It's about to get real - Trump's valet tests positive for COVID-19

"TheRealBicycleBuck" (therealbicyclebuck) 05/07/2020 at 15:03 • Filed to: None

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I usually try to skip the political stuff and I’m not cheering or jeering about this. It’s important to recognize that, despite their best efforts, the President has had close contact with someone who tested positive.

This could go either way. If he doesn’t get it or has a mild case, then that will reinforce his rhetoric about COVID-19 not being a big deal. If he gets really ill and/or dies from it, I think we will see huge repercussions.

Pick your favorite outlet for the news:

!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

For Sweden > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:12

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Finally, we have the political will to ban valet parking

Sovande > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:16

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Good call on seeing repercussions should the President of the United States succumb to a viral pandemic. 

fintail > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:17

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Of course it wasn’t Javanka or one of 45's shithead adult sons.  Of course.

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:18

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i vote for the valet accidentally backs the beast over him.....oh whoops...guess well never find out if the rona gets him now

Wheelerguy > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:18

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I want to keep my temper down, especially because there are equally pressing headline problems in the Philippines. I’ve got to keep it together.

But fuck it: I want Trump to suffer. I want him to go through the same process as regular folk and directly feel what others have felt like. I want to see his will tested mentally and psychologically, as with his supporters. I want r/The_D***** to find every theory, every enemy, and every cure they can get their hands and brains on — and fail as miserably as humanly possible.

Oh, and Prime Minister Xi Jinping, too. Fucking inject a strain to his veins and see how well he and the Party fares with shit-tier treatment. Better be called a bio-terrorist outlaw (I run the OPPO criminal conglomerate so charges mean nothing to me) than see Hong Kong and ASEAN fall because China can’t take a joke and a critical glare.

There. That’s all the anger I can spare.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:25

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I don’t wish the man to die, but damn, I really hope he gets it and is just miserable for a few days (like a good bout with the flu).

Would be some amazing karma.

TheRealBicycleBuck > farscythe - makin da cawfee! 05/07/2020 at 15:27

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Wrong kind of valet .

“The president has two valets in the Oval Office and three in the residence, according to a former White House official. Valets that work in the Oval provide anything Trump requests such as coffee, food, or whatever else he might need during the day. The president can call this valet whenever he wants using a button, making frequent daily interaction common.

The valets in the residence do his laundry, iron his attire for the day and pack his suitcases, the former official said. These employees also interact regularly with the president, delivering his newspaper or any other messages he night need.”

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > farscythe - makin da cawfee! 05/07/2020 at 15:29

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Valet really just means “manserva nt” here.

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/presidential-valets

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:30

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well shit.... im going well today

i hope the valet at least coughed on trumps personal coke button

TheRealBicycleBuck > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/07/2020 at 15:31

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If he has a real scare, it could result in a massive shift in his perspective. As my wife pointed out to me - he’s the kind of guy who says what he thinks and only changes his mind only after a nice long discussion with one or more of his experts. If he would just flip that behavior - long discussion first, then speak your mind - he would be a better leader.

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/07/2020 at 15:31

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well shit.... that sounds like a terrible job

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > farscythe - makin da cawfee! 05/07/2020 at 15:34

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I assume they get paid decently, are privy to some incredible inside information, and probably view it as an honor , but... yeah.

ranwhenparked > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:35

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Well, Dr. Fauci said he expects 70% of the population to eventually get it, whether it happens this year or the next or the year after.

Incidentally, my state has been doing antibodies testing of wastewater, and it looks like it might be up to almost 25% here, close to 50% in one county.

I had an unusually bad flu a few months back that knocked me on my ass for 2 weeks, shortly after meeting with a client that came back from Italy, and almost everyone in my office got it in turn over the next month, with one 61 year old employee being hospitalized for 2 nights. I’ve had a lingering hacking cough ever since, and am starting to wonder more and more if that was really the flu that we all had. None of us were tested at the time, though I left that job toward the end of March, so I don’t know if some of them might have been since.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:37

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He hardly ever really listens to his experienced advisors...

