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Comment by gpapilion | Hacker News Reader

Generally lockdown in the US has been pretty loose. Many people have left their homes, and had the opportunity to be exposed.

I also think there is a likelihood that between presymptomatic/asymptomatic transmission, and the possibility of 2 week incubation this seems like a nightmare to track transmission.

A friend who had SARS-cov2 was sick for 30+ days. So it’s not clear to me that a mild infection would be over in 14 days.

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More importantly than the tightness or looseness, we don't really have any facilities set up for if one member of a household gets sick and wants to stay away from the other members and not infect them. I can understand discharging patients back to their families before they're PCR negative because infectiousness in SARS-CoV-2 seems to be very frontloaded. But for people recently diagnosed with mild cases of Covid-19 it would be good if we had places for them to quarantine outside their households even if it was on a voluntary basis.

If it's a mild infection, by definition, the immune system has squashed it. If it didn't, the virus would take hold; it's not a latent viral infection like herpes.

Edit: okay, okay, I didn't specify "a mild infection that stays mild and goes away". We know complications can arise and the infection can progress into severe symptoms. Plenty of examples.

The evidence does not support this viewpoint. Also, things are complicated by the evidence that the worst symptoms are caused by cytokine storm, i.e. an auto-immune response.

Which evidence? Are you referring to the "lag" in immune response in the initial stage of infection?

Perhaps I should have said there is no evidence that I am aware of that supports that viewpoint. Instead, there is evidence that asymptomatic people can transmit the virus. No symptoms does not mean no virus.

Asymptomatic does not mean permanently infected

There are plenty of cases that start with mild symptoms, and then progress to severe/critical after about a week. Boris Johnson is a perfect example of this.

Please don't spread misinformation.

I've had coughs that have lasted a month or more - including at the start of lockdown [#] (caught from my son, I think, who was coughing for 8 weeks or more). I've always assumed that this is because a virus can be kept at low levels, but can "hide" in the body not coming across antibodies that will harm it, but not spreading enough to create a heightened immune response??

Kinda like when you don't take a full course of antibiotics, the latent infection grows again to problem levels.

You indicate this is wrong thinking (not a suprise as it's just a null hypothesis from someone without biology training): so what is going on when you have a cough/blocked nose for weeks on end?

{# I'm very curious to find if the virus I had was Covid19; it sent me to bed with mild flu-like symptoms, gave a tight chest, had me occasionally [not persistently] coughing for weeks. No noticeable anosmia. Very little phlegm; no snot (nasal/sinus mucus).}

> Generally lockdown in the US has been pretty loose.

I'd like to see the same study done outside of NY, because the NY lockdown was one of the most stringent in the country, from what I've read.

Was it? It reads about the same as the Bay Area's, possibly even a bit looser.

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