Absolutely horrible.

Yikes!

From the article: "I would lie down at night after taking melatonin and Benadryl, soaked in sweat and terrified of what might be coming next. What if I fall asleep and stop breathing? More Benadryl. More melatonin."

Maybe she should stop taking melatonin and Benadryl till the virus passes. It doesn't seem to be helping her symptoms. I'm no expert, but I think it is best to just rest and eat gentle foods and not take any unnecessary supplements or medication.

Melatonin and Benadryl side effects from WebMD:

"Melatonin has been used safely for up to 2 years in some people. However, it can cause some side effects including headache, short-term feelings of depression, daytime sleepiness, dizziness, stomach cramps, and irritability."

Benadryl: "Drowsiness, dizziness, constipation, stomach upset, blurred vision, or dry mouth/nose/throat may occur. If any of these effects persist or worsen, tell your doctor or pharmacist promptly."

She also said she used to be a smoker which could be the reason for her slow recovery. Who knows.

A very sobering and cautionary article. I hope she recovers.

My guess is that she was taking both to help her sleep (which she may have been short on, due to stress) plus the Benadryl would also help with her allergies.

I took Benadryl at night (for allergies) for a long time. I would take a different, non-drowsy medication during the day. Benadryl is strong stuff and definitely makes you feel sleepy. I considered that a side benefit. The downside is that I would wake up feeling luggy. The dreams you get while on Benadryl are quite colorful and intense!

I grew to really dislike the luggy feeling, and I prefer not to take it now unless I am having a very bad allergic attack or allergic reaction.

I took melatonin once and it made me feel somewhat like a milder version of what she is describing. Counted the minutes until it left my system.

Drugs often have a weird effect on me as they did on my father. Not all of our systems are exactly the same. But I am allergic to a few things that are very rare to be allergic to.

Never took it again and rarely take anything other than aspirin.


Good luck to this woman. Hope she makes it.

Yes,she should definitely get off the benadryl and melatonin.
I've seen coworkers and patients have what's called a paradoxical
reaction to benadryl, which by the way is the active ingredient in the sleep medication sominex. Instead of becoming sedated and sleepy, they get wired, hyperactive, and jittery.
As a nurse I've tried many things for sleep, especially after working a double shift and then coming back for another in eight hours. Melatonin made me tachycardic - my heart rate went up to the 140s for three hours. I fell asleep briefly just as I'd decided to drive myself to work and go to the ED. Woke up after an hour and heart rate was in the 120s for another two hours.
Just because a medication doesn't require a prescription does not mean it's safe for everyone.

The poor woman! The virus-deniers and virus-minimizers need to read this first person account.

I keep hearing about virus deniers.

I don't know any virus deniers, but I do know many who deny that we've had deaths in the past, as they don't want to talk about them. When 80,000 died of influenza a couple years ago, why didn't we read horror stories like the one in the OP?

I assume now every winter we will be shut down and will be fed constant stories of death, right?

I know many in denial of recent serologic surveys that show many more have been infected than previously thought, making the fatality rate lower - around that of influenza. Many also want to deny there might be inflation of the death count, as government pays more for covid patients. Believe one number, deny another.

I also know many deniers of the economic impact of the shutdown. They don't believe there are 30 million unemployed, and that suicide rates go up 1% for each of those millions.

I also know many who deny that people will starve, as now there are estimates of around 300 million by the end of the year.

https://qz.com/1850947/the-deadly-consequences-of-the-covid-19-economic-shutdown/

quote
A recent New York Times article quoted a Delhi, India worker stating, “Instead of coronavirus, the hunger will kill us.” The piece reported that around 265 million people around the world could face starvation by the end of the year, and that measures like strict stay-at-home orders are “drying up work and incomes, and are likely to disrupt agricultural production and supply routes.” As bad as millions of people starving to death may be, it’s only one of many other consequences that are likely to arise from a prolonged total economic shutdown.
end quote

See the above article for more impacts of the shutdown.

Denial about people dying at home due to shutdown and untreated medical problems.

Then there are those who deny that rural hospitals are threatened to close due to restrictions, as I just watched this morning.

There are those who deny that businesses will permanently close, as we've seen locally.

