rona moved in: ilx0rs with the bug report on their progress

sister getting it for the third time is making me wonder if people don't have certain unconscious habits (nail-biting and eye rubbing, not washing hands after going on public transit, etc) that lead to contracting this more easily/often? but don't want to suggest it's a moral/ethical issue. just can't help but wonder how i keep dodging the bullets. imagine it's still a matter of time and will straight up kill me when we dance.

I’m a disgusting person and have never gotten it. Dumb luck I guess.

i don’t think it has anything to do with any of those things

Not anymore.

Also not a moral judgment, but everyone that I know who has gotten it recently was in an enclosed space with other people, unmasked, often for some duration. This is certainly how I got it in May.

But we just had 12 people together in the Catskills over the New Year, and we all tested assiduously beforehand, and poof! Everyone is still clear a week later.

I went to California in November and wore a mask even while eating, really, tho there were some lax moments. I thought that I was going to get it for sure, but nope!

Vaccines and masks work, the latter being especially important I think. I don’t go indoors (other than my
own house) without one clasped to
my face.

I also just don’t really eat out or go out that much tho lmfao

I've been using the decent filter masks to go in shops but our big pharmacy chains have stopped even selling them. You can get them online but it is another 'we're all back to normal, nothing to see here!' while 1 in 20 people in the UK have covid...

My throat is awful, it's only day 3 but it's not improving. I can't eat or sleep very well so it's all a bit miserable. Wouldn't be too bad apart from that.

i assume i got it from seeing puss and boots (i was masked, but when you’re drinking or eating inside while masked, you’re not really masked, imo), the small nye party i attended everyone seemed to get out unscathed

but also i know plenty of ppl who got it recently who’ve remained as careful as ever and have no fucking clue how they got it

(assuming this has something to do with how everyone else has abandoned ppe but who knows)

well i fuckin got it again.

Ugh. Sorry. Thankful I had a was a weeklong monster cold.

sorry, Tracer -- how does it compare with the last time?

extremely mild. blocked/runny nose, mild headaches. i’m on day 2 and i doubt it’s going to get worse. (he said, jinxing it)

i’m going to see my immunocompromised mother in two weeks and my last booster was in october so this is actually the most perfect timing i could have

FFS, is it my imagination or is this the 4th time you've had it? Hope you recover quickly.

Yeah, I couldn't remember, like Peter Puma, if it was three or four times now.

third time, i think? i can't even remember anymore.

my friend just tested positive for the third or fourth time. also has an immunocompromised mother! i chatted with her for ages the day before she got symptoms so now I'm on high alert... altho got it in Jan so hopefully recently enough?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvHMmdpajHg

Why does it hurt when I see a T-line?

Damn you, Tracer Hand!

Sorry, never gets old. I mean for me it doesn’t. I’m sure for Tracer himself I’m sure it gets very old, very old indeed.

SO I tested positive on Friday evening. Second time.

I don't wish to jinx it but so far it seems to be extremely mild. On the order of "just a bad cold" thing that one hears people talking about. I had one nauseated evening and one sweaty night, and felt fine the next morning. I have a cough that I suspect will linger for a while but as long as I get hydration and rest I expect to be fine.

One thing that surprised me is that I knew EXACTLY what it was. I am a conoisseur of maladies. I can tell the difference between different kinds of pain in the way that a talented sommelier can distinguish vintages.

I hurled, then felt my forehead, and said, "yep, hi, COVID." The test was a formality.

My previous bout (last summer) had me feeling wretched in a tent in the backyard for several days. This encounter seems to be resolving itself within a matter of hours. Fortunately. I know not everyone has been fortunate in this way.

Glad it's milder this time.
Though it's gotten 0 public service announcements or news coverage,even ads, that I've seen, there was another booster approved this spring, for those who had one six months previous, so I got mine at CVS in April. Worth looking into.

I'm on my second bought of it (I presume, have no non-expired tests). Based on the time of appearance I likely got it at the Pere Ubu show in Los Angeles last Thursday. It's worse than the first time I got Covid - bad sore throat, a little drippy in the nose.

Seven days after symptoms and I feel normal but seriously depleted. First night was a doozy tho. Can’t believe I evaded it for three years and then a colleague came into my (solo) office maskless and chatted to me about how they don’t take precautions at work because they’re more likely to get it from their kids. And then tested positive 2 days later. 2 days after that, so did I.

Because I didn't qualify, I lied to get a second bivalent boost in early March. A smart decision.

matt, interesting that you can so readily identify the contact.

I'd spent the previous day in: an airport shuttle bus, a taxi with 8 people in it (the shuttle bus broke down), a long snaky airport security line (including getting a rather intimate pat-down), a long snaky immigration and customs line, two full 737 airplanes (one of them for over four hours), three crowded airports, baggage claim, another taxi, etc. etc.

It’s probably me being cranky and looking for someone to blame, it was just too neat a coincidence and other possible situations didn’t infect friends who were there too. I had been ultra careful at work (literally the only person masked and hand washing most of the time) and had decided that week to be a bit less paranoid about it so as not to seem full weirdo.

Ok. Agree that for your situation it was too neat a coincidence.

