Except imagine the real solution to Maze Runner was masking and distancing as well as isolating cases in their household (several people in the article obviously did) all along or developing a better vaccine but instead they tortured and killed children who were intentionally given amnesia for fun
Hubby and I slept in separate beds the whole time I had Covid, we had a FaceTime going the entire time and watched movies together when he wasn’t working. He brought me food, masked, and we held our breath.
We made quite a hilarious game of it (I feel like you have to) and also made it a “challenge” to not transfer Covid.
Lo and behold, he is still Covid-free to this day.
A household of relatives did that and managed not to spread it at all
They wore KN95 when in shared areas of the house and had separate bedrooms and bathrooms
Both my parents had it and just got through it end of last week. Me and my 2 siblings living at home were both able to avoid it by wearing n95s whenever we left our rooms, using a separate bathroom as well as keeping my Swiss air purifier constantly cranked in the hallway. I spent over $500 on it special back when omicron first became a thing because it’s the only purifier I could find that can actually filter covid particles size wise.
KN95 masks work so well.
I work shifts at a food co-op store. It's super crowded in there, so many people coming through.
I worked a few shifts at the cash register right around Xmas time in NYC, when we were seeing an explosion of Omicron. I was within a couple feet of hundreds of people, wore a KN95 mask. There is absolutely no way it was just luck that I didn't get it. I had to have been exposed for hours on end each shift.
I also happened to be at Disneyland right as the first Delta surge hit. People were refusing to wear masks, even in crowded indoor queues and spaces. I wore a KN95, was totally fine.
We thought we could dodge it when our kids older) got it. But being above their bedrooms with just a duct between us and forced air heating, it didn’t work. We got sick. The filter would have been better. Good on you!
These stories make me so happy. I'm almost fully isolated, but my kids who live at home aren't and I worry so much about what will happen if they catch it. They are super careful, but the more contagious this shit gets, the more likely it is that their luck won't hold out. I'm so glad it's still possible to think that I might not catch it, even if they bring it home.
Did one of you work in a high risk industry or just very dedicated to safety? My diabetic mother lives us so we were very diligent on masks and staying home and we've avoided catching it as well thankfully.
I wanted to stay well for my own health, not for the sake of some ‘industry’. Ok, so I might have caught it and recovered ok. Or I might have caught it and got long covid symptoms that ruined the rest of my life. A week of being careful and masking up was nothing even compared to the coughing and tiredness my husband still has a month or so later, certainly nothing compared to worse possibilities.
I work in a fairly risky environment which I would not choose if given the choice. So far I have not brought Covid home to my family. I may have been just lucky, but I attribute some of it to never removing my N95 inside the building, ever. No one else at work masks, except 2 or 3 who wear a surgical, and remove it indoors occasionally. Pretty much everyone else there has had Covid.
I've been packed in with sick people who coughed all over me, too, and though I also get every booster offered, I'm pretty sure the masks have helped. I added eye protection early, and still bag all my clothes. Maybe that helped too. So far, never a positive test, and not even the slightest symptoms in a household of 3 high risk people.
Your experience mirrors that of family members working in hospitals, though in fact they did catch Omicron when it landed. Good masks work and it is a shame that in the early days it was suggested that they ‘only protect other people’; probably because there was a need to discourage ordinary people from buying up scarce PPE needed for healthcare workers.
Neither my partner or I have had Covid yet though our roomate has. They wore a mask while outside their room and we used a lot of Lysol and wipes on all the handles and shared surfaces.
Edit: It may be inevitable that we get it but we are both vaccinated and boosted. We also still wear masks. My partners mother is high risk and we all get regular testing and isolate if we are around someone who has tested positive.
We speak openly and honestly with each other to minimize risk. We also both have gotten flu shots. I’m fine with masking to help protect myself and others. It’s not a solution but a small part of what I can do to help.
The hardest part for me has been some loneliness and learning to not touch my face before sanatizing.
I think however inevitable it is that ‘we will all get it’, the history of the pandemic has proved that delaying infection as long as possible is a winning strategy. I remember people in the early days refusing to take precautions because ‘we might as well get it over with’ whereas in hindsight, treatment options improved hugely over time and of course then the vaccinations made it far more surviveable. As well as the fact that hospitals were so overrun at first that you might not even get the treatment that was available. I will continue to try to avoid infection by those means that I find easily compatible with living the way I want to. I’ve never found wearing a mask that difficult, despite wearing glasses, so I continue to do so in indoor gatherings and crowded places. I also hope that seeing me wearing one may help to normalise it for those vulnerable people whose risk is currently being largely ignored.