Then denial about revenue for state and local governments and schools being severely reduced, and inability to provide public health and other services.

Of course, the answer to all these problems is the federal government printing money and throwing that around. And then there's denial about the consequences for that, and how it affects the poor disproportionately.

Our WA governor is one of the deniers, as he now thinks we can wait a couple more months to re-open. Initially we were told to just do it a few weeks, to flatten the curve, but now if you have any cases, stay closed. As with many of our wars, mission creep, as those in power can't let go.

Our area has little going on - 500,000 population in our county and only a couple new cases a day. 600 bed capacity hospitals, with 10 covid patients - hardly overwhelmed.

Many want to deny any difference in region, and consider Wyoming to be the same as New York in potential for death.

Some are saying the virus might be around a couple years. Are you a virus denier if you don't want to be out of work that long?

The deniers think food will magically appear on the shelves, and the power will stay on, without people going to work. Or do they not actually believe in staying home? Apparently they think they can go to the store.

Many of us who are not in denial are looking for ways to prevent death and destruction from the shutdown, while minimizing the impact of the virus.

There are many ideas out there proposed by leading epidemiologists from the start, to prevent deaths from the shutdown, but too many in denial to listen.

Let me get this straight, the people who are trying to avoid a worst case scenario for a pathogen that infects and kills more people in months than the flu kills annually are in denial while selfish fucks saying, "Damn the human cost, we want the economy to be healthy!" are right on this?

When this pandemic is over, Free Randroid, see if any proctologists can get your head out.


BTW, WHERE is the source for your claim that "the government pays more for COVID patients?" Is there an actual source or is this another, "I'm Free Man, I know more than any source does" claim?

>BTW, WHERE is the source for your claim that "the government pays more for COVID patients?" Is there an actual source or is this another, "I'm Free Man, I know more than any source does" claim?


I would encourage you to read all of the following (although I copied the final conclusion)

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/21/facebook-posts/Fact-check-Hospitals-COVID-19-payments/

The conclusion:

"A post shared on Facebook claims hospitals have a financial incentive to claim patients had COVID-19, saying payment is three times higher if a patient goes on a ventilator. An article the post links to includes comments from a doctor who suggests the number of coronavirus cases is being padded.

It is standard for Medicare to pay roughly three times more for a patient with a respiratory condition who goes on a ventilator than for one who does not. That has nothing to do with the coronavirus.

As part of a federal stimulus bill, Medicare is paying hospitals 20% more than standard rates for COVID-19 patients.

Indications are that due to a lack of testing and other factors, the number of coronavirus cases has been undercounted, not padded.

For a statement that is partially accurate, our rating is Half True"

Also see

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/hospital-payments-and-the-covid-19-death-count/

One key point:
"In an interview with FactCheck.org, however, Jensen said he did not think that hospitals were intentionally misclassifying cases for financial reasons."

Read the rest of the article for reasons why the claim that hospitals are deliberately overdiagnosing Covid-19 cases is unlikely.

If factcheck is missing the fact that hospitals are run like a racket, what else are they missing?

Medical billing was massively corrupt before Covid. I once took junior in to be checked for a concussion. The doctor saw him for 15 minutes. He was fine. Since we didn’t get out until after midnight, they billed the insurance company $2000 for an overnight stay.

Congress set up perverse payment incentives for Covid. At the same time, normal hospital business is way down. Hospitals are going to bill the way they usually do, especially with the solvency of the hospital on the line. The result is an inflated death count.

You say that despite evidence to the contrary offered immediately above. You lose the argument unless you can provide better evidence.

All I have is hear-say, same as them. We were arguing? We’re not even going steady.

Not true.

[|] provided sources for his statements. You did not. There wasn't any argument since you didn't even enter the arena.

Since this payment method is based on Medicare DRGs, answer these questions:

Do you know what DRGs are?
Do you know how DRGs work?
Do you know whtat the penalties for Medicare fraud are?

How many times are you going to post the same argument impervious to others' replies? Well, at least you are not reposting that ridiculous March article as if it had not subsequently been discredited. I guess that is progress.

A few points, though, about the article you just produced.

