No one in my household of three has had it, as far as we know. We’re all as vaccinated as possible and we wear N95 masks in higher-risk places. We’ve relaxed quite a bit since the height of the pandemic, though, eating in restaurants every couple of weeks and having friends over now and then.
One trend I’ve noticed is that fewer of the people I know who’ve gotten it in the past year have had severe cases. I knew eight people who were hospitalized with it in 2020, and two of them died. Even if I do end up with it, I’m grateful for vaccines!
I’ve read that the number of Americans who have not had COVID is about 1 in 4. My wife and I are among them. We’ve both been sick with what might or might not be COVID-like symptoms but have always tested negative, me as recently as this week. And whatever I had this week went away after a day or two.
My older brother and his wife had also avoided COVID but came down with it a couple of months ago. Her first, then him. Where was she exposed to it? Her Doctor’s office! It was the only place she had visited in the weeks before she came down with it.
Like many people, we have more or less put COVID behind us, but we do exercise at least some caution, and we’ve kept up on the shots.
There is. You can be tested for antibodies to the nucleocapsid of the virus. People who have had covid (or the killed-virus Chinese vaccine) will produce antibodies to both the spike protein and the nucleocapsid protein. People who haven’t had covid, but have been vaccinated with any of the vaccines available in the US or Europe will produce antibodies only to the spike protein.
I suppose if you had covid 3 years ago, those antibodies may have faded to undetectable levels. But if you had it 6 months ago and have a normal immune system, a test should pick it up.
For a while the Red Cross was testing every donor. My husband turned positive to covid at some point without getting sick (and without passing anything to us). So i guess he hasn’t “had covid”. But he was exposed to covid, and his immune system dealt with it.
When COVID first hit the news, we were returning home from vacation in St Martin. We had never heard of Wuhan and suddenly it was in the news. On our flight home some guy was wiping down his seat and tray with hand sanitizer while we chuckled about his OCD.
After arriving home I had severe diarrhea and a cough that hurt my head. It only lasted a few days though. Then “don’t touch your face” became a meme.
Since then I’ve been symptom free. I’ve masked when it was suggested, vaccinated as soon as available, washed my hands, etc. Any sniffles I’ve tested myself, any potential exposure I’ve tested myself. Always negative.
It’s estimated that as many as 2 out of 5 covid infections are asymptomatic. Also, negative tests, especially a negative home test, doesn’t 100% rule out an infection. While false positives are not real common with the home tests, false negatives are.
As a result, many folks who think they’ve never had covid actually have had it.
Yeah, that’s a good point. I didn’t think I had it ever, but when I was sick, I only tested once and took the negative result to mean I didn’t have it. I did have a really bad respiratory illness in '22 that I’m pretty sure was RSV. I tested negative for COVID. It was complicated by asthma.
Anyway, I tested positive for the first time a week ago. But it was an incredibly, incredibly faint line and I considered it questionable until my husband had a more obvious (but still faint) line. I guess the lines are getting fainter and fainter because of vaccinations and reinfections and what-not, there’s not as high a viral load as there used to be. I just think, if I had delayed testing by a day, I might have never known I had it. Look closely for those lines, folks! (Also, for me, it was nowhere in the ball bark of “a cold.” I had the worst headache of my life, for about two days straight, and was bedridden for a good portion of time after that. But I was also just coming off a previous sinus infection.)
This is even more true of other respiratory viruses as a class, correct? I wish I could find the cite quickly now, but I recall reading that something like 60% of influenza infections in a typical season are asymptomatic.
Regarding COVID specifically, there was early research (read about this in the summer-fall 2020 time frame) into whether recent-ish exposure to a legacy coronavirus – the ones that generally just cause regular colds – was protective against COVID. It was a plausible hypothesis, but I don’t know what conclusions were reached from that research.
As far as we know, neither my wife nor myself has had it, knocks wood. Aside from staying on top of our vaccinations and practicing the usual “wash your hands often and keep them out of your face” and occasional vitamin C boosts when we feel an onset of a possible cold, we don’t do anything special prevention-wise.
I never tested positive, but didn’t take tests during the time I probably had it but had no clue until I thought the soup tasted bland and days later my wife and son had symptoms and tested positive. So I never knowingly had COVID, but had a reasonable suspicion I did before it had passed.
I self-test every time I’m feeling unwell, and have never had a positive test.
I’m pretty sure I had a mild case several months before the disease was identified. It was the “going away and coming back” thing that tipped me off; before the vaccine came out, I tried to sign up for various antibody studies to find out if I was right, and never qualified.
I’m in the “not knowingly” camp. Work from home, am mostly a hermit. Have tested several times both home and professionally before traveling, came up negative each time.
But just now getting over some kind of cough picked up at a church Christmas party. State covid numbers are back on the rise, but so are flu and RSV. Didn’t bother to test as I was back in avoid all humans mode anyway.
Despite having flu like symptoms many times in the last four years and testing dozens of times either while symptomatic or after having been in “close contact” with people who subsequently tested positive (this was during 2021 and early 2022) I have never tested positive.
Neither I, nor my husband, have had it. Nothing so much as sniffles or even feeling off for a day. We’re both fully vaxxed, stopped masking back in the spring (except for medical sites!)
Any time we’ve tested it’s negative. We attended a wedding last summer where bride and groom tested positive the day after the event. Needless to say everyone in attendance immediately tested and retested. For us, always negative.
And lately we’ve been going out to social events, even a few theatrical events, still all good.
Me too. And I didn’t test positive until like Day Five. I knew it was Covid because my wife had it, and had tested positive during the days I was sneezing my head off yet testing negative.
But regular testing at work every two weeks during the beginning months (and months…and months…) of the pandemic, sent to a lab, revealed nothing. Have always been fully vaxxed with all the latest and greatest. Masked like a champ, all that. Social distancing? No prob. I don’t care for most people, and am still actively assertive about distancing the horde from my person.
No idea. Of course I have self tests at home, but those have been either underused by me or insufficient to provide a quality result.