On Friday I hiked 7.6 miles with somebody who thought she had had a head cold for 3 days. Today she tested positive for Covid.
Since I have chronic bronchitis, we are both very careful even about ordinary colds. We could have driven together to a different spot but opted not to get into a car together for just this reason. We were outdoors 100% of the time, and spent very nearly the whole time moving. But I think we were pretty frequently as close as a meter. It was just a little breezy. I used isopropanol on my hands twice and we pretty well avoided touching except for a couple fast hugs (no skin contact tho). I’m 66 and have now had 7 Covid vaccinations, most recently 48 days ago, I always get them as quickly and repeatedly as allowed, and have never been infected. As of this writing it has been 44 hours and I don’t feel any symptoms.
Where do the Dopers think I stand on the scale from “don’t give it another thought” to “get my affairs in order as a courtesy to my heirs”?
Is there anything I can do right now to improve my chances?
IANAD and know nothing about chronic bronchitis, but you’ve had more than twice as many COVID shots as I have, the last of them quite recently, and on that basis alone I’d tend to opt for “don’t give it another thought”. Not that there’s much you can do about it anyway, but I wouldn’t worry.
Anecdote: My son was going to a party a few weeks ago and because the host was for some reason hyper-vigilant about COVID, my son took an at-home COVID test which according to him showed a positive result, but only marginally so. He decided not to go to the party, so I invited him over to my place for the weekend. I’m vaccinated and didn’t worry about it. This was quite a few months ago; he never developed COVID, and neither did I.
If I were in your shoes (well, those shoes wouldn’t have hiked that distance), I’d be mildly aware but not freaked out. Being outdoors seems to work really well to prevent transmission. It would probably be good to start testing tomorrow; if (when?) you get a negative, test again in two more days.
Given your level of vaccination, even if you did get it, it would likely be mild. And given the circumstances, there’s a really good chance you didn’t get infected.
If you believe in science and doctors and facts and such, look at this CDC site. The title of this page is “What to Do If You Were Exposed to COVID-19.”
I for one had COVID two weeks ago, self-diagnosed with a lateral flow test after two days of sniffles; after that my wife and I shared our apartment, mostly stayed indoors in German November weather, took no precautions other than me spending the nights on the couch in the study. A week later my lateral flow test was negative again, and my wife never got COVID from me.
Spending a few hours (7.6 miles hiking - 2 to max. 4 hours?) strictly outdoors with an infected person, I’d say your risk of infection would be an order of magnitude lower than my wife’s.
I suspect you had quite a number exposures to persons with COVID in the past, that remained unknown to you, which were more of a risk to you than this event.
In response to the OP, the good news is that you were outdoors. Being outdoors gives the virus much more space to dissipate so that the particles are less likely to get inhaled into your lungs. It’s not impossible, but it does reduce the risk.
Had you been indoors for 10 hours with this person, the chances of infection would have been a lot higher.
Hmmm… much information. Looked at dozens of web sites, many of which point to CDC or use rebranded information that looks identical to CDC.
Officially, it’s clear I’m supposed to mask for 10 days, test at about 5 days and isolate if that is positive. Nobody distinguishes between indoors and outdoors in defining exposure.
I spent 2 hours 43 minutes at, I’m guessing, an average of 5’ distance. Certainly excursions above and below but I think less than a minute at less than 3’.
I think because of being outdoors and because of all my vaccinations I probably won’t come down with it, but I also think the probability isn’t trivial.
Crap, my spouse is entertaining house guests for several days this week…
Frankly, you are about as well protected as you could be, and the likelihood of infection in an outdoor, breezy environment with a single infected person is about as low as it could be (and far less than being indoor at the arbitrary two meter threshold, in a plane where their may be frequent air exchanges but you are still in close proximity to many potentially infected people). If you were infected, there may be several days before onset of symptoms, or you may be one of the many people who have an asymptomatic infection. There is little point in taking a lateral flow test before you exhibit symptoms (it often takes a day or more after symptom onset for the at-home tests to register positive), so lacking any outward signs or feeling ‘under the weather’, I’d wait until a day prior to hosting guests to take a test to maximize the chance of detecting an asymptomatic infection. Although I commend you for being conscientious and still taking COVID-19 seriously (most people, even medical professionals, have baselessly decided to be a minor ‘seasonal’ infection of no consequence) it is probably more likely that one of the guests coming home will infect you with SARS-CoV-2 (or RSV some other respiratory pathogen) than that you’ve caught it from a hiking partner.
Just had a previously scheduled online followup with my family medicine practitioner, so I invited her to bet whether I’d get Covid or not. She bets “No”.
I’m not worried, at this point, though I will practice due diligence.
I would avoid stressful situations (physically, emotional, mental), and treat it as a personal wellness period, make sure I was getting good food, rest, stay in temp controlled areas, etc. If that helps IDK but I don’t think it would not hurt.
Glad to hear this, and I hope it’s an exponential, not logarithmic, decay.
It seems that you won’t need this, but my sister-in-law (who is a long term Crohn’s sufferer) contracted covid-19 this past spring. I don’t know if there was a shortage of anti-viral drugs back then, but it took over a week for her to get a prescription for paxlovid filled.
If I ever suspect that I’ve been exposed, the first thing I’ll do is contact my doctor to see about getting a prescription.