1) It says that shutting down the economy will produce increased suicides. That is true. But the precise prognostication is that 24 months of today's shutdown will cause 20,000 additional deaths by suicide. The notion that the present restrictions will continue for two years is a worse scenario than virtually anyone anticipates. But even if it were true, that's 10,000 a year in comparison to the 35,000 or so deaths caused by COVID-19 EACH MONTH, so it seems as if you value the lives of pandemic victims 1/35th as much as those who die from containment efforts. Why is that? Do you have a political agenda that requires that the illness-induced deaths are less important than containment-induced ones?

2) Your article completely ignores the consequences of NOT imposing shutdowns. The models basically agree that without constraints somewhere between one and two million Americans would die from COVID. Do you have any conception of how many families would be ruined by that many deaths? How many suicides, episodes of domestic violence, personal bankruptcies, and bereaved children would ensue? Or is this another area where your political priorities lead you to discount the costs of the policies you implicitly endorse?

3) Your article states that the economic disruption will interrupt supply chains and thereby stop people with other illnesses from obtaining healthcare. Do you realize that this argument supports the quarantines and not your perspective? It is the need to keep COVID-19 from overwhelming hospitals and other healthcare resources that necessitates the shelter-in-place regimes in the first place.

Finally, in your gloss of the article you state that some parts of the US are not threatened by COVID and hence should not be subjected to the same constraints as, say, NYC and the US west coast. But since the White House has disavowed any role in the distribution of testing supplies, PPEs, and other medical goods, and has effectively left quarantine measures up to the states and local authorities, one wonders what on earth you are talking about. Read an article, look at a map: you'll find that there are vast differences between the quarantine measures imposed across the country. So what are you arguing against?

Your politics blind you to the truth. If that were not the case, you would think about the consequences of the path you advocate as well as the advantages as part of a balanced cost-benefit analysis. But that's a degree of objectivity incompatible with a pre-existing political bias as pronounced as the one you display.

It's more of that pseudo-"libertarian" bullshit again.

For some of these characters "libertarian" means "liberated from the need for evidence and disciplined thought." In this case it additionally means "freed from the tyranny of paragraphs."

free Man likes to point out that one flu season produced 80,000 deaths in a year.
The comparison is not particularly comparable.

By tomorrow Covid-19 will have produced 80,000 deaths in 3 months. If that were to continue for a full year it would equal ~320,000 deaths.

Consider also, that there was a vaccine for the flu and there is none (yet) for Covid.

I've mentioned before that during the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic, both of my maternal grandparents lost their first spouses. For my grandmother, it was a good three years before she was able to remarry. During that time, she had to go work in a factory, at a time when factory work had brutally long hours and was often dangerous. We still don't know what happened to her young children during this time period.

So that was two families ripped apart by the same pandemic, just two generations ago for me. My grandparents suffered a horrible personal and economic impact from that pandemic.

Talk to your governor, Free Man. The rest of us can not solve your problem for you. It might be that the eastern part of your state is able to reopen sooner than the western part.

Also, 60k deaths is a terrible flu year--more like 45k deaths is average. We've hit a third more death than a very bad flu year--as you say, in 3 months.

That doesn't even count the number of people who survive in a months-long limbo of severe illness and debilitation who don't appear on death statistics.

It's like a comment I read, "no one's dying of America's number one cause of death."

Covid-19 excuses ...


1. Instead of preventing covid-19, we should let people infect each other to achieve herd immunity.

2. Most cases of covid-19 are mild. We can keep older people at home and allow young, healthy people to go back to school and work.

3. People are getting sick and dying from other illnesses in greater numbers than covid-19.

4. It’s worth the sacrifice if some people die so that the country has a functioning economy.

5. We’ve been in lockdown for more than a month and cases aren’t declining; social distancing doesn’t work.

6. We can’t keep the country in lockdown until a vaccine is developed, which could take years.

Can't read, pay wall.

If you google "Washington Post" and the name of the article, that should dodge the pay wall.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you google "Washington Post" and the name of
> the article, that should dodge the pay wall.


I understand that if you have several internet search engines like Google, Chrome, etc., if you run into a pay wall in one switch over to another search engine to get another round of free access to the particular site.

For me it works using Edge and IE.