It finally happened — I got COVID

Last September, I got COVID. It was wildly unpleasant with serious brain fog that lasted for several weeks even after the other symptoms went away. That said, this did give me the opportunity to make some more plots based on my own data. Below, I show a few metrics of my vital signs (respiratory rate, heart rate, heart rate variability, and body temperature deviation) relative to my exposure (vertical dotted line) for six weeks before and after. The thicker grey lines in the background are the pre- and post-exposure averages for those six weeks.

As you can see, for a few things, even six weeks after exposure, I did not return to my pre-exposure baseline. My respiratory rate was slightly lower, my average heart rate was (and actually still remains) slightly elevated, and my heart rate variability is still lower (higher is better). My temperature is more or less the same.

All of this resulted in decreased physical activity, which I plot below.

 

I eventually went back to my baseline level of physical activity for all different metrics, but as you can see in the MET minutes metrics, there was a fairly long period of inactivity where it felt like my heart was not ready for intense exercise.

So, COVID-19: 1/10 — would not recommend.