Covid rant

[TheTrueZoltan!]

Also my son. My wife will have to clean them for him.

Okay, we should move on to more pleasant topics... like nuclear war, root canal at the dentist without anaesthesia, penis fracture or something...

 

[Orvillain]

 

[Sascha Franck]

Long Covid is a bitch of the highest magnitude (friend of mine is suffering, too), comes and goes at seemingly its own will.
As I'm not affected myself, I can't say much, though.

However, as far as alcohol consumption and some other things go, I can relate pretty well. If you feel you are in danger of getting an alcoholic, better stop while you can. And entirely. I sort of crossed that line but still managed to avoid any most horrible, perhaps non-fixable things. As a result, I decided to never drink alcohol again (well, ok, perhaps one day in a retirement home, but I rather hope I'll die before). And apart from the psychological aspect of not permanently playing a borderline game with dependency, just from the health aspect, it has almost done miracles.
Seriously, I heavily recommend to stop entirely, at least for a while to come. Just observe yourself during that time.

Another thing was/is healthy food. I have tried out a lot of things myself and can't stress the importance of healthy food enough. For me, it's night and day. Unfortunately there's no recipe working the same for all folks, our metabolisms just seem to work too differently. For me, it turned out to be mainly carbs and sugar (hence even kinda the same, but of course not exactly). A huge (!) problem, simply because I love both a lot. Carbs even more than sugar. The latter seems to be the antichrist itself. It's the enemy. Feeds pretty much all inflammations - which are a part of pretty much each and every disease and what not.
These days, after several "tests", I can safely say that I instantly notice certain things after eating more sweet stuff than usual. Getting very noticeable whenever I play football (soccer for you barbarian folks over there). The day after is pretty much like a litmus test. In case I had great food and little sugar, I just feel fine, in case I had lotsa carbs and sugar, it's as if a tank went over me.

As said, this is quite different for different people, so you need to take some time to check things out, but healthy food for me has turned out to be *the* key ingredient for my body to feel well.
And yes, I'm absolutely aware that Long Covid can trick you out nonetheless, but still...

Fwiw, I think I had 3-4 rounds of infections myself. 2 have been safe, another one brought the worst typical symptoms but no postitive test (apparently something to happen here and there), so I'm not sure, same for the last round but symptoms were really mellow and shortlived, they just came out of the blue, so I suspect it's been some omicron variant.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

Just read through all this @Orvillain. Speedy recovery dude I really hope you feel better soon.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Oh shit, even forgot, yeah: Speedy recovery!

 

[laxu]

I don't think we know enough of Covid at this point because the amount of stuff people have experienced long term has been pretty broad. I would not be suprised years later we find Covid makes some people susceptible to conspiracy theories or something.

Sorry to hear about your father, that must be awful! Also speedy recovery!

I've so far been able to avoid Covid to my knowledge, have been vaccinated 3 times. But I do see a lot of myself in your post. I'm only a few years older than you and I am far from being as fit as I was in my early 30s. I should lose 10 kg of weight at least, exercise a lot more. My hietal hernia is bad enough that I have sworn off floor modelers because bending down to adjust stuff sucks.

Figuring out how to reduce stress would definitely be a good start because that alone can make a big difference in your daily life. Alcohol is obviously not the tool here, but consider if you are going above and beyond for people who won't appreciate it, working long hours but not seeing it in your bank account etc.

 

[Frodebro]

I don't think we know enough of Covid at this point because the amount of stuff people have experienced long term has been pretty broad. I would not be suprised years later we find Covid makes some people susceptible to conspiracy theories or something.

There's already plenty of data out there, but it doesn't seem to get much coverage by the mainstream media.

As far as long-term impact, let's look at influenza. It first hit the population in 1918, with a huge loss of life. Now, some 105 years later, some 30,000 people still die annually from influenza in the United States.

 

[fretworn]

It’s a cold … next!

All the hysteria is warrantless 4 yrs later.

The countermeasures applied by goobers were/are far worse than the virus. Damned pernicious power grabbers.

Reportedly 1 million Americans died during Covid; while there are entirely whole countries in Africa that never lost anyone to sarscov2 … Think about that.

 

[Frodebro]

It’s a cold … next!

All the hysteria is warrantless 4 yrs later.

The countermeasures applied by goobers were/are far worse than the virus. Damned pernicious power grabbers.

Reportedly 1 million Americans died during Covid; while there are entirely whole countries in Africa that never lost anyone to sarscov2 … Think about that.

The goalposts have been shifted multiple times.

 

[Achilles]

I would not be suprised years later we find Covid makes some people susceptible to conspiracy theories or something.

Covid causes people to deny Covid. Now that would explain soooooo much.

 

[Frodebro]

Covid causes people to deny Covid. Now that would explain soooooo much.

The virus is very much real, just like so many others that have come before it throughout the history of mankind (it is the fourth major outbreak of a new virus in my lifetime, and I’m 53).

What sets Covid apart from the rest is the way it has been handled.

 

[Jarick]

Ughh... gotta get some stuff off my chest. Sorry if this is just self indulgent toss.

Dude...I can relate a lot. We are really, really similar!

First off, huge respect for coming to terms with alcohol. I always had a problem abusing alcohol ever since I started drinking as a 13 year old. I battled myself for many, many years about how much I drank, how often I drank, and all of the associated feelings of guilt and shame and anger and everything. I tried moderating and switching what I drank, trying to set rules for myself, everything, and I continued to drink way too much. Even though it hadn't cost me anything like my marriage or job or drivers license, it was still an issue.

