I would have said the same. 3 and a half years working retail during the pandemic and last week was the week it knocked me on my ass. Be careful.
Same! I work in healthcare and had to test nearly daily (using the antigene tests) and didn’t catch COVID until last week. If I didn’t work in healthcare I probably wouldn’t even know I had it, since the symptoms were rather mild. I only tested, because I had to work with people on chemotherapy and didn’t wanna risk them. At this point, I think there’s lots of people who catch the virus and don’t even know about it since we mostly stopped testing.
What did you do to avoid it for three years?
I dunno, wore a mask in public during the worst of it and used hand sanitizer regularly? I think it helped more that I’m a homebody with no friends.
All it took was a wedding for me to finally catch it last week. Sons of bitches
DUDE SAME
I got it for the first time at the beginning of September. I was so pissed, my 2.5 year streak of avoiding it gone. It was pretty brutal too, the fever and muscle soreness was no joke.
I’m just lonely, that’s my secret :)
yeah i pretty much didn’t notice the lockdown.
Yeah the only things that changed for me much for the pandemic was masking when I grocery shopped, extra SNAP, and the stimulus payments.
Had this weapon hidden under my sleeve for my whole life
It was super effective.
That’s me. I stayed home, avoided events, and waited to go to restaurants until cases were down. When I did go places, I went when it wasn’t busy and sat outside. Avoiding COVID wasn’t rocket science, all you had to do was follow the basic principles of disease prevention.
Now try it with kids or a partner who works in health care. Personally I was quite strict like you, but had it a couple of times due to external factors becoming internal factors.
My wife is an ER nurse and I never got it. Funny thing is she didn’t get it until she was in the hospital getting her gall bladder out. We also had two kids in elementary at the time, and they never got it either.
I won’t pretend that luck wasn’t a big factor, but my wife worked at a senior living facility and I managed to avoid catching it. Hell my wife even caught it, but she moved into the guest room and we just treated it like a clean room
Family of four here, 3 of us got it for the first time this past weekend. My wife still hasn’t had it.
I work in childcare so it was inevitable for me lol. I managed to go a whole 3 years though but caught it a month ago lmao
At this point it’s highly unlikely that there remains a human in an urban center that has not caught covid once. Maybe they didn’t have symptoms, maybe they didn’t notice, but they’ve had covid.
That or they’re a hermit.
Hermit reporting for duty, sir!
There are plenty of immunocompromised folks who have continued to be vigilant and likely haven’t caught it.
But generally, yeah. If you are in a city and haven’t been taking precautions you had it, you were just asymptomatic.
I agree for the immunocompromised, but I’d say they just isolated.
you had it, you were just asymptomatic.
A distinction without a difference, in my mind. I’ll take it
I live in one of the largest US cities, attend concerts, use public transit, and fly internationally. No covid in this house, and we go through a box of RATs a week. Not immunocompromised, we just don’t want covid.
The secret: we wear respirators everywhere and use nasal spray before & after risky situations.
My wife and I just mask up and not n95’s. She wears gloves to but I just wash my hands often. No covid, no regular flue, no cold, no food poisoning. We have not had anything behind headaches and allergies in the last 3 or 4 years. And for those who are going to ask how we know its allergies. Well its because allergy medicine clears it right up and its usually something that would set off allergies.
surface transmission seems to be extremely rare so I wouldn’t worry about gloves.
Thats why I don’t wear them but my wife is a bit more cautious and she should be given her medical issues. Her biggest threat is likely me. That being said in the long run we have been more impressed with how the precautions have kept all the other stuff as well as covid away. I keep worrying restaurants will stop using the light plastic gloves but luckily they seem to be keeping them. I would not be surprised if they looked at the data and saw a marked reduction in online complaints about eating there and then getting sick and decided it was worth the cost. That being said wearing the mask, to me, is nor more and maybe a little less annoying than wearing a hat. But gloves, especially disposable type, does not pass the value vs nuissance factor for me. Granted I live in the north so half the year I am wearing some kind of glove outside. I still hand sanitize and wash though.
Breathing and eating unmasked at a restaurant is a much bigger risk for covid than anything to do with hands. Covid is airborne.
Yeah and I don’t do it often or unnecessarily but I don’t really close myself off all that much. I just use a mask when in an enclosed public space or outside space with inadequate distancing when I don’t otherwise need to utilize my pie hole. So im not zero risk by any means but from my anecdotal data of the last 3 or 4 years its amazing how much it helps. Im wondering how long I can go without getting sick.
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I’m basically a hermit.
Hermits unite! Metaphorically… Stay away from me
I like where you stand on this
No one in my family got it, and my kids are in public school, while I work in a restaurant. Precautions plus luck, I guess. That or we’re genetic freaks.
I never got it, and I’ve been tested a few times due to coming into contact with people who did and always tested negative.
Negative test, especially negative rapid-test do not mean you don’t have covid. And positive tests don’t necessarily mean you’re visibility sick/contagious.
