Despite the well-documented symptoms and potentially fatal consequences of catching COVID-19, there’s still young people who think it is only really bad for old people and that their age will help them get over the coronavirus should they get it.
This is clearly a dangerous way of thinking and now a young man who suffered from COVID-19 has shown the grim reality of how the coronavirus doesn’t give a crap about your age or how fit you are.
Speaking of COVID-19, the GOAT team talk about how iso baking is the new thing to do on ‘It’s Been A Big Day For…’ below:
43-year-old Mike Schultz is one of the many people in America who caught COVID-19 and thought that he was young and fit enough to get over it with little trouble. As per Buzzfeed News, he worked out six or seven times a week, weighed a healthy 86 kg and had no underlying health conditions.
But as Mike recounted to Buzzfeed News, his assumption was far from the brutal truth and he ended up going through a 6-week ordeal in which he lost 20 kg, lost a good chunk of his lung capacity due to pneumonia, and was sedated and hooked up to a ventilator for almost the entire time.
Just to really hammer home the horrible reality of how COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate between the young and old or fit and unfit, Mike shared an eye-opening before and after photo of himself that shows how much of a toll the coronavirus took on his health.
Mike tells Buzzfeed News that he caught COVID-19 at a festival in March and went to hospital just days after. After being intubated and sedated, he later awoke and “thought only a week had gone by” only to be told by his nurse that he had in fact been in the hospital ward for six weeks. Even taking that photo of himself post-COVID-19 was physically difficult because he just holding the phone was like climbing a mountain.
The horrible experience with COVID-19 prompted Mike to share his story as a way to tell people not to be complacent about the coronavirus and how it can happen to anyone indiscriminately.
“I knew what I thought going in [about the coronavirus]. I didn’t think it was as serious as it was until after things started happening. I thought I was young enough for it not to affect me, and I know a lot of people think that.
“I wanted to show it can happen to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, have preexisting conditions or not. It can affect you.”
Mike is on the road to recovery now and received a lot of financial and moral support through a GoFundMe campaign, which also highlighted the awful financial burden some people may find themselves under due to COVID-19.
It’s an extreme way to get young people to understand the horrible reality of COVID-19 but here’s hoping that Mike’s story will get through to those who still aren’t taking things seriously or are buying into all the misinformation out there.
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