For most of the population -- 80 percent, they say -- the Kung Flu was a non event. If they got sick it lasted a week or so and was a flu-like annoyance.
For 15 percent of us, however, it became a serious illness. For 5 percent, it became critical, and in this last group were those who died.
I had it, and it took six weeks to fully recover. I didn't require hospitalization and never became critical, although as I read more about it I did worry at times and asked my doctor for reassurance. What my research tells me is that living or dying for some is a result of a genetic roll of the dice. Some people have immune responses that just don't work right.
My doctor says I'm not contagious and that I'm immune, at least for the time being. This is the thinking of the CDC. What I know is that I'm going to take this thing seriously, especially in the fall when we start closing wndows and staying inside.
Here's the headline of a USA Today article:
'Something we've never seen before': Scientists still trying to understand baffling, unpredictable coronavirus
The article continues:The new coronavirus has spread like wildfire, killed – and spared – people of all ages and all health conditions, baffled doctors, defied guidance and conventional wisdom, and produced an unprecedented array of symptoms.
There's never been a virus like it.
"This gets into every major biological process in our cells," said Nevan J. Krogan, a molecular biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied HIV, Ebola, Zika, dengue and other viruses over the past 13 years.
"At the molecular level, it's something we've never seen before, and then look at what it does to the body – the long list of symptoms – we've never seen that before."
I'm sympathetic to the point of view that our national reaction has been overblown. At the same time, having experienced the virus, I have a deep respect for it. There are some who beieve that we can't really stop a virus from spreading, no matter how many masks we buy. I'm sympathetic to that, as well, but I'm not going to needlessly expose myself or family to it.~ Al Desko