Name: Is This Coronavirus, or Just Allergies? Symptoms of COVID-19
Uploaded: 2020-04-04T04:57:15.000Z
Duration: 11 min 4 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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Hello everyone! We think nothing looks different right now,

but if it does, it's because we've moved our studio to my home.

Because the state of Montana has told everybody to stay home for now.

We're doing that, because that is what we can do

I'll show you - I'll grab my phone right now.

And show you what it looks like from my angle.

We want to keep you informed, so we are going to continue

Regular SciShow is going to continue as well, and we'll have plenty

of videos about weird worms and cool stuff in outer space

Now these days, a lot of people might be getting coughs or fevers

and stressing out because they're worried they have COVID-19 —

the disease a lot of people are just calling “corona”

The main symptoms for COVID-19 can overlap with those

And, at least in the northern hemisphere, it's still cold and flu season

— and the spring allergy season is beginning.

Meanwhile, it can be hard to even know if you have COVID-19.

Doctors want several kinds of tests to confirm.

It also can take multiple tests to know for sure

Even if you're tested and it comes back negative,

some reports suggest that in as many as 15-30% of cases,

that is a false negative — meaning you have the disease

Which is why doctors may advise some people who get tested

to self-isolate, even if they test negative.

But knowing more about the symptoms of COVID-19

can give you some clues about what to do next

First things first: If you think you might have the coronavirus

or want medical advice, you should talk to an actual doctor.

If you have acute symptoms, like trouble breathing,

pause all YouTube videos and call your doctor or the emergency room.

Still, the available research does tell us a lot

about what this disease generally looks like.

The three main symptoms everyone's talking about are fever,

Which makes sense, because this coronavirus is mainly

Two major review papers — one in Travel Medicine and Infectious

Disease, one in the Journal of Medical Virology — looked at

symptoms across thousands of patients, mainly in China,

where much of our early info is coming from.

According to their analyses, close to 90% of adult patients

present with a fever, and about 58-72% have a cough.

Big range there, yeah, but this comes from doing statistical analysis

— it means that we're 95% certain that the true number

Only the Travel Medicine authors looked at trouble breathing,

and they found that about 46% of patients had that symptom.

Now, the US Centers for Disease Control lists these as the top 3 symptoms.

But according to these reviews, fatigue and muscle aches

are right up there with difficulty breathing,

Kids seem to have much milder symptoms in general

— for example, the review paper from the Travel Medicine group

found that only 44% had fever, and just 22% had a cough.

And there's some evidence that kids may actually have

different symptoms — like more gastrointestinal issues, for example.

Also, it's important to remember that among both adults and kids,

many cases are presymptomatic — they already have the virus,

We still don't quite know what that means for how those people

spread the disease, but it is probably not good.

Likewise, we know that there is at least a small group of adults,

and probably kids, who are asymptomatic, meaning

In fact, a mathematical analysis published in mid-March,

which looked at early cases in China and how COVID-19 then spread

around the world, estimated that up to 86% of cases

That doesn't necessarily mean asymptomatic — it's just not like

But the illness, of course, can still become very severe

— especially when the fever, cough, and trouble breathing combo

turns into pneumonia, where the lungs become inflamed

By the way, you may keep hearing that older patients

and those with preexisting conditions are more at risk,

and that is true. But even younger, healthier patients

The two papers found that in 15-33% of confirmed COVID-19 cases,

the pneumonia can progress to acute respiratory distress syndrome,

where fluid buildup leads to a severe shortness of breath

That's why having enough ventilators, which help people breathe,

None of these symptoms, of course, are surprising;

there's a good chance you've heard all of this before.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Is This Coronavirus, or Just Allergies? Symptoms of COVID-19

evidence

negative

tricky

plenty