Apologies if this has already been done; I didn’t spot it scrolling through the forum topics.
I’m wondering how many of you who have had COVID have specific knowledge of where / from whom you got it. I’m interested in all such stories, but I have a follow-up question for those who know they got it from a specific person: What, if anything, did you say to the person you got it from once you found out?
In my case, based on my behavior (masking, going very few places, etc.) and the timing of getting sick, I am certain that I picked it up in an Uber on the way to the airport. As I’m on the mend and vaguely sane again, I’m wondering whether it makes sense to contact Uber. I don’t think it’s reasonable for someone to be driving around, unmasked, with COVID. But I’m not looking to get someone fired/banned who may need their gig, he may not not have known, and I’m not certain I could prove to someone who doesn’t know me that that’s where I got infected. Additionally, a significant amount of time has already passed since the date of contact.
So, would you say anything (or, if you already were in a comparable situation, did you)?
I’m not sure what the point would be other than retribution. The driver is doubtless past their infection phase, may have been asymptomatic if infected, and if you were wearing a mask to and through the airport you were essentially as protected as you could be, which means it is just as likely you picked it up from someone standing in the TSA line or a fellow passenger on a plane (no, the rapid air exchange on planes does not “guarantee” that you cannot get infected; someone who is actively shedding virus sitting in a row in front of or behind you, and especially beside you can easily produce enough contagion to infect you, especially with ‘Delta’ and later variants.). At any rate, essentially no one is attempting to do any track and trace efforts, and if this was in the last few months the driver had neither a legal obligation nor (as far as I’m aware) an obligation as part of driving for Uber to wear a mask.
Getting infected is just a risk you are going to take if you travel and it is pretty much on you to take the measures you deem appropriate to protect yourself without the expectation that anyone else is going to offer you any consideration. As this point I don’t blame anyone who has to work for hours every day in a public facing role for not enduring the discomfort of wearing a mask when so many customers absolutely refuse even when required. The only place I would be offended if someone didn’t wear a mask would be in a hospital or other medical setting, and even then first responders and medical personnel have endured so much abuse and indifference that I’d give it a pass unless I had to take off my mask for an examination.
The driver was, in fact, symptomatic, which I realized about halfway through the ride. I would normally have been wearing a mask, but got distracted saying goodbye to my wife and forgot. Not something that has happened elsewhere. Once I realized what was happening, I put on my mask and left it on for the remainder of my travels. That is why I’m certain about where I picked it up.
Agreed that he had no legal obligation to be masking. If he was conscious of the fact that he may have been sick, it would probably have been the wiser course of action to be masked. But, of course, it also would have been wise of me to have remembered donning my own mask before I heard him sniffling. It’s my responsibility to protect myself.
The ride was a week-and-a-half ago. I think the chances of me being able to prevent someone else from getting infected by him are next-to-nil. The only outcomes I can see of me reporting anything would be him getting in trouble, or, more likely, nothing happening at all.
I caught it from my wife. She came down with a “cold” during the height of the Omicron wave. Took a home covid test which was negative. A day or three later I came down with symptoms. It had been a long weekend so I hadn’t been to work in 5 days, thankfully. Someone I know who works in an urgent care told me that they were seeing positive tests only 2-3 days after initial symptoms – any test prior to that would be negative. So we tested, and yup, positive. Begin 5 days of isolation. We were both double vaxxed but not yet booseted at the time. Now we have our boosters.
My wife is a full-time DL student and only goes out in the wild one day a week: a support group she goes to for an hour. That was really the only possible place she could’ve picked it up. She was masked the entire time but caught it anyway. She said nobody there was symptomatic.
My oldest son caught the OG covid in early spring 2021. He caught it from an unmasked, its-all-just-a-liberal-plot teacher at his school. My son spread it to my other son but my wife and I did not catch it then.
So everyone in the house is now vaxxed, boosted, and recovered.
I guess it’s obvious, but I sometimes I have to remind myself that the direction of transmission of the pathogen in the specific instance (whether I catch it from you or you catch it from me) is irrelevant to whether anyone is at fault. All that matters is whether any given person is acting with reasonable care and consideration given the totality of their circumstances.
Of course, if you know you are sick, then that alters what constitutes reasonable care and consideration. But after accounting for that, I think any recklessness that causes one “instance” of transmission is equally bad whatever the direction of transmission. You can’t just say, “If I take a risk, that’s up to me, because I’m the one who suffers if I catch it”.
(This wasn’t at all a commentary on your specific situation, @Asimovian, just general musing.)
After we’d all been vaxxed (adult kid, grandkids and me) the older grandie brought it home from school whereupon I tested positive 5 days later. The adult kid and the younger grandie had managed to get it ( again via an outbreak at the primary school) about 7 weeks prior to that. All of us were essentially asymptomatic, but still had to isolate at home for the duration/s.