The “mild” covid is not always as mild as you might believe

(CNN) – Many people hear their doctors say they have a “mild” COVID-19 infection amid a surge in the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus, but their illness may not seem as mild as it sounds.

This is what happened to Michelle Cordes, a dietitian at a Chicago-area hospital. She is vaccinated and reinforced, and says that she has done everything possible to avoid catching the virus, such as wearing a mask and avoiding crowds. So when she wasn’t feeling well on December 30, she thought it was a cold or maybe an allergy to the cat her daughter brought home from college.

To be sure, she took a home test and was surprised to find that it was positive for COVID-19. Her husband, son and father-in-law also tested positive.

“We all developed coughs. We all had post-nasal drip. My throat itched, and my husband and I had night sweats for four nights in a row,” Cordes said.

What does a “mild” illness entail?

“Mild” is a word that seems to fit Cordes’s symptoms, compared to those he sees in his patients at the hospital, he said. But her illness didn’t seem like a minor cold either.

What it really feels like during covid-19 can vary drastically. Studies have shown that the illness caused by the omicron variant is usually milder than that caused by the delta variant of the coronavirus, and some people have no symptoms or only have a brief cold. But it can still cause serious illness, especially among unvaccinated people.

There are currently 126,410 people hospitalized with COVID-19, about 89% from last year’s peak, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

But even “mild” illness can be uncomfortable and prolonged.

The definition of covid-19 “mild” from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) includes symptoms that people are all too familiar with these days, such as fever, cough, sore throat and fatigue. They are symptoms that Dr. Shira Doron He has realized that they are nothing to write home about.

The use of the word “mild” “is not intended to minimize your experience,” said Doron, a hospital epidemiologist and infectious disease physician at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

Even people with a mild illness can develop what is called “long covid”, with symptoms that persist for
six months or more. The doctor believes that the term “mild” that experts prefer may need to be reformulated.

“When we, or the CDC or NIH, say ‘mild,’ we really mean that you haven’t gotten sick enough to go to the hospital,” said Doron. “But when you have a flu-like illness that takes you to bed, that’s not light for you. “

Cordes ended up sitting in her pajamas for three days, something she says she had never done before.

“We have felt bad and tired,” Cordes said. “On Monday we took down the tree and by one o’clock we were exhausted.”

This week he is feeling better and is ready to take on a paper shredding project, but he has not yet returned to work.

Dave Juday was also shocked when a routine COVID-19 test came back positive on December 8. This Arizona high school radio and audio instructor undergoes weekly tests and is very careful about wearing his mask because he doesn’t want to bring the disease home to his wife, who has lupus. The vice principal of his school even told him that his positive test scared people.

“They told me that if I can get COVID, anyone can get COVID, I’m very careful,” Juday said.

The vaccines and boosters worked, he said. He never had to go to the hospital, but a slight headache turned into what seemed like one of the worst sinus headaches he’d ever had.

“My head felt like a 20-pound bowling ball, and my sense of smell and taste was fading,” Juday said.

He felt good enough to teach virtually. “Even though I blew my nose 500 times because it looked like Rudolph on the Zoom with my classes,” Juday said. “I don’t even want to know what it would have been like if I hadn’t been vaccinated.”

When your body has these symptoms, it’s doing what it should, Doron said: neutralizing the virus.

“That’s good, but it doesn’t feel right,” said Doron. “The symptoms themselves are not dangerous, and you don’t need to seek medical attention.”

Disadvantages

With a “mild” covid, it is not necessary to go to the emergency room, especially at a time when health resources are scarce.

Calling the disease “mild” can have another downside: It can make some people not take it seriously enough.

“There has been so much fatigue from the covid, and that is associated with the desire to return to normal, or the closest thing to normal, that people can trivialize their symptoms and decide not to get tested for covid or flu,” said Dr. William Schaffner, Professor of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Even with mild symptoms, people should get tested for COVID-19, he said, to see if symptoms are getting worse and need medical attention. A test will also tell them if they need to isolate themselves so they don’t spread the coronavirus to others.

“Your case could be mild, but you could infect Aunt Susie, who has diabetes, and she could get a lot more serious,” Schaffner said.

And while the omicron variant may be causing more cases of mild illness than previous variants, people shouldn’t use that as an excuse to forgo vaccines or boosters.

“People are still hospitalized with this, and the vast majority remain unvaccinated,” Schaffner said. “A hospital is not a vacation hotel.”

Dr. Claudia Hoyen, Director of Pediatric Infection Control at Rainbow Babies University Hospital and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, has also been encouraging everyone you know to get vaccinated and get a booster shot. Hospitals are good at helping people with Covid-19, he said, but symptoms and complications can linger long after a hospital stay.

“We are recording data that shows that sometimes as many as 30% of patients who end up in the intensive care unit never get their life back,” Hoyen said. “The unvaccinated may think that ‘someone is going to save me and everything will be fine’, but not everyone recovers their starting level and their normal life.”