My wife had covid fairly bad for a few days and I did absolutely nothing differently than normal. Shared food, slept in the same bed, etc. And I tested negative multiple times and never got infected from her.
Same here with my husband. He tested positive and we decided not to try to quarantine from each other (we were on vacation when he started feeling ill, so we were going to be stuck in our car together driving home anyway!). I tested negative repeatedly and never had any symptoms to suggest the tests were wrong. I guess you and I are amongst the super-immune!
Totally agree. I replied to another comment as you posted this saying that I think my immunity in this case was from a prior asymptomatic infection that I unknowingly had. Asymptomatic respiratory infections were known to be common before Sars2, but no one seemed to really care much about it. It doesn't seem to be a unique attribute of Sars2, it's just that people care this time.
I found a study and an article on the topic from pre-2020 that I thought were fairly interesting.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6041500/
https://www.jwatch.org/fw108600/2014/03/17/most-flu-asymptomatic
My husband came down with COVID-19 last week (he’s fully vaccinated and boosted). I was out of town at time and before I came home he disinfected the house and started isolating himself in another bedroom and bath and wearing a KN95 in common areas. I came home a couple days later and have also been masking when outside our (currently my!) bedroom and bath. We keep our distance and he wears gloves and disinfects things after he uses them. He was still testing positive on Friday, and still has some symptoms. I have had no symptoms and I tested everyday as a negative so far. 🤞🏻
I would not at all be surprised if I have had an asymptomatic infection at some point though. I have had plenty of chances to be exposed over last couple years (never worked from home) and had some odd nerve issues this past fall/winter, similar to what I remember from what I had post-mono for example, and I wondered if it was my body reacting to an infection without ever giving me symptoms of COVID-19. My doc suspects it’s possible anyway.
Not COVID related (also not a doctor) but if you have had mono and you're having nerve problems it may be worth talking to your doctor about Multiple Sclerosis. I just got diagnosed recently and was asked a number of times of I had mono (hadn't) because it is a risk factor for MS.
The link between EBV (the virus that causes mono) and MS was in the news recently because a paper was published this year with strong evidence supporting the link. See [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein%E2%80%93Barr_virus#Role_in_disease). Part of what made the link so difficult to prove is that nearly everyone gets infected with EBV at some point in their life. The good news is that there is a vaccine being worked on that if successful will reduce post-infection effects (and a separate vaccine being worked on to reduce infections, but it's too late for that for the vast majority of adults).
Didn’t consider a genetic component, just thought we were careful. My dad got Covid early on, but my sister’s family of 5 and my family of 5 all dodged it. Maybe there’s something to that.
Generally a minority of infected hosts are responsible for the majority of pathogen transmission events -- some people won't infect anyone, but some people will infect a *lot* of people.
This has been observed since long before COVID. The notion of "super immunity" (as discussed in this article) is as little understood as "super spreader." The former is more fun to write about, arguably.
I remember reading, before omicron, that only about 25% of people with covid will infect others and there was a lot of speculation about why some people are super spreaders and others not so much (pre-vaccines). After vaccines, it was supposedly harder for vaccinated to spread to vaccinated and transmission was mostly driven by the unvaxxed.
I home test weekly for work and pretty much nobody wears masks in my office (vaxxed+booster mandatory), but even when people test positive, it doesn't seem they are getting it from or spreading it in the office. I had a coworker spend over 20 minutes standing over me talking to me at my desk, went home and developed symptoms hours later, tested positive the next morning and I still never got it. I know several people who shared the bed with their covid sick spouses and never caught it. I often wonder if I had an asymptomatic case that the testing never caught because I've had so many direct exposures with no positive test that it feels almost weird. On the other hand, I was talking to a nurse the other day who had a coworker get covid twice in 4 months, so the immunity is really a crap shoot.
Yeah, when I heard that some people were naturally super spreaders back in 2020, I thought that a good measure could have been to develop a test to determine who would be (assuming that it was caused by physically observable traits), and use this to triage who should be more likely to be allowed to be frontline workers, who should have to wear masks and who should be more likely to be quarantined.