Personally I have no such tidy explanation because I'd been on vacation, in the Bahamas, in close contact with literally several thousand people for the previous week. So it's just impossible to know. You have been extremely careful... and still got it.

I don't wish to speculate or postmortem it too much. Your approach makes sense for you. Rock on, I guess. But there is a temptation to embrace fatalism in these two stories.

Look, we're all gonna get it in the next couple years, minor or major symptoms; it's a mathematical inevitability. No need to dwell on what you could've done.

A buddy tested positive yesterday... the first test was very light (the pink line) but tested again later and it was unambiguous.(He had just flown home from Croatia a few days ago, I think last Thursday, and said there was a teen kid on the plane loudly coughing and sneezing everywhere)... he and I went for drinks on Friday night. I'll give it a day or two then take a test.
Was supposed to go visit my uncle in the hospital this evening but that's not going to happen now

I'm on my second bought of it (I presume, have no non-expired tests).

Your expired tests are probably not expired https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/NewDate

They are past the first extension date (from June to October of last year, iirc), but it looks like they got extended again. I'll check when I get home. (Test came out negative, 2 days after the worst symptoms).

Has anyone been pretty sure they've gotten it but consistently home tested negative throughout the bout?

If the control line shows up past the expiry date, your tests are very probably still good.

Just looked up the tests, they were extended to 2023-04-04, so still too old, but the reference line did show up.

xxpost The only way I learned I ever had it was back at the very start, when my Red Cross blood donation came back with confirmation of antibodies (something they were doing at the time). But I've never actually tested positive. Now, does that mean I've never had it since March 2020? Who knows. My symptoms back then were very mild and gone in two days and no one else got sick, and paranoia and suspicion with every sniffle aside over the subsequent years (!), I've never really been convinced I've had it again. And in between there have been supermarkets, stores, plenty of concerts, travel/airports, restaurants, sporting events, and so on.

My mom has spent much of the past couple of years traveling the world in her retirement, masking and testing as required/necessary, less so lately as those things have become less required/necessary, and she's never actually tested positive, either, or had any real reason to think she had it; she once came back from a trip visiting my sister in the UK and felt a little under the weather, but a few days of testing never came up positive (even though my sister tested positive soon after the visit, though her partner - with similar symptoms - never did). I dunno, I think there's still tons we don't know about it. My mom, for example, has hypothesized that as a pediatrician she was exposed to so many different coronaviruses over her career that maybe she had some sort of general baseline immunity. Or maybe she's just been weirdly lucky.

I think the CDC did a study of blood donors last fall that determined 96% of those 16 and over had covid antibodies.

96%!
I guess we all have had it to some degree at this point. I wonder if there's a better mechanism to determine how infectious anyone is at any stage, or if a coughing fit is just from a regular cold.

Motherfucker. My turn for round 2 — definitely a result of recent travels, probably from the plane ride home since first tickle in my throat showed up about 48 hrs later. Just cold/allergy type symptoms at the moment, I mostly tested because I WAS planning to take my kids up to see my septuagenarian parents this weekend. That's off now, but I'm somewhat optimistic I can just push it back 7-10 days.

So, more annoying than anything else, although I'm aware of the findings that repeat infections have some potential long-term impact on immune system etc.

do they? oh great. i've had it three times. or four. i can't even remember now. maybe there's a memory impact...

I actually don't think that's a widely accepted conclusion, fortunately (there is always the possibility that a later infection could be more severe, but there were many scientists critical of the study that suggested multiple COVID infections actually put you at larger risk): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/23/repeat-covid-infections-health-risks

regardless though ,hope you get better soon tipsy, and sorry to hear about your disrupted trip to meet the folks :(

I guess we all have had it to some degree at this point.

getting the vaccine would be enough to create antibodies

I actually don't think that's a widely accepted conclusion

Good, glad to hear that. tbh I have not been following the ongoing flood of COVID studies.

xpost I think they can distinguish between antibodies from the virus andbodies from the vaccine.

That's how I learned I'd had an asymptomatic case in September.

Well, round #2 wasn’t much of anything. A little congestion, no fever, no cough, etc. Already testing negative. Who knows the combination of factors that kept it so light, but I’ll take it.

As a public service for those comparing symptoms, here's where I'm at on day 2 (?). Began with a sore throat, kind of froggy, but that was my only real symptom, and I kind of assumed it was due to the poor air quality. But it persevered past ibuprofen, so I figured, what the hell, that's why we have all those tests. Confirmation line appeared almost instantly, I banished myself to the basement. Last night I woke up around 2am a little achy, but for some reason my throat wasn't that bad anymore, though I did/do now have a modestly stuffy (dry) nose, and once in while a fleeting (dry) cough. The most dramatic new symptom was a spike up to a 101.3 temperature, but weirdly not the usual attendant chills. In all, I feel a bit worse than I did/do after each of the vaccines. I'm going to try and get Paxlovid, but if the side effects are worse than the actual illness I may just ride it out.

Oh, fwiw, this is the first time I officially tested positive for Covid. I knew I had antibodies, but all the past years of exposure or symptoms never resulted in an actual positive test.

So much for Pitchfork Fest, though.

Sorry, Josh. Hope it gets better soon. Yours sounds like my first case, which proceeded along similar lines.

Sorry, Josh!