Forums

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Icky Thump

The vast, vast majority of people that I have talked to in NY with the teltale symptoms get cold-like symptoms, lose their senses of smell and taste, then get better with nothing. Occasionally some people use OTC drugs, some don't. Only the one was hospitalized with bilateral pneumonia, and was in for a while. She couldn't complete a sentence on the phone with me without coughing.

Should they get tested? Probably but over the past two months no hospital would waste a test on cold symptoms. If you do plan to go to the ER and want to get tested, hype up the symptoms "I walked up the steps and collapsed" or "I got dizzy and passed out." Generic cold symptoms, they will likely say "Assume you have it, isolate for 14 days, call us if you can't breathe."

The hospital does not want to test people unless they are sick enough to need to be hospitalized. Helping the general public understand the extent of the disease spread is not a bad idea, but it's trumped by the need to protect hospital staff from exposure to potentially sick people and to focus those staff on treating people who need it.

If we had a more competent federal government, it would be finding a way to test lots of people. State and local governments too, but they don't have the resources.