every fall and winter sneezing sniffling coughing in the lake is it the common cold is it the flu
is it covid 19 all of these have overlapping symptoms so how do you know which one it is
and covid 19 cases are already starting to surge again the so-called second wave
now that we're in the middle of october and the temperatures are getting colder and colder
so let's talk about how you can tell the difference if you can tell the difference between
these three illnesses and when you should consider going to seek medical attention all three of these
covid 19 the flu in the common cold they're all caused by viruses and the only way that these
viruses survive is by getting inside the cells of animals including humans there are over 200
viruses that can cause the common cold by far the most common ones being rhinoviruses
and different types of coronaviruses the exact virus that causes infection and how your body's
immune system reacts to that infection is what determines how severe the illness will be the main
way that these respiratory viruses spread is when someone who's sick with one of these illnesses
coughs or sneezes or talks or sings and then they propel that virus through respiratory droplets
and then it gets onto someone else's into their nostrils or their mouth or they inhale into their
lungs but it can also be spread when it gets onto commonly touched surfaces like such as
door handles and then someone else touches that and then they get that on their fingers and then
they touch their their face specifically they're either their nostrils their mouth or sometimes
the eyes now when these respiratory viruses are in these droplets and they're expelled from someone
they get launched into the air and they can travel six feet sometimes up to 12 feet
some of the viruses like sars coronavirus 2 the one that causes covid 19 can actually be
aerosolized and travel up to 27 feet and that's not just a made up number they actually did
studies on this and there's video evidence to show that this is what happens i made a whole
video on this called airborne transmission so go ahead and check that out if you want more details
with covid19 an infected person doesn't need to have symptoms to spread the virus of someone else
about 40 of viral transmission occurs before an infected person actually shows symptoms if people
with covid 19 do get symptoms the symptoms can last for several days or it can last for
the duration of the illness and then there's of course the long haulers were last ongoing for
weeks to months at a time and up to one third of people with covid 19 never get symptoms with
the common cold you're contagious the entire time you have symptoms but you're most contagious right
when you get the virus before you develop symptoms so right when you get the virus that's when you're
most contagious then you get the symptoms and you remain contagious throughout the entire
time now with influenza meaning the flu you're most contagious the day before you get symptoms
and you remain contagious up until around the fifth day of illness and for lots of people the
fifth day is pretty much when the flu is over but it can go a little bit longer than that
with any of these illnesses it's important to stay home to prevent others from getting sick
whether that's you or your child being sick stay home now based on symptoms alone can
you tell the difference between the common cold the flu and covid 19 and the answer is sometimes
but the only real way to know for sure is by doing testing the common cold is most likely to cause
sneezing a runny or stuffy nose sore throat and cough these symptoms usually last a week
and they're typically worse on days two to four of the illness symptoms don't usually appear until
day 2 to 3 of the illness and like i said it's right after you get the virus when you're actually
most contagious so those first two days you don't have symptoms and that's when you're most
contagious in about one-fourth of colds there can be a persistent cough that lasts for several weeks
with the flu you typically have the same symptoms as the cold but in addition you're going to have
body aches headache fevers chills sweats fatigue and sometimes nausea and vomiting flu can last
for a week or maybe a little bit longer but typically it's about five days sometimes flu
can be so severe that it causes inflammation in the lungs so the real wild card here is covid 19
so one third of the time it doesn't cause any symptoms and then sometimes it can cause
mild symptoms similar to the common cold sometimes it can cause symptoms similar to the flu and one
of the unique symptoms of covid 19 or relatively unique is that it can cause loss of taste or smell
and then like influenza coconitine can cause a viral pneumonia so inflammation in the lungs
and sometimes that viral pneumonia is so severe to the point of causing acute respiratory
distress syndrome essentially you have lots of inflammation within the lungs and that can also
cause this cytokine storm where other organs in the body can become affected by that and you can
get multi-organ failure and that's what can lead to death that's very rare the case fatality rate
of covid 19 is thought to be around 0.4 percent again because it's early in the pandemic that
number is being adjusted so when you compare covid 19 to the flu they both can cause viral pneumonia
and they both can cause ards but covid 19 is more likely to do that from the time someone
gets sars coronavirus 2 to the time that they develop symptoms it can happen anywhere from day
two to day 14. but on average it's about five days another unique aspect of covid 19 is that
symptoms can be mild and there can be temporary improvement and then people get worsening
symptoms after that temporary improvement these symptoms can eventually resolve or things can get
worse and then there's the long callers which i talked a lot about in my last video with covid 19
we know that there are certain risk factors that make people more prone to having worse outcomes
this is older age that's the biggest one being a male also having obesity or heart disease or
