this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Doctors who treat Covid describe the ways the illness has gotten milder and shifted over time to mostly affect the upper respiratory tract.

Doctors say they're finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish Covid from allergies or the common cold, even as hospitalizations tick up.

The illness' past hallmarks, such as a dry cough or the loss of sense of taste or smell, have become less common. Instead, doctors are observing milder disease, mostly concentrated in the upper respiratory tract.

"It isn’t the same typical symptoms that we were seeing before. It’s a lot of congestion, sometimes sneezing, usually a mild sore throat," said Dr. Erick Eiting, vice chair of operations for emergency medicine at Mount Sinai Downtown in New York City.

The sore throat usually arrives first, he said, then congestion.

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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago (3 children)

As a person who is on the tail end of COVID infection, this describes my current symptoms.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I never tested myself because I just thought it was a cold, but that describes my symptoms too. Started with sore throat which wasn't too bad and went away. Then the next day congestion and exhaustion, with just a little bit of sneezing.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

These symptoms lasted nearly a month after my covid infection.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Same for me as well

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Do the old covid tests still work? Ive had this cold several times this year and always covid negative.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago

The answer is yes they are still as effective, dont let anyone here convince you otherwise. The base protein has not mutated and that is what is being checked when you do this chromatography style test.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They have a much higher false negative rate now than they used to. Thats probably due to changes in the virus itself and lower viral load as people have higher levels of immunity now. However if you test positive you can still be pretty certain you have covid.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, also recognition that some people may have symptoms and test negative or feel fine and test positive. That’s also why there is no recommendation to test again. If someone pops a positive recommendations say to stay home for 5 days then mask for 5 more. There is no benefit to additional testing because of natural variation in antibody production and function.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Mind the expiration dates.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

I simply had the worst sore throat I’ve ever had. No congestion. Then I lost my sense of smell for about 6 months. That was awful. Very grateful it came back.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

So is there any real way to say if this is because of widespread vaccination or because the virus itself has lost some lethality genes

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Not a scientist, but I'd guess mostly B, maybe helped along with some of A.

The goal of a virus is to replicate, and it does that better when it's less lethal

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Just a very small correction- as with all biology, natural selection will drive a virus to replicate more effectively, that’s it. This does NOT mean a virus will automatically become less lethal over time. That’s an older hypothesis that scientists found was not in line with observation.

The newer hypothesis is known as “virulence-transmission trade-off”. The oversimplification of the idea is that if a mutation increases both transmission and virulence, it will also tend to be selected for. COVID is inconsistent with both hypotheses in certain ways though, so really predicting its virulence in the short or long term has proven difficult. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10066022/

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Viruses don’t have goals. You are anthropomorphizing them. What viruses do is mutate. If mutations have more fitness, they will spread more effectively. That says nothing about mortality nor morbidity. With this disease it spreads in the early stage, which long before the person who has caught it either dies, recovers, gets long COVID, etc.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

It's not anthropomorphizing, it's abstraction and it's incredibly common in evolutionary science to speak in this manner.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

It helps that it already killed millions of the more susceptible early on before immunity started.

Not sure how statistically significant this is in the overall numbers, though.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Scheduled next boost for next week.

I finally caught it earlier this year. Thanks to vax, it was similar to a cold / flu. Was mostly better after a few days.

Medical science is awesome. I couldn't be happier about how it turned out. What a relief.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

That was the basic progression when I had it a few months ago if you add fever and chills.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Huh, I have exactly that. Dunno if covid though of just some flu

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's kind of the mystery, isn't it?

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