{"id":27460,"date":"2020-06-17T10:59:37","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T14:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=27460"},"modified":"2020-06-22T10:25:33","modified_gmt":"2020-06-22T14:25:33","slug":"friend-in-texas-runs-but-cannot-hide-from-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/17\/friend-in-texas-runs-but-cannot-hide-from-coronavirus\/","title":{"rendered":"Friend in Texas runs, but cannot hide, from coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anecdotal evidence that my cherished hope of summertime relief from coronaplague is illusory: a friend in Austin, Texas has developed Covid-19. If the virus can survive not only summer, but the Texas <\/em>summer, that is indeed sobering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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His Facebook post:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had a 100ish fever last Thursday night\/Friday, with none of the other effects I’ve read about. Got tested just in case so I didn’t increase anyone else’s risk.<\/p>

No fever or anything else since then except occasional headache and maybe some fatigue. My primary care doc thinks I may have gotten a very small exposure and fought it off quickly – we’ll see. He may have me do an antibody test in a week or two to rule out a false positive.<\/p>

Be safe – remember that even being very careful, wearing a KN95 mask and gloves at the grocery store with plenty of hand sanitizer, social distancing, etc are not 100%.<\/p>

UPDATE 6\/17: Low grade fever early this morning (100.1) but responded to ibuprofen and now I feel pretty normal. Still no other symptoms.<\/p>

UPDATE 6\/16 – Q from the comments: Do you have a feel for where\/how you got it?<\/p>

A: Not sure. I’ve mostly stayed put since early March since I work from home.<\/p>

Could have been at the store – KN95 is still 5% failure rate, and even though I bought the masks at Staples, it’s hard to know the quality of the Chinese manufacturing.<\/p>

We’ve seen a small number of people while socially distancing in recent weeks – that would be my bet, but none of those people (already notified) have reported symptoms so far.<\/p>

My guess is I’ll never really know.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He’s in his 50s so he is not statistically invulnerable to the plague, but he is otherwise healthy as far as I know, so I am not heading down there to dig a grave for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A friend recently traveled on JetBlue (empty middle seats, unlike on American<\/a>) and was surprised to see a fellow passenger in full Ebola doctor PPE: respirator mask plus face shield. Maybe this is the way to dress for the next 2-3 years!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alternatively, could we be (very slowly) proving the Bishops of the Church of Sweden<\/a> correct? They said that the virus would wait for us to come out of bunkers. The U.S. right now has a Covid-19 death rate roughly 30 percent lower than Sweden’s, but we have years to catch up. (And don’t forget we have all of the shutdown-related deaths, e.g., from delayed health care, from unemployment and poverty, etc., that nobody is bothering to tally.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Update: his fever went away by Wednesday. So it was a one-week fever with “occasional headache, fatigue, and tight chest but really nothing else.” Both children, age 6 and 11, got it (“mild” and\/or “brief” fever), but not the wife. Maybe that tells us something about the typical amount of physical intimacy in an American household with children…]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n