Symptoms are primarily respiratory. Coughing and shortness of breath are common, according to the CDC. Fever is also possible. The severity of the symptoms depends highly on the patient’s age and immune system.
For the elderly and those with underlying heart disease, diabetes or other conditions, coronavirus can cause pneumonia and lead to organ failure and death. But for most people, cases have been mild, requiring little to no medical intervention.
Carl Goldman, the owner of a California radio station, is one of those people.
“I have the coronavirus,” he wrote in an op-ed for The Post. “And it hasn’t been that bad.”
Goldman, who is in his late 60s, says a bad case of bronchitis a few years ago was much worse.
“This has been much easier: no chills, no body aches,” he wrote of coronavirus. “I breathe easily, and I don’t have a stuffy nose. My chest feels tight, and I have coughing spells. If I were at home with similar symptoms, I probably would have gone to work as usual.”
But Goldman was aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where dozens of Americans were infected.
“If you told me when I left home in January that I wouldn’t be back until March — that, instead, I would be confined for more than 24 days because I’d catch a novel virus at the center of what could become a pandemic — that would have completely freaked me out,” Goldman wrote. “But now that it’s happening, I’m just taking it one day at a time.”