Octopus Overlords

Based off a couple posts in R&P, I wanted to start a small poll.

Question is simple. Do you personally know anyone who has tested positive for Covid-19? This has to be someone you actually know. Having a friend tell you someone they know has tested positive, but you don't know that someone, counts as a no.

The main reason I post this is due to the fact that a couple posters in the R&P thread were shocked that other posters personally know someone who has tested positive.

July 13, 2020 edit - the poll has been reopened so that you can change your votes if needed.

And for me, my answer is no. I don't know anyone who has tested positive.

Same here. But we should probably include people who are presumed positive but haven't actually been tested (though that's still a no for me).

I selected "No". Because my brother's test came back negative. However, due to how quickly he declined, we are highly suspicious of that result. But since he was in Thailand, there wasn't anything we could do about it.

No, but I probably skew the results given that I don't have that many social contacts. I'm a social recluse and haven't worked in almost 20 years. My circle of 'know' and am in close enough contact with to know if they have it is... six people? No, seven.

I'm the first yes! As I posted elsewhere, my friend and his dad both tested positive. My friend has recovered and is out of quarantine, but I'm not sure of his dad (who also counts for purposes of the poll as I personally know his dad).

I'm going to check no because the co-worker's test came back negative, but it sure seems like he had it given the symptoms and severity.

Do not personally know anyone with it.

My sister had most of the symptoms and was super sick for almost two weeks, but they refused to test her because when she went in she didn’t have a fever. We are pretty sure she had it, but they were just overbooked and wouldnt use a test on someone who wasn't critical. This was near the start of heavy testing.

That's part of what's so surreal about this for me personally. It's this major worldwide catastrophe that's changing the way that everyone lives, but it's nothing that I can see or observe personally (beyond everyone's responses to it).

El Guapo wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2020 10:35 am Same here. But we should probably include people who are presumed positive but haven't actually been tested (though that's still a no for me).

One person I know was presumed positive (fever lasting more than 2 weeks) but ultimately tested negative. That was of some concern as 2 days prior to lockdown/restaurant closures we attended her baby hazing and subsequent banquet at a crowded restaurant. I know someone who thought he had it (no elaboration) but AFAIK never got tested. So I can't yet say I definitively know someone who has it.

Closest I got was Friend's Wife's Business partner.

Yes, at least 8 confirmed cases (likelier more with those who couldn't get tested, even though they had flu-like symptoms and tested negative to the flu), although no one I've seen in person in the last year. Fortunately, no one who's died or had to be hospitalized to my knowledge, although a few friends have lost family, friends or coworkers.

negative for me, closest is my co-workers cousin.

Yes. Aunt and uncle both tested positive early last week, and were admitted to the hospital last weekend. Aunt recovered fairly quickly, but uncle is still in the ICU on a ventilator. From my cousin on Tuesday, "The goal is to slowly ween him off the ventilator. His doctor said that in these cases the patients don't typically make a turn until around day 14 and he's on day 8, so things might get worse before they get better."

Talked to my aunt last night, and she said it's the worst illness she has ever experienced...and she was the one with the "mild" case.

Not COVID related, but my oldest son has been on a ventilator a couple of times due to pneumonias, and it's not a fun time even when you don't add in the complications of COVID. The numbers will look great and you'll start the wean, but then things go sideways and it seems like regression. The key is that this is normal and not to get discouraged. It's normal for the wean to stall or even go backward a bit. They will not want to get overaggressive in the wean (which was a really tough position for us as parents just wanting to get him off the vent and back awake).

My cousin tested positive a couple of weeks ago. She's OK now. Even though she's a first cousin, we're not very close - I haven't actually seen her since she was a baby, and she's grown with kids of her own now.

No. I do have one friend (a nurse) who thinks she might have had it before testing was available, and before they knew that nausea and diarrhea can be symptoms in their own right, without fever and cough. She treated herself with various Rx meds that were available to her and got over it.

Last week I had those same symptoms. They went away after 5 days. I felt lousy and lost a couple of pounds. Covid? Probably not. Someday, maybe we'll all have an antibody test and find out.

It's a safe bet that many, many people have had asymptomatic, mild, and/or atypical Covid infections. There's no way to count those (yet).

Me personally no.

Keri's and my old college friend has lost both of her grandparents to it. (Georgia)



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One of our poker circle (~ 40 people) has recovered from it (well, is currently into her second week of slow recovery progress) after a few days in the hospital.

I don't even know anybody who's been tested. But then I'm more of a recluse than Blackhawk.

Our next door neighbor (who is in an assisted living facility because of brain tumors and glioblastoma) has been diagnosed with Covid-19. His wife is expecting this to be what finally kills him...to be honest, they've been expecting him to die for months. Poor guy has been sick for years. He's only like 48 years old.

Yes. A friend in NYC first had an in-law catch it, then shortly after friend's wife caught it along with himself a bit later. I also know one of the top doctors in the Boston area who's been on the front lines battling this and says the shit he's seen is pretty scary with what the virus is doing to people.

No one in my immediate circle, but some of my students tell me that family members have it. At least one has died.

dbt1949 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2020 1:07 pm I don't even know anybody who's been tested. But then I'm more of a recluse than Blackhawk.

I'd come and yell at you for saying that, but that would be way too social.