95% of who are left are yes-men (and -women). 

TheRealBicycleBuck > farscythe - makin da cawfee! 05/07/2020 at 15:38

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Alfred would like a word with you.

DipodomysDeserti > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:40

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Have you seen anywhere that says he tested positive for the virus or antibodies?

Also, my aunt tested positive, then negative. The tests kind of suck.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > ranwhenparked 05/07/2020 at 15:40

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Do I really want to know how they determine the percentages from wastewater...?

I’m going to go with no.

I bet you did have it. Some in my office had a terrible sickness in early March , ended up with pneumonia, but tested negative for flu. Had to have been it. 

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:40

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fine... sounds like a terrible job for me...

i’d get pretty sick of dealing with batmans shit too... go fetch your own damn paper

Spanfeller is a twat > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:42

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If Lopez Obrador caught COVID-19, it would cause the biggest political crisis in this country’s history. I hope he realizes and really takes a lot of care of his own health. If he dies, or becomes incapacitated, he leaves behind two truly dangerous problems:

1. An increasingly ambitious inner circle

2. Weakened institutions that increasing relay on the orders of top officials.

I fear Trump has similar issues. Which is why he really needs to stay healthy as much as possible. 

TheRealBicycleBuck > ranwhenparked 05/07/2020 at 15:43

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I’m of the same mind as Dr. Fauci. We will all be exposed eventually. It’s just a matter of when and what health care resources will be available to us when it happens.

I was also sick a couple of weeks before the outbreak. My daughter was sick at the same time, had the same symptoms as I did, and tested positive for the flu. Although I wasn’t tested, the doctor was pretty certain I had the flu. I also didn’t have contact with anyone who traveled to Italy.

I hope you get over the cough soon. It may lead to you being chased  out of a public place!

TheRealBicycleBuck > DipodomysDeserti 05/07/2020 at 15:44

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As far as I know, Trump hasn’t been tested.

You’re right about the tests. There have been reports about problems with both false positives and false negatives. 

ranwhenparked > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/07/2020 at 15:47

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Well, the virus, and its antibodies, are present in all bodily fluids (which is how its spread through coughing and sneezing, after all), so when it comes to human waste, well... maybe a good thing that public bathrooms are mostly closed right now.

We’ve only got 3 counties in the whole state, 2/3 of the population lives in the northernmost one, and the majority of them in just the northern half of that county, which is served almost entirely by public sewers with only a few operators, so that was the area they chose to study. A lot harder down south in the rural areas wh ere larger numbers are on septic tanks. But, they came up with a likely infection rate in that county 15x higher than the confirmed case count, which, doing the math, would work out to about half that county and 1/4 of the state. If that’s accurate, its even more than that, since they didn’t even check 2 out of 3 counties and only half of the one they did.

Which is kind of weird, because our state hasn’t seemed especially/unusually hard hit so far, at least in comparison to New York/New Jersey/Virginia, etc, and we are doing a decent amount of testing.

ranwhenparked > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 15:51

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That has been a concern, our stay at home order is supposed to end next Friday (though it will probably be extended), and all my customers whose businesses were ordered closed are allowed to resume curbside pickup tomorrow, so its hopefully a matter of time before I’m allowed back on the road to call on all of them in person. I figure I can maybe cover it with cough medicine and try to hold them in when I’m around people, or try to  turn them into throat clearing noises or something.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > ranwhenparked 05/07/2020 at 15:53

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Still not getting how they determine a percentage from the wastewater. 