About five years ago I quit drinking. It took a couple times to make it stick, but I quit cold turkey and haven't looked back. I'm very glad that is in my rear view mirror now. There's really no upside or benefit at least for me in drinking. What helped was the Reddit r/stopdrinking and the book "This Naked Mind" which explains everything about alcohol addiction and how to reverse it.

One thing I found is that for me at least (and I know a lot of others too), I was not able to moderate drinking after quitting for a while. I quit for several months and then had a beer, within a week I was right back to my usually 4-6 drinks a day and sometimes more. Quitting completely made the decision super easy (I just don't drink).


So, everything else. I just turned 40 a couple months ago, and physically I've felt like crap a lot like you are describing.

I used to go to sleep somewhere between 11pm to midnight and then wake up at 6am. Even with little kids that I had to get up with through the night, that was fine. But starting late last year, I would get tired at around 8pm and sometimes go to bed and sleep until 6am. I would be exhausted a lot of the time and then just lay down and sleep. Even yesterday, I fell asleep at about 7pm for 30 minutes for no reason. A lot of nights I used to stay up and play guitar, but much of the time I have no energy and just go lay in bed after the kids go to sleep and I'm out within 15 minutes.

I've always been overweight, but that weight keeps creeping on. When I hit 10 years old, I went from skinny to chubby, and got up to 185 pounds at 5'6" in high school. In college I cleaned up my diet a lot and went on supplements and got down to 135 pounds (skinny but no muscle). Over the years that crept up to 150, then 165, then 190, then 200, and now up to 215. I've got more muscle than I did when I was young but I'm easily 50-60 pounds overfat. A few times in my 20's and early 30's I could lose up to 25 pounds by dieting, but I haven't lost any real weight in close to a decade even though I constantly watch what I eat and try different diets. And now I'm starting to get those nagging pains. A lot of lower back pain, pain in my knees especially going up and down stairs, etc.

While I don't exercise in a gym, I play hockey 1-2 nights per week and have for over 15 years. My ability to perform on the ice has greatly diminished the last couple of years. I was never very good, but I've definitely gotten a lot worse. Our league rates players to make sure you're playing at the right level...I was rated a 3.0 or just a bit higher a few years ago, which is kind of an average adult player (1 means you have no idea how to skate or play at all, 5 means you are former pro or D1 college). That slipped to a 2.9, 2.8, 2.7, and now like a 2.6. I can't skate as fast, don't have the endurance, and because I'm tired on the ice my overall game is a lot worse. I had to drop from the medium pace league to a slower/older level which was depressing.

Last thing, I've battled anxiety issues most of my life. Sometimes I have to use medication for it to back it off, sometimes it doesn't bother me for months at a time. I would say now it's okay, but there's been a few times where I basically stopped eating and functioning because it was so bad. CBT and mindfulness helped me to manage it for the most part, but I do need meds sometimes.


Now, pulling this all back to Covid. I don't know. I had Covid twice...first time was early 2021 where my whole family got it and we all had a mild cold basically for a couple days. Second time was fall of last year and that hit me harder, but wasn't devastating by any stretch. My fatigue got a lot worse late last year, but not sure if it's related or not. I never had the really bad symptoms, and haven't been sick at all for many months.


I really don't know what the solution is. A lot of it looks like "aging" on the surface, but I know a lot of people and most of them don't just fall off a cliff in terms of quality of life at the age of 40. I've been watching some videos on people eating a carnivore diet the last couple days and think I may give that a shot. I've done just about everything else and I'm so sick of struggling with food like I have for 25 years. A lot of people describe similar problems where it seems their health is just going to hell at a relatively young age and they just said "fuck it" and ate like two steaks a day and lost 100 pounds in a year and felt great and no longer even think about food.

I just got a Costco membership and I think I'm going to get some roasts and other meats and try it for a couple weeks. All I know is I just turned 40 and I don't want to just feel more and more like crap every single year until I die. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if it is broke, do something different. Right?

 

[fretworn]

The goalposts have been shifted multiple times.

“2 weeks to slow the spread”

 

[Mongillo19]

I'm surprised this thread stayed on topic as long as it did tbh

But yes, best wishes @Orvillain. You are blast to have around here and only deserve the best life has to offer

 

[Mongillo19]

Reportedly 1 million Americans died during Covid; while there are entirely whole countries in Africa that never lost anyone to sarscov2 … Think about that.

Really don't feel like getting into an argument about this because it won't amount to much but I think it's important to consider reporting procedures/access to medical care/detection methods and how much they may differ in various countries.

 

[Jarick]

Forgot to say, of course my DM's are always open if you ever want to chat, have questions, whatever!

This is a super awesome forum. I don't really bother going anywhere else anymore. Great people.

Also on the alcohol, society seems to have realized that it shouldn't be a stigma to be sober anymore. There's so many great NA options out there and so many people especially after lockdowns have quit or cut back. When my best friend quit drinking 15 years ago people (maybe even me) used to give him a hard time. Now when I say I don't drink, people say "good for you"!

 

[fretworn]

IReally don't feel like getting into an argument about this because it won't amount to much but I think it's important to consider reporting procedures/access to medical care/detection methods and how much they may differ in various countries.

I’m not looking for an argument. These are facts.

I’m a top tier University-trained microbiologist; mcdb - w/ molecular genetics as my specialty.

I also am well-versed in epidemiology and biostatistics

I also have a very long career being a top tiered management consultant for both private and public sectors, advising leadership in US state, local and Federal governments and fortune 1000 clients.

 

[Gearzilla]

The virus is real full stop, and has impacted lots of people in various ways.

 

[fretworn]

The virus is real full stop.

Is that really in question?

 

[Gearzilla]

It’s not just a cold.