Bill Chen was the most recent known poker player to come down with COVID-19, and for him it wasn't pretty.
Here was his description on Facebook:
Chen is around 50 years old. He didn't have any preexisting conditions to my knowledge, but he was overweight. This was a public post on someone else's well-read Facebook thread, so I figured I'd share it here.It was digestive. Diarrhea and huge loss of appetite first, and so tired it took all my energy to stand up and pee. Yeah I figured out I could sit down eventually. Then gastritis from not eating, vomiting bile every hour or two sometimes 36 hours from last meal. doc prescribed medication, two weeks to come back fully from that. I lost 30 pounds from it.
He has since recovered, but I wouldn't be surprised if he suffered permanent damage from this.
It seems that the super-extreme fatigue is a common symptom for those over 45 who come down with the virus.
Some of you also might know of Mike and Tammy Ward, especially if you attended the Pokerstars PCA in the Bahamas. Mike was the tournament director, and his wife Tammy was the tournament coordinator. Both caught COVID-19. Mike had tough symptoms but was not hospitalized, and recovered. His wife Tammy, who had previously dealt with breast cancer, wasn't quite as fortunate. She passed away, likely because she was immuno-compromised from the cancer.
Mike Ward was involved in a small controversy at the PCA in 2016, where the PCA miscalculated the number of players paid and announced the bubble had burst when it hadn't, and then obnoxiously demanded the $500 back from that player later, in a confrontational fashion.