COVID-19 has existed roughly since late December 2019, and we know almost nothing about it. The standard view is that a minority of infected people, who are typically elderly or have heart, diabetes, lung or respiratory diseases, will be infected and sent to ICU and some will die. But most people will have little like flu symptoms and recover at home, staying in isolation for fourteen days.
Fiona Lowenstein saw her first symptoms on March 17, 2020. She went to hospital and was discharged nine days later. Lowenstein was involved with a wellness organization called Body Politic as a support group on Slack. One channel of the support group was for the corona infected people whose symptoms persisted for longer than thirty days. It has more than 3700 members who share and exchange their symptoms, sufferings and progress of illness months after first discovery.
Their experiences are not peer-reviewed or come from any science body, but simple patients who are suffering and they exchange their experiences. This group feels that their sufferings do not get attention the way older or ICU patients do and the sufferings have no explanations from current medical research.
Patients complain that after 10-12 days recovery, old symptoms come back, like difficult breathing, diarrhea, confusion, lack of concentration, mental fogginess, lack of ability to smell and taste things, ability to exercise or perform simple daily tasks like taking shower fearlessly. They feel like heart attack but their x rays, EKG are all clear.
These patients face disbelief from medical professionals as well as friends when they describe the suffering and the problems. They tend to think that these people need to fix their heads for depression.
Lowenstein says people that include their own friends and relatives, are seriously mistaken who believe that getting infection is no big deal, either they die or they recover and will be like nothing happened. These loved ones do not understand the suffering of this group
The senior most of this group that suffered since 82 days ago ( first symptoms of coronavirus in the US) say that they are not part of any statistics of positive confirmed cases, deaths or recoveries. But their contributions can help all the countries to better prepare to serve its people.
We must think of the millions in India who can come in this class of coronavirus sufferers. Our medical resources are already under stress. Indian Prime Minister Modi did a great job of lockdown in March, but opening now is a bit too much on June 8 seem like a big gamble, when India is adding approx. 10,000 cases daily.
Adding to currently rising cases asymptomatic millions of sufferers also need to be urgently taken care of as they become super spreaders to the remaining population.
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