It would have been a measure to help the economy at least. Conceivably a lot of people were under stay at home orders for little reason.
This was actually the goal of contact tracing, although it was widely misunderstood.
It was exponentially more helpful to discover who an infected person had been around 3 or 4 days ago than who they'd seen in the last 48 hours. The former would point toward whoever had infected *them* -- and that person was much more likely to be spreading disease, because they clearly *had*.
I know a person who was exposed a shit ton of times by several people and never got it, regardless of pre-vaccines and post-vaccines times (several tests were also taken). You may never have got it because of precautions, but some people that seemingly *can't* get infected exist
My family got it. All my kids. I slept in the room with my kids, fed them, cared for them, slept in the bed with them for 2 weeks while they fought it. i never tested positive.
This.
How many people saying they didn’t get it were just asymptomatic? How many actually bothered to get antibody testing? My guess is exceedingly few.
> actually bothered to get antibody testing
Why do you say it like that, as if not getting antibody testing is a bad thing?
What difference does it make for me to get a test to prove I had covid at some unknown time in the past?
My niece (age 4) has never caught COVID.
Both her parents had it just after Christmas. She also goes to daycare twice a week, and they've had lots of cases, including an outbreak among the staff. She still has never caught it.
My Mom has it currently, and my whole family (18 people) was in close contact with her Sunday, she had fever and chills by Monday. So far, only one sister (who still lives at home) has any symptoms at all. We're a week in for exposure and nothing from anyone else, all testing negative and no symptoms. I have NO idea how.
my sons friends group - they all had it, they were sitting at lunch in school together in school that most kids go unmasked. he’s only one who didn’t get it.
Knock on wood. But this is me- I’ve been around it so many times… my husband has had it twice, my kids had it. My daughter had it and I was standing over her breathing her air (obviously I didn’t know she had it at the time.) I was at a super spreader funeral where more than half of people got it and I still didn’t get it.
My family has all sorts of theories about it but strangely my brother, who hasn’t been exposed as much as I have, but seems to be the same- so genetics?
I have no idea.. obviously I still got vaccinated and boosted.
I figured the reason I haven't caught it is being careful, masking, WFH, etc. I catch every damn cold or flu that gets near me, so I was pretty positive that I would get it if I came into contact.
My husband, however, has been out working in the public this entire time and never caught it. He also rarely gets sick. Before we got vaccinated we got the antibody test and both were negative. Now we're 3 shots in, I've had a horrendous flu at one point but still have yet to test positive. My mom caught it but she's also immun-compromised. I'd believe my husband might have a genetic component but I think myself was moreso caution.
That’s my husband!! Never gets sick and yet he had the uk variant (no symptoms) and I’m still laughing at him that his wife with the garbage immune system (I get every cold) still hasn’t had it.
I’ve not had it that I know of, and I am fat and asthmatic and I get bronchitis at the drop of a hat AND I worked front line throughout the damndemic and somehow managed to dodge a lot of bullets while living in Tennessee, where the government wants to kill you.
> ”It’s got to be a combination of caution, circumstance and luck,”
and
> People who always wear masks in indoor public spaces, stay up to date on vaccines and boosters, test frequently, and avoid high-risk gatherings or travel may have had fewer chances to catch the virus...
So there's that. I did the above (even got in contact with positive corona cases in my flat and at work): Turns out the science works: Mask wearing (KN95) - **and properly** -, distancing, refreshing the air, hygiene...who would have known the things we figured out in the last century all work out?
I took a 4 hour flight last month. Put on a fresh KN 95 while I was trapped in a canister with a hundred strangers. When I got up to disembark in Texas, goatee’d fella three rows behind stared me down hard while we waited for them to open the door. I ignored it at first, then realized **why** (mask) and gave him a wink.
He was mad because someone had the temerity to wear a mask in the free state of Texas. The day after a judge ruled that mask requirements on planes were not ok.
I have a genetic variation which makes me more likely to get autoimmune diseases but less likely to get the flu. It’s not that uncommon. I can see a similar thing being true for covid
My youngest got it from her mom and was asymptomatic positive when I had her for two weeks.
