Hey everyone! I’ve decided to release this episode by donation because this news is important and relevant. It’s worth paying for in my opinion and I also recognize some folks just can’t.
Normally I do a patreon early access release by a few months for folks who don’t want to wait to help make up for the many hours of research, interviewing, editing, publishing, social media promotion, and other such time and emotional labour I put into my podcast.
If you’d like to do so and can afford a few bucks, come support me at patreon.com/VictorSalmon and throw as little as one dollar my way. If you’re able to do so, it all helps no matter how small. It’s very appreciated. Thank-you.
If you don’t have funds because it’s a pandemic, trust me: I get it. It would be super helpful if you could just leave me a review on iTunes or if you don’t have
Okay. So I know it’s scary, but let’s have a conversation about covid-19, long term effects, and a bit about prevention. I’ll post resources in the description.
First, how much COVID-19 is out there? Well, we currently have more active cases here in BC than we’ve ever had before. We’re cleanly into the second wave and it looks like a very intense curve. Data is linked in the show notes in the CBC.ca story https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/covid-19-claims-4-more-lives-in-b-c-as-366-new-cases-confirmed-over-the-weekend-1.5733047
For me, it started with knowing people who knew people. Next, I knew one person who’d had it. Now I know several. Then I knew someone who had two family members who died from it. I haven’t gotten it yet but talk with one of my sex educator and public speaker friends whose whole family had it and whose whole family survived. That story is in contrast to another friend whose parent and step-parent both died from COVID. Again, it’s not common to die from COVID-19, but it’s about more than that.
Let’s move on to long term effects. We’ve known about or suspected these effects since the start of the pandemic in Canada. I’ll link one story per month since the start of the pandemic in the show notes.
“It’s now been more than a month since she started experiencing symptoms, and she’s still battling a lingering headache, cough and fatigue.” (from May)
“She’s had a fever, she said, for more than 100 days.” (from June)
“”COVID-19 can result in prolonged illness even among persons with milder outpatient illness, including young adults,” the report’s authors wrote.” (from July)
“When most people think of COVID-19, they imagine two possibilities: a flu-like illness that clears on its own, or a life-threatening condition that requires ventilation and a hospital stay.” (from Aug) https://time.com/5880191/long-haul-covid-19/
“Participants were recruited about 2½ months after their illnesses, when their symptoms were expected to have subsided. More than half reported lasting fatigue. Researchers looked for certain biological signs that might explain the results, such as white blood cell counts and inflammatory blood markers. They found none.” (from Sep) https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/more-half-covid-19-patients-have-lasting-fatigue-research-suggests-n1240351
The best snapshot I’ve been able to find about the disease that seems to neither under-represent nor over-represent how bad these chronic conditions are is from a cbc article from yesterday:
“A global online survey of almost four million people suggests that five per cent of people who contracted COVID-19 reported persistent symptoms one month later.
According to a study recently accepted for publication in the European Respiratory Journal, 75 per cent of people admitted to hospital in Vancouver for COVID-19 continue to experience symptoms more than three months after the onset of symptoms.” (from Yesterday) https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5730904
So this idea that that you can be sick with symptoms from a former COVID-19 infection – that is you get sick for two weeks, you eventually recover from the infection, and you no longer test positive – this idea has a name. Individuals who no longer test positive but who experience intense side effects like blood clots or headaches or chronic fatigue – they’re called COVID long haulers, and there are support groups online that you one day might be joining if you get COVID-19. https://www.facebook.com/covidrecoverystories
Finally, my guest today, Intimacy, talks with me about prevention as well. We chat about the importance of knowing the weakest link in your family unit: Of all the people who might contract it, who is at the greatest risk of contracting it? Who goes on unnecessary outings to indoor locations? Who doesn’t wash their hands?
According to the Vancouver Sun, 18% of us in BC are what they call “cynical spreaders” meaning they don’t take any steps to limit COVID-19 spread. That’s going to have its impact on BC, but if one is in your home, it will impact your risk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=24&v=QibLtgTX6-I&feature=emb_logo
Remember, anyone can bring it home with them, and once they smuggle it past your front door in their lungs, it’s unlikely any amount of surface cleaning or hand washing is really going to help you out unless you are cleaning surfaces, washing hands, and also able to identify it before they start coughing and get them to a testing station and isolated before they can spread it. Folks have done this before in rare cases.
So, go get tested if you think you have it based on symptoms like: fever, chills, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion, runny nose, nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea. If you get a few of those, if you have it at all, you’ve likely had it from 2 to 14 days. I got this list of symptoms from cdc.gov, link provided in the show notes (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/symptoms.html).
Many cities have drive-through testing now. I’ll post links for where to get tested in the metro vancouver area and if you’re not from here, google is your friend.
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/covid-19-heres-where-to-get-tested-in-metro-vancouver
Now, let’s go to the session with my guest, Intimacy, who no longer tests positive with COVID-19 but has been experiencing blood clots and other serious symptoms here on Intimate Interactions.