Hopefully its safe to discuss this here.
How is everyone doing with this pandemic? My family (so far) has been able to avoid it and we are a fairly big group. I noticed in the paper the other day that the majority of cases are in Surrey and Abbotsford luckily I'm not near those!
Does anyone have any experience with this disease and I'm not talking the friend of a friend kinda thing, but actual first hand experience. I'd be interested in hearing your story. Theres so many differing opinions about the severity of it, some say that its no worse than a flu, others say its more like every flu you've ever had all at once.
BC's numbers keep going up after we were so good about keeping them low. Now, theres over 100 cases per day for the past few weeks.

Anybody worried? Terrified? Apathetic?

OK lol looks like nobody has an opinion on this.
The numbers are starting to climb again. This isn't going away any time soon. Take care out there!

Definitely concerning. Wish the younger generation, party goers take this virus seriously... as it can people with other health issues; and older generation.

People need to make more steady use of the mask in public, to cut down this spread.

K

But is it?
Donald Trump caught it and recovered within 4 days. How dangerous can a virus be when an overweight, 74 yr old male can get over it in less than a week?
I know we hear all sorts of horror stories about young, virile people on death's door or worse, but there is always going to be an exception to every case. Makes you wonder about the hidden 'comorbidities' of people, maybe it's in their genes, maybe they have underlying conditions that they aren't even aware of!

Here we are 2 months later and the case count is now over 43000

At least a vaccine has been developed now. Maybe we can get back to "normal" in another 6-8 months!

You know that Trump was given special treatment like Regeneron which might have made a big difference in his rapid recovery.

Longwalk,
The different expressions of the virus and great range in severity of the infection are of great interest to doctors.

A milder case may be the result of immune cells present from an earlier exposure to a related virus.
Here is the summary of an NIH article:

"--A study of blood samples taken before the COVID-19 pandemic showed that some people already had certain immune cells that recognize SARS-CoV-2.
"--These immune cells also reacted with coronaviruses that cause common colds.
"--The findings suggest that existing immune cells may help account for the wide range of symptoms experienced by people with COVID-19."
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-...ize-sars-cov-2
It is a horrible illness. Imagine cement coating your lungs for 3 months, and then you die anyway. If you live, you may have lifelong cognitive and neurological deficits.
Underlying factors increase risk but are not an infallible guarantee that one will acquire the disease.
Similarly, lack of underlying factors may decrease risk but does not guarantee one won't get it.

Scary is the new mutant form in UK with a possibly much greater transmissibility. Its recent appearance has thrown GB into tier 4, highest level of preventive protocols.

As for POTUS: he received an experimental drug cocktail not available to the likes of us. The White House has medical staff on hand, and there is a specialized suite in Walter Reed Military Medical Center with a limousine to convey pres there. By contrast, reg'lar folks have died of COVID-19 at home because they did not fit the disease profile at the time and so were not admitted to hospital.

Last summer -- 4 months ago -- I did not personally know anyone who had contracted the disease. Now I do. More frequently I find myself writing condolence letters to friends who have lost spouses or parents or siblings.

Last week in USA, reported deaths per day ticked up to over 3,000.

I write all this in response to "How dangerous can a virus be ...?"
Very.
Take care, take care of others, have a good holiday. We will get through this together.

Don't think that for a second I am down-playing the seriousness of this. I get extremely frustrated with those individuals who parade around without masks, proclaiming "I feel fine!" while totally ignorant to the concept that they might be carrying it and infecting others.
I've been following this thing since the beginning at although the death tolls are frightening, the fact remains that the AVERAGE recovery rate (at least here in Canada) has been hovering in the 80 percentile since mid-July.
These "recovery" numbers don't mention any long-term effects mind you so you can decide for yourself what to make of them.
To date, the BC infection rate is still below 1% of the total population and just over 1¼ % nationwide.

Another thing to remember is when they show the numbers on the News every night, this is the TOTAL number of cases since the whole thing started not the number of current infections. Some people get confused about that.

Even worse are these that organize "freedom protests" claiming whole thing is some sort of government hoax.

No kidding there are dozens of Facebook pages of "freedom rallies" and other such nonsense. My favorite is where they claim that Bill Gates has microchipped the vaccine in order to track everyone!

This is a reason to take this virus seriously even if you are asymptomatic: https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2021/01/13/...tag=MSF0951a18

That is a scary picture. Belief is that asymptomatic people already had exposure/built immunity to some virus variant in the past

I still have some issues with the MSM when it comes to "news". I've seen all kinds of things being reported that simply aren't true and some stuff that borders on outright lies.
The reports of the "mostly peaceful" riots in Wisconsin (with the burning buildings in the background) was evidence enough that the media can and will spin the truth to fit the narrative of each network.
Having said that I believe that those people who have been infected have not seen the last of the effects. We must remember that this is a virus that is unknown to the human body so there is no telling what its long-term effects are or what our un-aided immune system will do to attack it.

I know what you mean. Same goes with CNN, MSNBC, NBC, Yahoo news, CBS etc.
For information about Covid-19, one of the few credible sources of info which is explained clearly is MedCram. They have a website and youtube channel with 120 episodes of updated info on the virus.

The more unmoderated by some objective non-biased standard certain avenue is, the worse it will be. This is why social media is real misinformation dumpster as anyone can post whatever he/she wants.



Agreed about COVID long-term effects. Even vaccine is unknown factor at the moment. Think the best in near future at least is not to get infected in the first place.