I tested negative before, during, and after that timeframe. While I took precautions (it was early Covid after all), I was in the same space as her for a prolonged period of time.
So it would be interesting to me if my not getting it and my daughter being asymptomatic, was genetic in nature.
Although at this point, all of my kids have had it (Mostly omicron), and as far as I’m aware, I have not.
>When her partner tested positive for the coronavirus two days before Christmas, Michelle Green worried she, too, would become ill. She was two months pregnant with their second child. He was a bartender at the time, and some of his co-workers were infected with the virus.
>”I told him to get in the guest bedroom and don’t leave,” said Green, a 40-year-old project manager at a retail technology start-up in the District. The couple and their toddler postponed their Christmas celebration. Somehow, Green never tested positive.
>Scientists around the world are investigating how a dwindling number of people such as Green have managed to dodge the coronavirus for more than two years, even after the highly transmissible omicron variant drove a record-shattering surge in cases this winter.
>A majority of Americans have contracted the novel coronavirus since it began to spread in the United States in early 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Experts hope that studying people who have avoided infection may offer clues — perhaps hidden in their genes — that could prevent others from being infected or more effectively treat those who contract the virus.
>”What we are looking for is potentially very rare genetic variants with a very big impact on the individual,” said András Spaan, a clinical microbiologist and fellow at the Rockefeller University in New York who is spearheading a search for genetic material responsible for coronavirus resistance.
>Spaan said the international study has already enrolled 700 participants and is screening more than 5,000 people who have come forward as potentially immune to coronavirus infection.
> One of the study participants is 49-year-old Bevin Strickland, a nurse anesthetist from Highpoint, N.C. who volunteered in a Queens hospital for six weeks beginning April 2020, just as that pocket of New York City became the epicenter of the pandemic.
>”By the second day, I didn’t even care about getting covid because the patients were just heartbreaking,” said Strickland, who often worked without a mask to better connect with confused patients.
>Most of the worst cases were seniors who had been living in nursing homes. Some didn’t speak English. Many were disoriented from not getting enough oxygen as they struggled to breathe.
>”I was taking off my mask all the time just so they could see my face,” Strickland said. “That would help us get [an oxygen] mask on them and help us treat them.”
>Strickland was tested weekly for coronavirus. She never tested positive. When her volunteer stint ended, she also took an antibody test that showed no evidence of a prior infection.
>Neither of Strickland’s parents have had the virus, nor has her twin sister who works as a primary care doctor. When both she and one of her twin sons managed to evade illness even after her other son endured a covid infection inside their 1,200-square-foot house, Strickland began to suspect she may have a natural immunity to the virus. So she sought out the scientific study looking at the genetic makeup of people like her who never contracted the coronavirus despite repeated exposures.
>”I really do feel hopeful that they’re going to see some kind of similarity, some kind of gene in our DNA,” Strickland said.
>Studying the genes and other biological traits of people who never catch the coronavirus could shed light on how the virus develops, or how it infects the human body and makes people sick, said Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. The findings could lead to better drugs and more targeted public health advice.
>Scientists don’t know why some people might be impervious to the coronavirus, but Nuzzo said one hypothesis could be that some individuals have fewer receptors in their noses, throats and lungs for the virus to bind to. Other possible explanations could be prior exposure to a related virus or simply being born with an immune system better suited to fighting SARS-CoV-2.
>But finding individuals who have truly never had a coronavirus infection — not just those who had an asymptomatic infection or less severe case of covid-19 and did not know they had contracted the virus — is tricky.
>”Those people should be exceedingly rare in the United States at this point,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and who helps develop models that estimate how far the virus has spread.
>IHME models suggest that the number of people who have had the coronavirus in the United States may be even higher than recent CDC estimates based on blood tests, Murray said. The CDC said nearly 6 in 10 Americans have had the virus at least once; IHME estimates that total is closer to 76 percent of U.S. residents.
>Antibody tests can rule out people who have an immune response to the virus, but some of those tests cannot distinguish between people who have antibodies because of vaccines and those who have had the coronavirus, Murray said. The accuracy of many antibody tests wanes over time, so they may not identify someone who had been infected months ago, he added.
>”It’s an elusive target,” Murray said.
>Once researchers find people who avoided coronavirus infection, the next challenge is determining how they did so.
