Covid
For a time, I had a site called A Bottleneck in the System. I started it because of talking online with some folks about Covid.
My mental model is that Covid-19 does something to the blood and this somehow is the real issue for why you can't get enough oxygen, not "respiratory" problems. But I can't quite figure out how or why that is.
I and my two sons likely all had Covid in March or April of 2020, though I can't prove that. We never saw a doctor and never had any testing.
We were on the mend when it occurred to me this was likely why we were so tired and hungry and eating not only more than usual but differently than usual. My very aspie oldest son who can be very uncommunicative was all "Well, duh!" which I found annoying.
So he already figured we had Covid and I was late to the party in drawing that conclusion.
I finally drew that conclusion in part because articles about how it impacts the blood began coming out. Prior to that, everything framed it as a respiratory infection that killed people due to the respiratory problems.
And then stories began coming out that ventilators weren't doing very much in comparison to what tney normally do. In short, heroic efforts to treat the respiratory problems were failing to save as many lives as you would think would happen if it were, in fact, a respiratory condition.
Around that time, I spoke with a researcher on HN and we also exchanged a few emails. This person said something I didn't understand and I asked some questions because it sounded like it was blood related.
So part of that conversation can be found here. And I seem to have used the expression an invisible bottleneck in the system for the first time that day in talking about covid, for example in this comment.
That discussion was meatier and more interesting than I remembered it being.
Anyway, I talked with the researcher and talked to my son and described my idea to him that there was some bottleneck preventing oxygen uptake that wasn't respiratory per se and he said my description "fit" with what he was experiencing. We were both having energy issues and were just exhausted in a way that reminded me of episodes of severe anemia I have had in the past.
I was breathing fine but simply moving air in and out of my lungs did not seem to be giving me enough oxygen. I could tell that was the issue: That I somehow wasn't getting enough air even though I was breathing better than usual given my incurable genetic disorder that significantly impacts lung function.
So I told my son this researcher was talking about zinc and we talked and realized all the foods we were piling on in unusual amounts were zinc-rich foods. So I said "Cheese has zinc. Order a cheese pizza and I will go pick it up."
So I did that and he felt a whole lot better after eating that. So we continued to suck down zinc-rich foods and we began having fewer issues with being exhausted and whatever.
I later thought about how events in our lives allowed us to load up on beef in our diet for some weeks a few months prior to getting what we think was Covid-19. For various reasons, we hadn't had much beef for the 7.5 years before that and we spent at least six or eight weeks eating a LOT of beef and that may have been part of why we had so few symptoms and I didn't think it was Covid until we were mostly over it.
My mental model is that Covid-19 does something to the blood and this somehow is the real issue for why you can't get enough oxygen, not "respiratory" problems. But I can't quite figure out how or why that is.
I and my two sons likely all had Covid in March or April of 2020, though I can't prove that. We never saw a doctor and never had any testing.
We were on the mend when it occurred to me this was likely why we were so tired and hungry and eating not only more than usual but differently than usual. My very aspie oldest son who can be very uncommunicative was all "Well, duh!" which I found annoying.
So he already figured we had Covid and I was late to the party in drawing that conclusion.
I finally drew that conclusion in part because articles about how it impacts the blood began coming out. Prior to that, everything framed it as a respiratory infection that killed people due to the respiratory problems.
And then stories began coming out that ventilators weren't doing very much in comparison to what tney normally do. In short, heroic efforts to treat the respiratory problems were failing to save as many lives as you would think would happen if it were, in fact, a respiratory condition.
Around that time, I spoke with a researcher on HN and we also exchanged a few emails. This person said something I didn't understand and I asked some questions because it sounded like it was blood related.
So part of that conversation can be found here. And I seem to have used the expression an invisible bottleneck in the system for the first time that day in talking about covid, for example in this comment.
That discussion was meatier and more interesting than I remembered it being.
Anyway, I talked with the researcher and talked to my son and described my idea to him that there was some bottleneck preventing oxygen uptake that wasn't respiratory per se and he said my description "fit" with what he was experiencing. We were both having energy issues and were just exhausted in a way that reminded me of episodes of severe anemia I have had in the past.
I was breathing fine but simply moving air in and out of my lungs did not seem to be giving me enough oxygen. I could tell that was the issue: That I somehow wasn't getting enough air even though I was breathing better than usual given my incurable genetic disorder that significantly impacts lung function.
So I told my son this researcher was talking about zinc and we talked and realized all the foods we were piling on in unusual amounts were zinc-rich foods. So I said "Cheese has zinc. Order a cheese pizza and I will go pick it up."
So I did that and he felt a whole lot better after eating that. So we continued to suck down zinc-rich foods and we began having fewer issues with being exhausted and whatever.
I later thought about how events in our lives allowed us to load up on beef in our diet for some weeks a few months prior to getting what we think was Covid-19. For various reasons, we hadn't had much beef for the 7.5 years before that and we spent at least six or eight weeks eating a LOT of beef and that may have been part of why we had so few symptoms and I didn't think it was Covid until we were mostly over it.
