Has anyone read or God forbid experienced Covid recovery? It seems like it could end a wind players career. A tube down your throat and lung damage sound serious. I'll bet there's a cruise ship musician who might have a story.

I'm just trying to dig a little deeper for motivation to keep distancing from my musical friends.

Look up Ron Wilkins. He spent something like 34 days on a ventilator in an induced coma. He's starting to play again. And he's going to need help with living expenses and medical, if anybody can afford to contribute.

<LINK_TEXT text="https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.expres ... 03771.phps">https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.expressnews.com/entertainment/music-stage/amp/How-trombonist-and-San-Antonio-native-Ron-Wilkins-15303771.phps</LINK_TEXT>

https://www.ronsroadtorecovery.com/

Wow, what a story. Just the number of people he knew who got it and died is frightening. Thanks for the links.

I came down with Coronavirus back in March. Luckily the symptoms were relatively mild in comparison to what I’ve read. I didn’t have much issue coming back to the horn. Just your general out of shape feeling from not playing for 2 weeks.

Didn't have COVID but made a recovery almost three years ago from flu / pneumonia / bronchitis. My prescribed inhaler helped a lot to get a full breath. Stayed on small bore for quite a while due to lack of air. Lots of long tones followed by a lot of hacking. Took over six months to get back to speed.

While your lack of breath may be a limiting factor, it is still important to stick with regular practice and do what you can by incrementally building up your tone length and sound.

It's amazing how elastic our lungs are (up to a certain age) in terms of vital capacity. I am 6'1" tall, aged 24. My vital capacity "should" be around 5 liters.

I measured my vital capacity with a Voldyne (not the most accurate, but good for ballpark measurements) this morning before exercise or stretching, at 3.6 liters. Light exercise and stretching raised that to 4 liters. I went for a run, took a steamy shower, and stretched more- 4.9 liters. That's a 36% increase in capacity just at a different time of the day. I didn't get bigger, just more flexible.

Lung function is more than a function of capacity- it also has to do with how efficiently your lungs oxygenate blood. Playing a wind instrument is largely a function of capacity. Capacity can be recovered fairly quickly, even after a serious illness, as long as serious trauma to the ribs or thoracic cavity has not occurred (this will have to heal first). Lung function (especially after Covid, if reports are to be believed) can take longer to recover.

There is a reason that wind instrument playing is prescribed to asthmatics- it helps both function and capacity.

I listened to a scarey podcast yesterday while doing my indoor bike workout (gym access being a problem and my ankle has deteriorated and won't let me run any more).

It talked about patients where the virus escapes the lungs into the bloodstream. COVID toe is the least of their worries (though very painful for the person involved.)

One thing among many I don't understand: The morning talking doctor said with COVID you don't maintain antibodies; they fade and you can get it again. If so, how does a vaccine work? I thought vaccines produced an antibody response.

Re: Ron Wilkins and medical expenses. I've just reread both of the major books on the Spanish Flu pandemic. I hadn't known this, but the European universal health care systems were created as a result of those experiences.

[quote="timothy42b"]

Re: Ron Wilkins and medical expenses. I've just reread both of the major books on the Spanish Flu pandemic. I hadn't known this, but the European universal health care systems were created as a result of those experiences.[/quote]

Interesting. Maybe well get a US universal healthcare system to deal with all the long-term complications

[quote="timothy42b"]...

One thing among many I don't understand: The morning talking doctor said with COVID you don't maintain antibodies; they fade and you can get it again. If so, how does a vaccine work? I thought vaccines produced an antibody response.

...[/quote]

I heard on another broadcast that COViD antibodies last for quite a while -- but we won't know how long quite yet. Possibly for a year, so vaccinations would have to be done annually, much like we do now for flu.

This latest wave seems to have hit everywhere. We here in the far Northeast (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont) were pretty much spared compared to the rest of the country, but we seem to be catching up fast.

[quote="BGuttman"]<QUOTE author="timothy42b" post_id="119205" time="1594217355" user_id="211">
...

One thing among many I don't understand: The morning talking doctor said with COVID you don't maintain antibodies; they fade and you can get it again. If so, how does a vaccine work? I thought vaccines produced an antibody response.

...[/quote]

I heard on another broadcast that COViD antibodies last for quite a while -- but we won't know how long quite yet. Possibly for a year, so vaccinations would have to be done annually, much like we do now for flu.

</QUOTE>

Dr. Gupta made a comment on one of the morning news shows. He said (I'm paraphrasing) that the antibodies don't seem to last, but at the same time we aren't seeing much reinfection, so it isn't clear what's going on. We just don't know enough yet.

I had regular bacterial pneumonia at age 22 and it took nearly a year before my lung capacity got back up to par. I felt it dearly every time I picked up the bass trombone. Not keen on rolling the dice to see what covid would do to my (now older) body.

[quote="timothy42b"]<QUOTE author="BGuttman" post_id="131132" time="1605940523" user_id="53">

I heard on another broadcast that COViD antibodies last for quite a while -- but we won't know how long quite yet. Possibly for a year, so vaccinations would have to be done annually, much like we do now for flu.

[/quote]

Dr. Gupta made a comment on one of the morning news shows. He said (I'm paraphrasing) that the antibodies don't seem to last, but at the same time we aren't seeing much reinfection, so it isn't clear what's going on. We just don't know enough yet.
</QUOTE>
So the disconnect here is that antibody titer (what gets measured in the blood tests that Dr. Gupta referenced) don't quite correspond 1:1 to protective immunity. You can have immune memory that protects you from reinfection even though the quantity of antibodies in your blood declines after last exposure - indeed, that's how it usually works; your antibody titers against measles are almost certainly lower now than they were a month after you were first exposed or vaccinated, but there's still enough there for your immune system to quickly mount a response to any new challenge. For other infections like pertussis, those declining antibodies do eventually translate to renewed susceptibility. We don't know yet how durable immunity to SARS-CoV-2 will be.

TL;DR: declining antibody levels are necessary but not sufficient for covid19 reinfection.