Not a hermit, just mask everywhere, don’t go to big things, and ask my friends what they’ve been doing recently if I want to take off my mask around them.
Yeah people are confusing subclinical disease with not ever having it. Outside of total extreme isolation you had it at some point. You didn’t know you had it. You were in denial about having it. But you had it.
Tests are not 100 percent sensitive. Or many people just chose not to test themselves. But if you were interacting with the general population in the past 3 years you have had covid.
Whats extreme isolation to you? The person at the grocery store still wearing a mask and cleaning with hand sanitizer at the car?
I don’t think my entire family that spans from toddler to elderly would all be asymptomatic and show false negatives on RATs, but I guess it’s possible.
But also is cross-immunisation. So…one could have had something other than Covid-19 and still be immune to it. Then there are also the genetic outliers that are just naturally immune to the attack-vector of the virus.
This is just multiple ways of saying what I said. Outside of some extreme outliers every person has come in contact with the virus. But that doesn’t always translate to extreme illness or even mild illness. As you said some people are naturally resistant or have other means of a defense that doesn’t lead to a significant illness after exposure.
So really the more accurate thing to say is that you never got sick from your covid exposure. Again you have to divide this further into those who genuinely have never had cold like symptoms since 2023 and those who are just in denial about it. I’ve come across a few people who proudly claim they’ve never had it but have shown up to work coughing and hacking. Lol sure you haven’t.
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I see this assertion all the time and while there is a fair bit of underreporting this line is just plain wrong but said with 100% conviction every time.
Estimates using late 2022 data assumes about 25% of Americans 16 or older have not caught COVID. 50+% believe they have not caught COVID, so unless I’m missing something drastic then if you are like me and lived as a hermit for 3+ years, followed all the reasonable precautions, and never had symptoms there is more like a ~50% chance you caught it and were asymptomatic.
It’s only an estimate. It’s closer to only 20 percent not producing antibodies. Some percentage of that is people having immuno compromise and not developing humeral immunity even though they’ve likely been exposed. Then there’s testing failure. None of these tests are 100 percent sensitive.
I do believe though like what. Ten to fifteen percent of people have isolated for three years and not gotten it. I’d buy that for sure. And there are a lot of places where you just don’t encounter people often. People that naturally were distanced from others just sort of…kept doing what they were doing.
I think that depends on what you mean by “having it”. Does having any amount of the covid-19 virus flowing through your body automatically mean you have it? Because the amount of the virus you have been exposed to is an important factor in whether or not you are impacted by it. Also if you aren’t impacted at all, but had what basically amounts to a microdose of the virus did you have covid?
It would be good to know what the medical definition is for this. I don’t actually know personally.
I really should. I haven’t had the 'rona and also survived a stroke and two rounds of brain surgery in 2022. I’m one lucky bastard.
Wow, glad you’re still with us.
Thanks, me too! Otherwise I would have missed the whole reddit debacle, and never discovered Lemmy😉
I only had one round of brain surgery and worked in a convince store all through COVID taking slander from all the customers in my super red county. Did not get COVID!
that you know of. I’m sure there are sections of the population that were silent carriers. you fuckers got us sick!
I’m one of those who still haven’t caught covid. But every time I leave home, I still wear a mask. I vaccinate whenever a booster’s available. And i still wash my hands all the time.
meanwhile i got vaccinated 4 times and still caught it twice - is there a prize for that end of the spectrum?
Your prize is still being alive!
What a rip off!
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This is me so far
That’s me!
Me too. Though I’m wondering if I ever caught it and just ended up being asymptomatic. I can’t say that I’ve been particularly careful and pretty much everyone in my social circle had it at some point.
I thought about that to but I usually got sick with something every year before 2020 and I have not been sick since either late 2018 or early 2019. Its been so long I can’t remember. The masking is working for everything else so likely I don’t think my wife or I have caught covid ever.
High five! (from a safe distance)
Me too!
That fucker got me in april. Even with precautions. Thank god i got vaccinated or my immunocompromised ass would be six feet under.
I’m going to guess that a lot of people ,like myself, who believe they never caught COVID actually have. A large percentage are likely just asymptomatic carriers. Or light symptoms that didn’t show up on any tests.
I made it to last week. Sorry guys.
Damn me too. These recent strains are contagious as fuck
Turn in your membership card please.
Same here. 3 years covid free until last week.
I haven’t ever had COVID (that I’m aware of, and I tested regularly for the first two years of the pandemic), because I never stopped following the science and taking precautions.
I recognize that I was and am able to consistently take those precautions only because of a lot of privilege.
I am sure, at this point, for some people the tests don’t work. I have lupus and take immune suppression medication and my only means of transportation is public transport. Normally, I collect every germ possible. But somehow not COVID? Nah.
For me, the vaccine seemed to prevent catching the first few variants quite well, but i eventually caught the Omicron (probably, idk for sure) variant. My SO showed symptoms first, and neither of us tested (nasal swab) positive until ~24hrs after symptoms appeared.
