Four-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner and former WSOP Player of the Year Shaun Deeb has admitted to his Twitter audience that he has contracted the COVID-19 virus. While playing the 2020 World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) from Mexico, Deeb contracted the virus and was so severely affected that he had to be hospitalized.
A Decent Outlook During a Trying Time
Deeb mentioned to his Twitter followers last week that he had contracted the virus. “I’ve been keeping this quiet the last week and a half, but I have COVID now,” he wrote on Twitter. He stated that he had been playing in many of the WCOOP events, even having to nap during the five-minute tournament breaks each hour in the events he was playing. It also was bad enough that he eventually went to a hospital and was admitted to get control of the virus.
On his Twitter account, Deeb was incredibly open about some of the things that went through his mind while he was being treated. “I will have to say (the) scariest thing was debating with my wife making a video to my kids…in case I got intubated (a breathing tube inserted down the throat to the lungs) and whether to tell them I was sick or not,” Deeb wrote on his Twitter account. While he doesn’t go into any further detail on this situation, he did note some of the other physical effects of having the virus.
“One terrible thing about COVID is how hard your body is at retaining water,” Deeb observed, indicating that he was highly dehydrated. “The changing of tastebuds…I’m glad my kids didn’t experience watching me not being able to eat pizza or tortilla chips…I will never give a person shit for complaining about pain…I had no idea your own body could do that much to itself so quickly…it was/is crippling at times,” he concluded.
Released Thursday, Looking to Return
Deeb was released Thursday and apparently is staying in Mexico as there are some questions as to his return to the U. S.:
The COVID-19 pandemic, named after the corona virus discovered in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 (hence COVID-19), has been running rampant around the world. In rapid fashion, the virus migrated from China to Europe and eventually made its way to the U. S. The U. S., through its own mismanagement of the virus, has been heavily affected by the virus, beyond the point that any other country on the globe has been affected.
More than 32 million people have been affected worldwide by the virus, with just under a million of those cases resulting in death. The story in the U. S. has been even worse; with only 330 million of the world’s seven billion people, more than seven million people have contracted the virus (accounting for almost a quarter of the cases in the world) and have seen over 204,000 deaths (once again, almost a quarter of the world’s deaths). Yet despite these bleak numbers, many in the U. S. do not take the virus seriously.
Travel, especially between countries, is one of the worst things that people can do because they expose themselves to the virus in transit. It was what kept many U. S. players out of the recent 2020 online WSOP – many countries would not allow U. S. residents to travel because of the pitiful way that the COVID-19 virus was handled. But many, like Deeb, found their way out of the country to Mexico, which had few restrictions on U. S. citizens traveling to the country.
Deeb is currently waiting in Mexico for clearance from government officials to return to the U. S. He is also concerned about exposing his wife and children to the virus, so it could be some time before Deeb is able to return to U. S. soil.
