Wikipedia articles require that medical article following the Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine). This article does not follow those strict standards due to the fact that COVID-19 is a current pandemic, and important ongoing research is being lost. Instead this article is being tagged with the word "notes" in the title, so the reader understands that is not a standard Wikipedia article. See Disclaimer section of this article for full details.
This article is intended to be a layman's article about Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For a more scientific version of this article, please see the article Coronavirus disease 2019. Please keep that goal in mind when adding information or editing information.
Classification
COVID-19 is part of the coronavirus family of viruses. It first appeared in November 2019, in Wuhan, China. The first case to show symptoms was on December 1, 2019. It became a worldwide pandemic affect over 200 countries around the world. COVID-19 is the official name used by the World Health Organization (WHO), and coronavirus is the general term that most lay people (non-medical people) use to describe this virus.
Symptoms
These symptoms may appear 2 to 14 days after exposure to the virus (from US CDC, Center for Disease Control):
New loss of taste and smell (usually a first symptom with senior citizens)
Fever (38°c or 100°f
Cough
Chills
Repeated shaking with chills
Muscle Pain
Headache
Sore Throat
Shortness of breathe or difficulty breathing
If you think you have COVID-19 call your doctor, even if your symptoms are not severe and over the counter medicines seem to be working. The doctor will want to keep tabs on your symptoms and the doctor will want to take a history of public places you have been to during the last 14 days.
If you do not have objections, that information can be downloaded from Google's location and forwarded to the doctor. This will never be done without your permission, but sharing this information with your doctor can help warn other people you may unintentionally exposed and allow them to get early diagnosis and treatment. This will further help contain the virus. Your personal information is not released to the public. Just that a person who was diagnosed with COVID-19 was at such and such location at such and such time on such and such day.
Seek Medical Attention
Seek medical attention when you experience the following symptoms:
Shortness of breathe or difficulty breathing
Trouble breathing
Persistent pain or pressure in the chest
New confusion or inability to aruse
Bluish lips or face
If you are over the age of 60 or if you have pre-existing medical conditions, call your doctor to tell them that you think that you have COVID-19 and what symptoms you have.
If you have any of the above symptoms call your doctor, or your local emergency COVID-19 number.
How will a specimen be taken?
In some communities, they do not want COVID-19 patients to go to the doctor's office or hospital. Instead a paramedic will come to your house and get a sample from you, and get information from you. This helps to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by not requiring a person to go out in public, including the doctor's office.
Risk Factors
Over the age of 60
Diabetes
Obesity
Heart issues
Lung issues
Excessive smoking and drinking
Illegal drug use
Prevention
Self quarantining if you know if you have been in contact with somebody who was diagnosed with COVID-19 for 14 days.
Community lockdowns (used when testing was not widely available, cures had not been established, and doctors were still unfamiliar with this virus and how its spreads)
Wearing a face mask in public (current recommendations)
Limit number of people in a public place, including stores and houses of worship (current recommendation). The standard breakups are the following and
Group of 3 people
Group of 10 people
Group of 19 people
Group of 50 people
Group of 100 people
Group of 500 people
Group of 1000 people
Keep groups for exercise, praying, and learning consistent with the same group of people (current recommendations)
Social distancing by keeping 6 ft (2 m) between people when in public.
If one person in a household (or consistent group) is diagnosed with COVID-19, assume everybody in the household (or consistent group) has COVID-19. Some communities will not bother with formal testing, they will just assume you have it, and instruct you to act as if you have been formally diagnosed with COVID-19.
Anybody traveling from out of the country is required to go into a 14 day quarantine. Some communities will require a person to go to a quarantine hotel for those 14 days.
Screening, and Testing
Abbott ID Now 5 minute test (least accurate, 15% false negative)
Vivalytic COVID-19 rapid test | Bosch Global 2 1/2 hours test
Controversies or uncertainties in medicine should be supported by reliable secondary sources describing the varying viewpoints.
The problem with meeting this requirement is that we are currently in the middle of a pandemic. The best that we are going to hope for at the current time is "Dr. X from Y country and Z medical location observed using these combinations of drugs, vitamins, minerals, and/or plants and saw these results with these type of patients." In order to get to the level that Wikipedia normally requires, 3 double blind formal clinical trials need to be done. At the current time, COVID-19 has not been around long enough to realistically meet that requirement.
Instead, the format for this article is to show all the different drug combinations that doctors around the world have seen success, note if other doctors have seen the same success, what type of patients that success has shown for, and link to any clinical trials that are currently being done for that combination (if they exist). We will also include any known information that has been published by the FDA concerning that drug combination.
Findings are often touted in the popular press as soon as original, primary research is reported, before the scientific community has analyzed and commented on the results. Therefore, such sources should generally be entirely omitted (see recentism).
Everything with COVID-19 is recentism. Until this pandemic becomes the past, this is going to be true. But too much critical information is being lost due to the strict adherence to this standard on Wikipedia for a current pandemic of worldwide proportion. By tagging the article as "Notes", it is clear that this article is not intended to become a long term article with the intention of "what information will withstand the test of time". It is intended to be a stop gap article to meet a current need at the current time.
If this article eventually gets deleted (after the pandemic is over), renamed, information incorporated into other articles, or kept for historical purposes as template on how to potentially deal with situations like this in the future, is for the future to decide.
My hope is that Wikipedia administrators (and Wikipedia editors) will understand the intent that this article was created, and respect that intent, and keep this article's content until at least the pandemic is over and people's lives return to normal -- including Wikipedia going back to its strict medical article standards.
Zzmonty (talk) 19:01, 25 April 2020 (UTC) (Wikipedian who originally created this article)
Primary Source
A primary source in medicine is one in which the authors directly participated in the research or documented their personal experiences. They examined the patients, injected the rats, ran the experiments, or at least supervised those who did. Many, but not all, papers published in medical journals are primary sources for facts about the research and discoveries made.
Second Source
A secondary source in medicine summarizes one or more primary or secondary sources, usually to provide an overview of current understanding of the topic, to make recommendations, or to combine results of several studies. Examples include literature reviews or systematic reviews found in medical journals, specialist academic or professional books, and medical guidelines or position statements published by major health organizations.
Triennial Source
A tertiary source usually summarizes a range of secondary sources. Undergraduate or graduate level textbooks, edited scientific books, lay scientific books, and encyclopedias are examples of tertiary sources.