I have a lot of relatives from Colorado and Texas to Hawaii and not one of the ones I've talked to knows anyone who has it. My friends are local and not one of them knows anyone who has it. None of my relatives or friends has it. None of them has been tested though. My answer would be no then, pending more widespread testing.

Not someone I personally know, but a coworker's parents both have it - his mother is recovering at home, but his father has been in the ICU since early March. Went on and off ventilator twice now, they thought he'd need a tracheotomy, but last we heard, he started breathing on his own (but still in critical condition).

We are reasonably confident that my father-in-law had a mild case early this month, but it never got bad enough for him to go in and get diagnosed. He had been spending a lot of time at the hospital visiting his mother, who was there for reasons unrelated to COVID.

A co-worker's grandparent died of COVID a couple of weeks ago.

Coworkers. Several.

On the “that I know of” side, there’s three people that I know:

My wife’s cousin and her husband (he had to go in an ICU).
My MIL’s roommate at her long-term care facility.

In terms of seeing the impact though, going to one degree of separation:
Offsite co-worker died on 4/6.
Father of close co-worker died.
Father of other close co-worker died.
Father of less close co-worker died.

Mother of my cousin’s wife thought she had it, but when she went to get tested they discovered it was metastatic lung cancer instead (oof).

Yes...multiple people actually, including two who are suspected to have died from it without being tested. One of the people I know is a physician assistant in a New Jersey ER who tested positive and likely contracted it at work; recovered now, but her mother-in-law living in the same town died suddenly after symptoms without being tested. Another acquaintance was a roughly 35yo CRNA who I used to work with, now living in SC, who developed severe respiratory symptoms and died suddenly...previously healthy, not tested, but no other explanation.

Those are the worst cases. As an anesthesiologist in CT, I know three other people that I work with every day who have had test-confirmed COVID and recovered after relatively mild illness. It is not believed that any of those people contracted it through workplace exposure. I've also had direct contact through patient care with roughly a dozen confirmed patients, and who knows how many asymptomatic carriers.

Interestingly, I don't feel that I know about these people because of my job putting us at higher risk. I think it's more a result of being in a highly-affected area and working in an environment where I know a lot of people.

No one in my close family or friend network that I know of. One of my wife's coworkers had a fever that lasted about a week. She was tested for it, but the results were "inconclusive" and they wouldn't let her retake the test.

One of my customers told me he had it and was treated for it, but that could just have been him wanting to delay making his payment.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2020 3:07 pmCoworkers. Several.

If it comes anywhere near me, it's most likely going to be this way. To my knowledge, though, none of my coworkers have been sick enough to warrant getting tested. Early last month one of the office managers called out with a fever and got a two-week vacation, but she didn't get sicker and was fine the next day... and still couldn't come back to work.

I just tallied it up - more than I thought: 8 confirmed - 1 highly probably
+1: A friend's husband has it - has been in ICU on/off vent since third week of March.
+3:
* A wife's former co-worker who we saw at Christmas party - he died about 3 weeks ago. Governor Murphy mentioned him at one of the conferences by name.
* His wife just died of it.
* The wife's son has been in ICU since early April.
+3: people in the NJ roller derby officials community have tested positive. Their cases are not connected.
* 1 has a wife who is a nurse in Jersey City. He got it early before they knew what was happening.
* 1 is EMS.
* 1 is a NJ/NY Port Authority officer.
+1: The EMS person's father got it in his nursing home and recovered.

1 additional unconfirmed but highly probable case. She is a nanny and the kids and the mother were positive.

Edited with more.

Heard through the grapevine that a neighbor I didn't know well died from it (maybe 8-10 units over in our development).

Also, our upstairs neighbors (duplex condo/townhouse) who we're pretty close with apparently had it and recovered, and they couldn't get a test, but their Doc said he would have bet on it, and the symptoms matched up. From talking to the dad, it was really bad for about 17 days, but they all came through it ok (at least for now - it sounds like there are possible long term health issues with heart/lungs).

So, I figure that without the Shelter-in-place in the Bay Area, the odds are Mrs. Kub and I would have gotten it (probably 75-80% probability) just from them, and we have some health issues (and are older than our neighbors), which could easily have led to it being far more serious for us.

Have also had a co-worker's dad die from it.

My cousin got it who works in CAD for one of the big meat packing plants in their corporate offices (in the same town where one of the biggest meat packing plants in the US is located on the other side town and has had a serious outbreak). Apparently he got it from his boss but we don't know if it was related or not to the outbreak at the packing plant. Thankfully he has been doing ok so far.

I don't know anyone who has it, as far as I know. My FIL and brother's MIL have both died in the past 5 weeks but Covid was not a reason given.

I do wonder if the wife and I might have been exposed early on but I think more likely it was just some kind of cold. We spent several days in Monterey (California) in January. Monterey is a very international city, lots of foreign languages on the street, and we both came home and were sick for several weeks. But neither of us ran a fever, just a cough that wouldn't go away and perhaps the runniest nose I have had in memory.

A woman I know from church who also lives in our neighborhood had it. She works as an ER nurse and got tested for work. She had a very mild case.

Scuzz wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 3:10 pm But neither of us ran a fever, just a cough that wouldn't go away and perhaps the runniest nose I have had in memory.

Fully 1/3 of hospitalized cases never spike a fever.