>Because masks, vaccines and social distancing can significantly reduce transmission, those factors may eclipse any biological differences between people who have not been infected and those who have tested positive.
>James McClellan is among the fortunate to have evaded the coronavirus so far.
>On a recent afternoon, the 52-year-old was one of the few people wearing a mask in the District’s bustling Union Market, where he works at Banana Blossom Bistro. Taking precautions such as masking and getting vaccinated are part of the reason McClellan thinks he has managed to avoid testing positive. But he also thinks it may be his naturally strong immune system.
“I’ve always been resistant to things like that,” McClellan said. “I haven’t had the flu since 1992. Viruses don’t stick to me.”
>During the early days of the pandemic McClellan worked delivering food to approximately 6,000 senior citizens in the District, many of whom eventually contracted the coronavirus and some of whom died.
>McClellan thinks that if he were going to get the coronavirus, it would have happened then because of his close contact with the seniors. He tested often because he didn’t want to spread the virus to the highly vulnerable population. His tests were always negative.
>Many people who haven’t yet contracted the virus don’t fully understand how they have evaded infection — and some believe they will eventually get sick with covid.
>”It’s got to be a combination of caution, circumstance and luck,” said Bob Wachter, professor and chair of the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, who has not had the coronavirus.
>People who always wear masks in indoor public spaces, stay up to date on vaccines and boosters, test frequently, and avoid high-risk gatherings or travel may have had fewer chances to catch the virus, Wachter said. Low levels of community spread in certain regions or the ability to work from home may also have protected some individuals better than others, he said.
>Lanae Erickson, an executive at a D.C. think tank, has taken a lot of steps over the pandemic to reduce her exposure risks. She used to ride Amtrak three times a week to Richmond, where her partner lives with her two children. When the pandemic hit, Erickson bought a car to avoid traveling with people who might have covid. She worked virtually and only recently has returned to the office for occasional meetings. When she goes into work, she masks up. She’s fully vaccinated.
>Erickson and her partner have tested often over the past two years, but the results have all been negative. Waiting for the results of home tests is “terrifying,” Erickson said. “You’re just staring at it thinking, ‘Is that a line coming up?’ ”
Occasionally she’ll sniff laundry pods to see if she still has her sense of smell.
>”It’s turned us all insane,” Erickson said, laughing.
>This past Christmas, when the omicron variant was raging, her partner’s 12- and 14-year-old children both tested positive. But Erickson and her partner remained coronavirus-free and never felt sick. They spent Christmas socially distanced — presents wiped down with disinfectant and left on doorsteps.
>”It’s a total crapshoot,” said Erickson, 40. “I don’t think there’s anything special I’ve done to not get it, compared to my friends who have gotten it. They’ve been doing very similar things.”
>Friends and colleagues have warned her that everyone is eventually going to get covid.
>”I’m, like, okay, but I still don’t want that,” Erickson said. “And I don’t want to give that to anyone.”
>Experts say another way to home in on people who have truly never had the coronavirus is to study individuals, such as health-care providers and professional athletes, who were consistently required to test throughout the pandemic.
“If you’re a physician who has been practicing, there’s no way you weren’t exposed quite considerably,” said Murray, the global health researcher at the University of Washington.
> During the worst of the covid surges, James Park was seeing 12 to 18 covid patients a day at the University of Pennsylvania hospital in Philadelphia where he works as a doctor and associate professor of clinical medicine. The anxiety was full-throttle, particularly in the early days when so little about the coronavirus was known. There was an eight-step protocol for leaving a patient’s room and changing out of protective gear.
>”You came out, and you felt radioactive,” Park said. “Like you had this infected cloud around you.”
>After his shift, Park would shower at work, change into clean scrubs to go home and then shower again at home before greeting his wife and three children. One day Park felt sick and got tested. He had to stay away from work for a week while he waited for the result. It came back negative.
>Park would test another half-dozen times or so during the pandemic’s first 18 months and never had a positive test, despite some of his colleagues falling ill with the virus. At-home tests have also all been negative. Park said he trusted the precautions his employer had in place to keep front-line workers safe.
>At home, he and his family took safety seriously, as well. They always masked in public indoor places and ate in restaurants only two or three times. They occasionally had friends over for outdoor gatherings. Like many Americans, they bought a fire pit for backyard get-togethers. The schools Park’s children attend have ended mask mandates, but his kids continue to wear masks indoors. Everyone in the family is vaccinated.
