Great news for people who aren't me!

Though I'm in generally good health and the condition is well controlled with daily medication, I do have an autoimmune disease. Early on in this pandemic I was very concerned that this underlying condition would impact my prognosis if I contracted COVID-19. There wasn't much research yet about outcomes for people with my condition, but one thing that did seem clear was that the type of medication I'm on does not increase my chances of contracting the disease, which was reassuring. Some people treat with immunosuppressants, which as the name suggests, suppress your immune system and make it harder to fight off infection; these people were at elevated risk of catching the disease, but the recommendation was to continue your medication because letting that condition flare up would be even worse.

So for the past months I've been living as if I had the same chances for contracting and surviving the disease as anyone else. Obviously, I'd like to avoid getting it at all, which is why I take precautions like staying home, getting things delivered, washing every item that comes into my house, etc.

In the past few weeks, it seems there have been more reports of relatively young, healthy people having really bad outcomes from COVID-19. One of the things that was recently discovered is that the disease can cause blood clots to form all over the body, which can lead to other problems and even death during treatment. Many patients are dying of stroke, for example. Some hospitals are putting all COVID-19 patients on blood thinners, though even that doesn't always prevent it. I've had a fear of blood clots for many years (probably because I've been on birth control, with clots a common side effect, for almost half my life), so this whole development was very scary to me. Also, I recently had some family members who were dealing with stroke and other clotting issues.

The second bar from the top is what I take

Last night, I saw the thing that has probably upset me the most recently. In a Facebook group about my autoimmune disease, someone posted a chart of COVID-19 outcomes for people on various types of treatments. It was shared with a cheerful caption like, "Great news for those of us on immunosuppressants!" Not so great for me, though: the type of medication I'm on has the second worst outcome. Now, there's a lot this chart doesn't tell us - did the people on this type of medication have more active disease, or additional medical conditions? Were they generally older than people on other forms of treatment? Was their outcome typical, but the immunosuppressant medication the other patients were on was actually a benefit to their recovery? (This has already been suggested and is being tested right now to help fight the cytokine storm caused in some COVID-19 patients.) We can't tell from the data that's available right now. So I don't want to read too much into this chart. But it really re-triggered my anxiety since I saw it.

All I can do is just continue taking the precautions I have been...