Alcohol is all out at my local stores, too, but I have a full bottle.
Here is a good article by Dana Lewis on preparedness. Gives data to back up her comments. Per China, Diabetics are 7.3% more likely than non-D to require hospitalization.
The question is… does well controlled diabetes increase risks? The “typical” diabetic in the world is probably running around with an a1c of 10-13 and is generally quite unhealthy overall. So how many of the statistics derived from that population group apply to me? That can be very hard to untangle
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I don’t think your control is the issue, I think like all respiratory diseases (flu etc) that affect the stomach and the lungs that insulin using diabetics are going to have more issues than the general population because of the ability to more easily go into DKA when you can’t keep food and drink down. Honestly 7% higher chance of needing hospitalizations seems pretty small to me. I would guess it is similar to the flu.
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Here is the flu data, Type 1’s are at much more risk (4.4x) of hospitalizations than Type 2’s or non-diabetics.
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I don’t think I’d be in any significant risk of dka due to not being able to keep food down… don’t think anyone on modern regimen carefully administered and monitored should be
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The cause of DKA from being sick is not necessarily from food, but the fact that illness can increase certain hormones which will either increase insulin resistance and/or increase the release of liver glycogen. Both of those factors will be the contributors to increased possibility of DKA.
So in a worst-case scenario, you are throwing up, your body is releasing liver glycogen, and your body is becoming resistant to insulin. Since you are not keeping food down, you don’t take insulin, but the liver glycogen still spikes you. And attempts to bring it down are not as successful, because your body has become insulin resistant.
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If you’re testing and responding appropriately, I still think manageable… granted maybe some of the diabetics out there are still just testing 1x or 2x a day or whatever and don’t feel empowered to adjust their doses under any circumstances
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Yes. Most of these studies are not talking about the FUD types. Not a lot of research studies done on FUDers.
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Question - do you think having flu and pneumonia vaccines will be beneficial relative to Corona virus complications?
I wouldn’t think the flu vaccine would have any effect, but am unsure on the pneumonia vaccine. That said, the flu vaccine could be useful for the flu. My father-in-law was hospitalized with flu which led to pneumonia this year that had nothing to do with the corona virus.
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T1Ds may also be at more risk because of the autoimmune nature of the disease—it may have little to do with control. The damage comes from inflammatory response to the virus in the lungs, and so having hyperreactive immune system may actually do more harm than good in this case. Either way, I suggest considering yourself at potentially higher risk unless shown otherwise.
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Also the pneumonia vaccine is useless for COVID19, because the vaccine is for bacterial pneumonia not viral pneumonia, which is what is going on here. The flu vaccine is only good (sorta) for the flu, which is absolutely a reason to get it if you haven’t, since that’s also rampant, and you can absolutely get both, which is going to be way worse than either one alone.
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I plan to ask my doc to sign a work excuse based on cdc guidance so I don’t have to fly through seattle and work on a large passenger ship for weeks on end in April… I think that’s what’s in line with the current guidance
Chicken
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Normally I have to impregnate someone to be able to take sick leave so this is a great opportunity in that sense
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…and they say romance is dead…
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Purdue University is going to online-only and no gatherings of more than 50 people after Spring Break. Students living in the dorms will not need to return to campus.
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My understanding is that when someone has a serious illness doctors will take measures to avoid unrelated illnesses, so if you are felt to be at risk of developing pneumonia from Covid-19 doctors will probably prescribe antibiotics to prevent a bacterial infection causing pneumonia, or anything else for that matter.
Flu vaccines are available regardless of health state; antibiotics used to be but that proved to be a very bad idea. By now I hope everyone has had their flu vaccine.
It is unlikely to get two different colds at once but there is nothing I know of in a cold itself that prevents another infecting you at the same time. It’s the epidemiology that stops that; if you are feeling unwell you are less likely to encounter the other people who might infect you.
These terms we use pretty much all relate to symptoms; bronchitis and pneumonia, like diabetes, are straightforward descriptions of issues within our bodies. There are only a few potential causes of diabetes, but there are many potential causes of pneumonia and bronchitis. Wikipedia lists viri, bacteria and “other microorganisms” for pneumonia.
The “cold” is a particularly extreme form of these symptomatic descriptions and the terminology has changed with time. When I was much younger a “cold” was a bacterial infection giving rise to those symptoms and “the flu” was a viral infection with similar symptoms.
In my experience the terms are used generically in English, both US and American; “I have a cold” means a mild set of flu-like symptoms and “I have the flu” means a bad case of cold symptoms. So far as I can tell the things we get are virus based but there are an enormous number of viri causing the same symptoms.
So my doctor did prescribe Z-Pack at the end of January when both my wife and I sort his diagnosis because we had a particularly bad “cold”, but he stated the reason was to avoid “community infections.” I.e. he didn’t want us getting anything else in addition to the cold.
At the same time my eye doctor continues to prescribe acyclovir (which is an anti-viral) to lessen the risk of my herpes recurring; a prescription I’m very glad to take because the first re-occurence (it was assumed to be the chickenpox I had when young) was particularly frightening.
Perhaps the things to remember here are that antibiotics are highly effective and act against broad classes of bacteria but if they are used widely they simply stop working.
Vaccines, however, only work prophylactically; they have to be taken well before we encounter the virus in the wild because they don’t “kill” the virus, they just provide a key so that our own immune systems can either disable it or kill our own cells which contain it.
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Fortunately I’ve had the flu vaccine and 2 pneumonia vaccines this year.
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Haven’t started doing those yet, but I hit the big 60 in less than a month’s time, so no doubt my doc will convince me. Do you know what viruses they cover?
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