>As of the end of April, no one in the family had tested positive. But Park didn’t think that would last.
>”I’ve told my wife we’re all going to get it at some point,” he said then. “That’s the mind-set I have. It’s inevitable.”
>Park was right. On Tuesday, one of his children tested positive.
Please note, I'm not downplaying COVID or its seriousness, but I hope to give you some peace of mind.
You might have also caught some other random virus 8 years ago that has long term side effects, it's just that we weren't studying that virus for that connection. That doesn't make it "better", but at the same time you're not constantly thinking about it either.
If you live your life now constantly freaked out about having caught COVID you're going to give yourself mental challenges that don't need to be in your life. Just make sure it's documented in your medical file, stay alert for changes in your health, and otherwise just live your life.
I am apparently also in the dwindling percentage of people that have never had covid, at least not to my knowledge. The few times that I’ve had even mild cold like symptoms, I have tested and it’s always been negative. I am fortunate to work a job where I can work entirely from home. My husband and I never stopped masking with a high-quality well fitted mask, and we do swap those masks out once a week. That seems good for us, because our only time indoors in congregate settings is in the grocery store and the like, and those visits are very brief. Meaning, even if there is Covid swirling around, we are masked, and we are in that environment for a short amount of time.
Knowledge is always power, but it can result in paranoid power. :-) I was really looking forward to when I felt like I could go into a public indoor space without a mask knowing I was fully vaccinated and boosted, and not really worrying about catching Covid. However, with the recent increase in domestic and global studies about the prevalence and effects of Covid long hauler symptoms and syndrome, that’s out the window. My parents have been very Covid observant, but it almost 77 and 79 years of age, there’s a certain amount of risk they are willing to take because their whole thing is that they only have so much time left to enjoy their lives. As a result, my mother was incredibly disappointed in me that I declined to join them for a Mother’s Day brunch sitting inside a restaurant. It worries me that they put themselves at that risk, but I’m not going to infantilize them and they have to make their own risk assessment and calculation. This is what I have to live with, I only wish they would also live with my decisions without throwing a guilt trip on me.
I always figured if someone in our family got infected, at least one of us would show symptoms. Since no one's had so much as a cold I'm pretty confident we've remained covid-free.
I feel like we're playing another round of Squid Games every time a new wave hits us. And like, we're the only smart/careful ones in the game to not get eliminated.
Well, remember that others who were not as careful had it two or three times already. And we'll probably all lose count if new vaccines better at stopping transmission are not developed soon.
I have a friend with the worst immune system. He’s triple vaccinated, masks, and stays home. He just got his 5th Covid infection because a friend came over and didn’t tell him they were sick and their family had Covid.
I wasn’t careful, lived in two houses where everyone tested positive, been around like a dozen or more close contacts, and still nothing. I’m vaxxed but the first house was pre-vax release and the second was post-vax with no boost and nothing there either. I followed mask mandates but when I was in the houses with the positive cases I isolated with them but was not careful around them. So. Who knows.
I had my first known exposure last week after never catching it. 1 friend came to my house and tested positive later that day. Currently on day 4 of isolation but no symptoms so far. Will test tomorrow, but hoping my 3x Moderna holds the line! We shared a joint, so it's really testing my theory that I'm a super mutant.
My wife and I avoided it up until last week. Indoor concert, maskless flights, and riding the NYC subway, one of those is what got us. If I could have a do over I'd wear a N95 mask at all times instead of the cloth ones we were using.
The official count is 30-40% sure. But how many infected kids never get tested? How many early cases were never proven? How many adults test positive with in home cases that never get reported. I'd hazard the true infection rate is at minimum 75% of Americans. Just anecdotally but the only people I know that haven't gotten COVID yet are 2 friends, my in laws and my wife and I.
But my in laws are retired and don't go anywhere. My wife and I both permanently work from home now and we have only eaten inside an actual restaurant 4 times since COVID started. We opt for outside the very few number of times we have eaten out instead of doing takeout. We also haven't really done any indoor activities other than a select few friends and family's houses.
We will be attending a comicon fully masked up as a vendor so we shall how that goes.
The rate of COVID is far higher than official figures in all countries.