Still don’t really want to know.

facw > ranwhenparked 05/07/2020 at 15:57

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While sewer testing is interesting, I’d guess if the extrapolated case count is much higher than what is being reported by random antibody testing, it’s probably a sign that the extrapolated case count is wrong. We’ll see though. The highest antibody counts I’ve seen were 20% in NYC , though that wasn’t a random sample, and had other weaknesses . I think the analysis said the actual infected case count was more likely to be around 13% (which is still higher than people were expecting).

ranwhenparked > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/07/2020 at 15:58

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Yeah, I don’t totally get the methodology, either, and the numbers they arrived at just seem ridiculously high. Like, really, if I go up to Wilmington, 1 of every 2 people I see has or had it? That just seems impossibly high  this early in the pandemic, no other state has shown anything close to that in their antibodies tests, New York was only like 14%.  It was done by a state government agency, I guess they know what they're doing, but how often have they had to do something like this?

facw > Spanfeller is a twat 05/07/2020 at 16:01

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Tru mp has been the one weakening our institutions and I’d very much like him to stop. We’d be in better shape if Pence were in charge (as much as I don’t like Pence), and in better shape still if Trump and Pence both went down and left Pelosi in charge. N ot a huge fan of her either, but I’d welcome any sort of competence, even if it’s beholden to the wrong interests.

Brickman > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 16:01

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Sometimes you have to learn the hard way.

Dead_Elvis, Inc. > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/07/2020 at 16:11

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He’s incapable of learning, and refuses to admit being wrong about anything .

I hope this kills him, and he suffers HORRIBLY on the way out .

Spanfeller is a twat > facw 05/07/2020 at 16:12

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I don’t know if Pence would truly be any better, he seems articulate on the outside but he played havoc with Indiana’s institutions because he’s a religious extremist. If the US could skip over to Pelosi it could be more stable... but seriously, undemocratic transitions of power and highly polarizing times do not mix well. 

TheRealBicycleBuck > ranwhenparked 05/07/2020 at 16:13

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I predict that y ou’re going to get a lot of dirty looks in the near future!

Good luck!

ranwhenparked > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 16:21

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Well, I also work for a tobacco company, so maybe I can just tell people its from smoking or something. Wait, no, that would probably not be good for business, either. 

facw > Spanfeller is a twat 05/07/2020 at 16:22

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Pence has terrible politics, but he’s a conventional politician and is at least somewhat constrained by tradition and decorum in a way Trump is not. I think we’d be much better off if the Senate had done it s job and at least seriously considered removing Trump this winter.

There would of course be a major freakout on the right if Pelosi inherited the office. I’d like to think that if she were measured and didn’t pursue an overtly partisan agenda that the country could pull together for half a year, but we might be too far gone for that.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > Dead_Elvis, Inc. 05/07/2020 at 16:27

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A better fate would be that he end up a one-term president, a national disgrace and international pariah, whose one-time supporters view as a loser , penniless and in prison for some kind of shady dealing...

Snuze: Needs another Swede > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/07/2020 at 16:34

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I would guess they take samples, measure # antibodies per unit of waste, and then compare that to the # of antibodies per unit of waste produced by 1 human, and extrapolate to the number of customers they serve.  

Dead_Elvis, Inc. > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/07/2020 at 16:35

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I want those things for him, too, but I’m out of patience & just want the shitstain gone . I don’t believe there’s a chance in hell that he’ll ever actually see the inside of a prison, lose the support of the most slavish MAGAts, nor suffer financially as a result of his criminal incompetence.

ttyymmnn > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 16:36

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I think he gets tested every couple of days. But there aren't enough tests to test all of the Congress. Priorities, I guess.

Derpwagon > facw 05/07/2020 at 16:40

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You think Pelosi is capable of not pursuing an overtly partisan agenda? Yikes.

Derpwagon > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 16:43

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Oppositelock. Home of “be excellent to each other, unless we disagree with their politics, then it’s OK to wish death, injury, serious harm, or other ills on them”. 

facw > Derpwagon 05/07/2020 at 16:46

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I do, at least in the short term. Would she, I don’t know, but I think it’s believable.

