleasant I found it really useful to read other people's experiences on Twitter and see that what I was going through was relatively "normal" for a moderate CV and probably not worth having a panic attack over.

xp yeah easy on the working out. I took F for a gentle 40-minute walk on Wednesday and when I got home I felt like I'd done a massive workout. Went straight back to bed.

Great entries, much thanks.

Stet is the man

I had a bug in early March which I wonder if was it. On 7 March I came down with a fever, upset stomach, and intermittent fatigue where I felt on the verge of nodding out in the afternoons (quite unusual for me). After a few days of this, I developed a scratchy throat, where I felt the need to keep clearing my throat and had a rough voice - but never developed a cough. I recovered from the fever in about a week, and checked the 111 online site very carefully and went through a questionnaire which told me I didn't need to quarantine myself as I didn't have the symptoms of C19 (which in retrospect seems mad) . The unusual bit is the general loss of stamina which persisted for some weeks after, and I've still got a slightly scratchy throat even now.

If it was Covid 19, with its 5-7 day incubation period the most likely place I caught it is on a very packed train from Oxford to London, filled with the weekend Bicester Village visitors.

What freaks me out a bit is the memory that this weekend (7/8 March) was when the awareness of the real threat of C19 impinged on me, and things started to seem very scary and out of control - and I may already have caught it.

Great to hear Tracer, Emma, Madchen on the mend..

Love to all our ILXoronas and thank you for sharing your experiences.

One reason I hope this stuff might be useful is just to give people something to judge against if it happens to them. A few nights in when it was getting unpleasant I found it really useful to read other people's experiences on Twitter and see that what I was going through was relatively "normal" for a moderate CV and probably not worth having a panic attack over.

we need an epithet for ilx covid survivors

case hardened?

poxy fules

Sonned a virus in a rona beef

aka beefarona

emma b: lovely-haired (καλλιπλόκαμος kalliplókamos)

madchen: beautiful-cheeked (καλλιπάρῃος kallipárēios)

stet: conductor of men (διάκτορος diáktoros)

tracer hand: man of twists and turns (πολύ-τροπος polú-tropos)

mrs g: bright-eyed (γλαυκ-ῶπις)

someone was saying stevie had it too?

Haha I love that you included me in the list (and thanks for all the wishes) but when I said it was very mild and gone in a week, I meant it was like a cold with a bit of extra fatigue. The only reason I think I had it was I came down with it at exactly the same time as Stet, with the same symptoms, but I had it at about 5% strength. For which I am very grateful.

exillors

stet when do you feel like you can go to the shops? i don’t have major symptoms any more so according to the NHS 111 website i can go, but it feels.. weird? i really need to though. grocery delivery in london is literally impossible. we’ve been leaning on friends but they have been rubbish at actually reading what’s on our list and actually getting that thing. no, alpro coconut-apricot yogurt is not the same as “plain yogurt”.

they evidently use the ocado substitutes app

and stevie himself said he had it (or assumed he had)

Having been in a supermarket a few days ago the last thing I wanted to do was stand over a metallic fridge with other people looming over it for too long (people wearing gloves FFS and completely failing to respect other people's personal space). You probably have to take into account that "get the fuck out of this shop as quickly as possible" is very high on people's priority list.