There are two ways to classify acute respiratory disease: by symptoms (syndrome) or by causative agent. Most of the time a syndrome is used because there is no reason to look for a causative agent. /1
https://twitter.com/reutersfacts/status/1435691548813955078
COVID-19 is an outlier. The reason for this is surveillance - we test to track the disease for some reason (epidemiological, political, or other stupid). As with most acute viral respiratory diseases, treatment is supportive not targeted. /2
Had we not gone nuts, there would be no covid-19. Majority of cases would squarely fall into common cold, sinusitis, or flu categories by symptoms. Clinically there is no reason to find what caused any of that because we have no targeted treatment. /3
Majority of cases of these syndromes are self-limiting that is they resolve on their own without any treatment. If you want to treat them, you would be treating symptoms. /4
Treatment of symptoms roughly splits into two ideologies: alleviation (traditional) or elimination (modern). Alleviation implies you help a man suffer through a symptom by making him comfortable. Eg. Slight physical cooling for fever or opening up passages to ease breathing./5
Elimination means bringing down fever or drying up mucous membranes. /6
Reuters is full of shit. Otherwise they operate under assumption of a static disease in vacuum. Other common viruses that cause “a common cold” cause flu-like symptoms in certain people and kill. What is different now - scale and proportion. /7
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