high blood pressure or diabetes these are all risk factors for having more severe disease
in a recent october study published in the new england journal medicine the researchers
identified a specific cluster of genes that make some people more prone to having severe covet
illness and they also confirmed the potential involvement of the abo blood group system
there seems to be a higher risk in type a than in other blood groups and a protective effect in
type o if you think you have symptoms that might be covid 19 or the flu what you can do is call
your doctor or call your urgent care clinic or your hospital emergency department and you might
want to get a test regardless whether you call it before or after it's especially important to
make that phone call if you're at higher risk for having severe disease the most concerning symptom
is shortness of breath so if you have shortness of breath that alone is enough reason to seek medical
attention it's also not a bad idea for some people to get a pulse oximeter so that they can check
their oxygen levels generally speaking most people have oxygen saturation levels of 98 to 99 100
but some people have underlying lung conditions or even underlying heart conditions where their
oxygen levels at baseline are lower such as pulmonary hypertension such as with copd emphysema
so these patients have lower oxygen levels in the 89 to 92 percent range or 94
so you have to know what your baseline oxygen level is before you can really interpret
how low you need to go before you seek medical treatment but for most people who have a baseline
oxygen saturation of 98 to 99 100 percent when their oxygen level drops below 94 percent that's
when we start to get real concerned that they could have an acute respiratory illness such as
covid 19 going on i did talk about this in further detail in one of my videos where i talk about the
pulse oximeter and checking your oxygen levels as it pertains to covid 19 now let's talk about making
the diagnosis of flu and covid 19 with the flu we have a rapid antigen test and we get results in 30
minutes it has a sensitivity of about 70 percent so if someone truly does have the flu that test
will pick it up 70 percent of the time not the greatest not the worst so it's a good test to rule
out the flu but not rule in the flu so if someone actually does not have the influenza virus and
they test negative with that test it's going to give you an accuracy about 95 in that circumstance
so again it's good to rule out the flu but not good to rule in the flu what is a more accurate
test for the flu that would be the standard flu test the only problem is that it takes about three
days to get results back so you have to trade off the time versus the accuracy in that case
testing for covid 19 is a whole another discussion and actually did make a video on
one of the tests for covid 19 the rapid antigen test but for this part of this video i'm going
to give a brief summary of the testing we have the pcr test which is the gold standard that's
the best that you can get the problem is it takes a little while for that test to come back
you have to do an oral swab and a nasal swab so that's that then there's the rapid antigen test
for covid 19 that's the one i made a video on that has the advantage of getting quick results
within 15 minutes and it's almost as accurate as the pcr test then you have the antibody test
that's the third category of testing for cover 19. this doesn't test if you have active infection
what it does is it tests if you had recent infections so if you had a history of covid 19
in theory it's going to detect if it's accurate enough it's going to detect that you've had
recent or previous infection with covid 19. so really the two main tests are the pcr tests
and the rapid antigen tests in order to detect if you have active infection the loss of taste
the loss of smell is a relatively unique feature of covid 19 that can help differentiate between
the common cold and influenza does that mean the common cold can't cause loss of taste of smell
of course not but it is a useful symptom that can help differentiate it but symptoms alone
not enough to determine if you have covid 19 versus the flu versus the common cold
you're going to want to get a test and the rapid engine test which comes back in 15 minutes
is almost as accurate as the pcr test and one more thing from this video is that it's so important
to get the flu vaccination this year more so than ever because of the covid 19 pandemic
you have to realize that not just the covid 19 in itself is bad but that also
has a downstream effect on treating other people's medical conditions
so when you start to add all these things together they compound and really burden
our health care system so please flu vaccination oh what's what's this huh what what what's that
wow
so this is what youtube sent me but really it's what you sent me because you're the one who
subscribed and i want to say thank you very much for subscribing this is what uh they sent me for
getting 100 000 subscribers and i've been so busy with work and with my move into my new place and
just uh been non-stop and making these videos of course so i did want to take the time to finally
open this on camera and i want to share this with you and thank you once again and i think i'm going
to put it i just i was like right here does that look good like that i think it looks good
so yeah thank you once again and by the way a lot of people been asking when i'm going to upload a
new video on my other youtube channel and that's going to be coming soon probably tomorrow or the
day after that so be on the lookout for that if you want to subscribe to my other channel
anyway thanks again and stay safe stay healthy please do the right things from a health
perspective and pass along the message we know that masks are important you guys all already
know all the stuff that you should be doing and uh it's unfortunate that some people at the top
go against the scientific expert device but
you know what it is you watch this channel and again thank you very much
you