Looks like Donald Trump (and Melania "Give Me A Fucking Break" Trump) are going to get a little adventure in empathy. Whee!
Dear Trumps: if you're lucky enough to get the so-called "mild" version that doesn't require hospitalization, here's the first thing: The symptoms will keep changing.
Right now, Jonathan Lemire is on my teevee saying you had a "raspy throat" the other day. Ooops! This is the first thing: The sore throat, according to me and the other people I know who had it, feels like someone took a razor blade and slashed your throat, and it stays that way for a while. (Try the Vitamin C and zinc lozenges. They do help.)
It took several months before my sore throat finally went away. I hope yours doesn't last that long, I know how you love to yell.
You may or may not have a fever. (I didn't.) You may feel incredibly cold, like you were trapped in a walk-in freezer, yet still show a normal temperature. Whatever! Luckily for you, you have easy access to medical care and tests -- something you made almost impossible for the rest of us in the early stages of this pandemic. But bygones!
The chest tightness is scary as hell. It feels like a grand piano has fallen on your chest! If you're "lucky" like me, it will pass. If it doesn't, well, you have doctors watching you closely.
Maybe the scariest part is, the virus feels like it's knocking on the door of every organ and system in your body, looking for a way in.
After a few weeks, you feel better. If you're really lucky, it stays that way.
If you're not lucky, and you're one of the people like me who has what they call "long haul covid," you have several awful months ahead of you. You will keep relapsing, and during those relapses, you will suffer from enormous, crushing fatigue. Three-naps-a-day fatigue. (And no, Adderall won't help. In fact, if you have heart damage, you will have to stop tooting.)
If you can get past the terror, it's actually kind of interesting to observe your body reacting to this bug you and your administration inflicted on millions by so carelessly ignoring it. A couple of times, my face swelled up and hurt. One of the warning signs of another relapse for me was, my tongue swelled up, too. My hands hurt for quite a while. Neuropathy in my feet, too.
Oh, and the weird blood pressure spikes are scary, too. That time my BP went up to 265/154? Yeah, scared the crap out of me, especially since I normally have blood pressure on the low side.
From what I read, it can also cause severe anxiety symptoms, completely separate from the fact that you're already pretty anxious about being sick for months on end. (That doesn't help with the chest tightness.)
A couple of times, I felt like I couldn't quite catch my breath. Pretty frightening.
Anyway, good luck with that. I really wouldn't wish this on anyone, but I do get to be angry at the fact that your narcissism and willful ignorance made sure so many other people experienced this before you did, with over 200,000 dead.
And if you're looking for a face-saving measure out of your impending crushing defeat, well, you could always pull out of the race.
