Thought of the Day - May 20 - What Does Recovered Mean?

Countries around the world are producing figures on the number of cases, the number of fatalities, and the number of recovered. Active cases are defined as the number of cases minus the other two figures. But let's dig a little deeper. There is a lot of analysis happening around fatalities; rightly so as it provides valuable data leading to better treatments, understanding of relationships with other co-morbidities, the effectiveness of potential therapeutics, etc. However, there is another category that is only now been talked about: "recovered".

While the difference between "in hospital" and "discharged", or "tests positive" and "no longer tests positive" is fairly clear, we are now seeing that the distinction between "active" and "recovered" is pretty blurry. BC revised its criterion last month adding "consideration for specific patient symptomology". There are people who are relapsing (some say getting re-infected), others have new or exacerbated ongoing conditions - organ damage, fatigue syndrome, heightened allergic reactions, continued inflammation, mental or sensory impairment, compromised immune response, blood clots, etc. This is also known to happen with other types of viral infections. Indeed the US military is now banning applicants who have had Covid-19 (first they said "diagnosed", now they are saying "hospitalized") - maybe they know more than the general public.

All this to say, I may have been wrong. Early on my thoughts were: if you are young and healthy why not get this over and done with and self-infect (as we used to do years ago for many potentially fatal diseases, such as measles, that had no vaccine). At that time I was thinking of the chance of death, which is very low for this group. Now that more information is being shared, the real issues may actually lie in the "recovered" column.

Cheers

Cliff