Do you have any reason to believe she’s incapable, other than her being a Democrat? She’s certainly refused to play hardball with the GOP at every opportunity. She had to be dragged kicking and screaming to impeach Trump by the liberal wing of her caucus (she considered it a political liability as well as pointless since the Senate was never going to convict).

TheRealBicycleBuck > Derpwagon 05/07/2020 at 16:47

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I hope  that you are referring to the commentariat. I made it a point that I’m not on either side of this fence. I just recognize that this has serious consequences whether he avoids it, gets a mild case, gets a severe case, or dies from it.

Derpwagon > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 16:53

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I should have stated that more explicitly, yes. It was not directed at you. 

Derpwagon > facw 05/07/2020 at 17:05

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That entire debacle was a fucking farce from the get-go, and I’m not sold that she was that reluctant to do it.

I don’t care what political party she’s a part of, it’s her actions that I disagree with, and a history of decisions I don’t agree with. 

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > DipodomysDeserti 05/07/2020 at 18:03

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One of the scariest things about this is that not only does it spread readily, but tests are not accurate enough to make real decisions on.

ZHP Sparky, the 5th > ranwhenparked 05/07/2020 at 18:34

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Same here. Early March coworkers started getting sick. Guy in cube next to me I work very closely with was out for about 2 weeks, including ambulance trips to the hospital. Has a horrible cough to this day. My whole family had mild flu like symptoms around/shortly after that, as well as folks at work. My wife had it the worst and still has a cough. She was tested for COVID last week and came back negative, was told could very well be that she had it but is no longer detectable in her system.

My symptoms were pretty mild, low fever and aches for a few days - and I had what appear to be “COVID toe”. Talked to doc office, but they said will most likely come back negative just like my wife’s so don’t really think it’s worth bothering.

Antibody testing would be pretty awesome to have just to be able to know, but not even an option right now. 

ranwhenparked > ZHP Sparky, the 5th 05/07/2020 at 18:40

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That all sounds very suspicious, one of the hallmarks of this thing is how highly infectious it is. I’ve worked in fairly close quarters with people who came down with the flu and not gotten it, but this seems to spread like wildfire as soon as it gets into a building. And the hospital trips, too. Yeah, some people do have to do that with the flu, and in especially bad seasons, hospitals do sometimes run out of beds for them, but  that isn’t  like this.

It would be nice to know for sure. Antibody testing is lagging way behind, obviously, it isn’t the main priority right now, and all non-emergency medical appointments are halted in my state anyway. Really, its more out of curiosity than anything.

DipodomysDeserti > TheRealBicycleBuck 05/07/2020 at 20:17

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I mean the valet. Because he could have tested positive for antibodies, meaning he had the disease and got over it.

DipodomysDeserti > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/07/2020 at 20:23

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TBH I don’t find anything about the actual disease scarier than our response to it. 

DipodomysDeserti > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/07/2020 at 20:47

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As someone that has taken a wastewater management class, you’d be surprised. My professor is working on research using sensor technology he’s developing. This guy is a genius and doing really crazy stuff. He taught a dispersion modeling class in my soil and groundwater class this semester. The bio engineers know their shit. It’d be interesting to see the certainty of their studies. We’ve used wastewater to track public health before. The uncertainty would be how much of the antibody remains in the wastewater, as it is a brand new antibody which we have little data on. They probably model  that in.

DipodomysDeserti > ranwhenparked 05/07/2020 at 20:49

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There was a case in Hong Kong where SARS was spread through an apartment from the plumbing .

ranwhenparked > DipodomysDeserti 05/07/2020 at 20:55

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Interesting, and that’s another coronavirus, too. 

DipodomysDeserti > ranwhenparked 05/07/2020 at 20:57

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Yep. Covid has also been known to cause digestive issues.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16696450

ranwhenparked > DipodomysDeserti 05/07/2020 at 21:12

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Which might explain why the local drugstore is totally cleaned out of both diarrhea medicine and toilet paper

TheRealBicycleBuck > DipodomysDeserti 05/07/2020 at 21:18

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What I heard was that the valet started showing symptoms, so they tested him.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > DipodomysDeserti 05/08/2020 at 01:57

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I’m honestly surprised at how low it seems the fatality rate has been driven. Without medical care, it kills substantially more than we’ve been losing, so I guess it’s a dice roll - we could keep everything as it was, let it run wild, saturate the medical system, and see the rate rise to around whatever it would be (something like 2-3%, mostly older people and those with medical conditions, though it could be substantially higher with the percentage of the population in the US with chronic conditions). Would it be worth i t? Possibly. Most of the people dying are losing the worst/last years of their lives, so it would not cause much disruption to the economy.

I do believe that all of this, if it continues long enough, will fundamentally alter how people of all ages that lived through it see the world and what they consider important.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > DipodomysDeserti 05/08/2020 at 10:19

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I don’t doubt the brilliance of some of these guys, I’m just guessing the sample gathering process is pretty gross.

Soils was the end of my civil engineering path.

DipodomysDeserti > davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com 05/08/2020 at 11:03

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Sorry, I misread the quite you were replying to. Yeah, I’m sure it’s pretty nasty.

DipodomysDeserti > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 05/08/2020 at 11:12

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I don’t think the death rate would be anywhere near 2-3%. Were starting to find out that a substantially larger number of people have had this thing than we previously thought or can even test for.

Unfortunately, politics have clouded our analysis and handling of this whole situation.

ZHP Sparky, the 5th > ranwhenparked 05/08/2020 at 11:41

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Agreed - my wife especially has been really stressed to the point her skin has started breaking out . She’s not usually like this and is a pediatric leukemia researcher so she’s used to her fair share of morbidity. Her worries are mostly from a personal level - if she ends up in the hospital isolated for weeks it’ll be horrible given that we have a breast feeding kid who is glued to her 24/7. So yeah if we can know that we’ve already had this - of course we’ll still be careful and follow social distancing until we know for sure that you can’t get it more than once, but will provide some level of solace.

My coworker who ended taking ambulance rides - this guy is in his 40s but runs everyday and hikes/skis every weekend, crazy fit. He’d get off work calls from home and later tell us that he just had to go lay down for an hour because being on a call for 30 mins was too much. Both before and after he took medical time off I worked very closely with him. The dichotomy also really rings true with this virus - some folks get it really bad and are just knocked out (like him) , others barely show any symptoms (like myself).

ranwhenparked > ZHP Sparky, the 5th 05/08/2020 at 12:04

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Ive got a friend who works for the Red Cross in Western PA, and he definitely got it, picked it up from an EMT at an ambulance company where he works part time. The only symptoms he got were fatigue and very mild congestion, which all resolved in a little over a week, but he still keeps testing positive. A bunch of other people at the company got it too, none serious. The guy is obese and has high blood pressure, but he’s in his 30s, so maybe age is what helped him. He did visit the Red Cross office before he knew he was sick, but fortunately everyone in that part of the building is teleworking, so they don't think anyone there was exposed. 

Unfortunately, he gave it to his mother (asthmatic in her 60s), and she wound up in the hospital. Not ICU, fortunately, they were supposed to release her a few days ago, but I haven’t spoken to him since the weekend.

ZHP Sparky, the 5th > ranwhenparked 05/08/2020 at 13:15

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That’s the scary part, how easily you can spread it to others who might not be as lucky. Hope your friend’s mom recovered and was released as expected. We’re on the west coast but have a friend of my wife’s family out in Boston who was on a ventilator for weeks. Guy in his 60s, fit as can be again but it was really touch and go not knowing whether he would pull through or not. Thankfully he did, but I don’t know if he’s back to 100% or not.

What’s infuriating is at the same time there are folks in the family in the same age group (and far worse health)   who know this man and have had thanksgiving dinner with him that to this day think that this is all just hysteria we need to cut out and just get back to life as usual . Of course we see this playing out at a national level too.