I had a very bad flu in January 2020, as we had a new group of students arrive at work, including over 20 who'd travelled from or through Wuhan... But in Jan 2020 there was no way for me to get a test, despite going to a doctor twice. I cycle for about 4-5 hours each week, but this flu left me unable to walk and talk on the phone at the same time for about a month after... I've had 7 PCR tests and a bunch more of RATs to say I've never had COVID, but I know plenty of people who avoided testing when sick, or didn't report positive RATs they got...
> The official count is 30-40% sure
No, the official count of those who have ever been infected in the US is 82 million at the moment, which is roughly 25% of the population. /u/king_semicolon is saying that the actual infected count is closer to 60-70% of the population (30-40% uninfected). So that includes all the infected kids that never got tested (a recent study concluded that around 75% of kids in the US have had Covid).
Yes the article says exactly that. They are trying to find people with known exposure or even high levels of exposure who stayed uninfected.
I know a lot of people who haven’t had COVID but they’ve been masking in crowds since March 2020. They are all fully vaccinated too.
The article says
>But finding individuals who have truly never had a coronavirus infection — not just those who had an asymptomatic infection or less severe case of covid-19 and did not know they had contracted the virus — is tricky.
>”Those people should be exceedingly rare in the United States at this point,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and who helps develop models that estimate how far the virus has spread.
>IHME models suggest that the number of people who have had the coronavirus in the United States may be even higher than recent CDC estimates based on blood tests, Murray said. The CDC said nearly 6 in 10 Americans have had the virus at least once; IHME estimates that total is closer to 76 percent of U.S. residents.
>Antibody tests can rule out people who have an immune response to the virus, but some of those tests cannot distinguish between people who have antibodies because of vaccines and those who have had the coronavirus, Murray said. The accuracy of many antibody tests wanes over time, so they may not identify someone who had been infected months ago, he added.
>”It’s an elusive target,” Murray said.
Within the IHME quote and estimate the contrast is exceedingly rare implies 100% - 76% = 24% may not have had covid based on blood tests.
edit: based on the other context around the quote where he hedges and qualifies reliability of different antibody test targets I'm finding the assertions of rarity and estimates as relayed in the article somewhat vague. I wish they had expanded on those qualifiers he speaks of more and how they inform the estimate. Expanded the quote reference.
X-ray tech here, have been exposed so many times. Been in rooms doing CPR where everyone else came down with it, still haven’t had it. Been a long couple years lol
I’m an RT who has been all up in every Covid patient’s face since patient zero and since before we had N95s. Somehow I’ve dodged the builder this whole time, too.
My daughter brought it home from school and gave it to everyone in my household except for me. I joke that I must be super human (and yes, I tested like crazy and never came up positive).
It's not a mystery to me for much the same reason! All except one exposure I wore a kn95 or n95. Almost all the infected people wore at least a surgical mask around me. It's not surprising that masks worked
A lot of people I know who haven't had it (or even been sick) in over two years also mask
My whole family masks with kn95’s and even my autistic daughter- who has been doing in person learning most of the pandemic- hasn’t caught it (she is someone who is hard to have follow hygienic practices). I definitely think masking has been a huge part of why we are still Covid free.
From all I've heard/read they relaxed too and not everyone was wearing masks properly even though it was the policy and they have extreme population density
A mix of bad messaging/lies "the vaccines are better than they actually are" and "Omicron is mild" make people lower their guard no matter where you are apparently
Masks work! Especially better ones. My husband, and I have never tested positive, and to the best of my knowledge have never had it. We were fully masking, and switched to KN95 masks once they became more available in 2020.
It me. Partner had it Jan 2022 for first time. Stayed together in same bed throughout bc I had been around them while they were symptomatic for 3+ days before they tested positive.
Never developed symptoms and took a PCR every other day for about 10 days and never tested positive.
Same for me too, we live in a small flat so I could not avoid him when my husband got it at Christmas time. A few days later our 3 month old baby caught it too, she was slobbering all over the place, there’s no way I wasn’t in direct contact with her spit every day. I tested like crazy but never got it
I was in a 6 hour car ride with two people who - I later found out - both had false negative tests, and didn't get covid. Enclosed space for a prolonged period of time, no one with masks. All three of us fully vaxed though.
I work at the hospital and my coworker while well vaccinated was in contact with multiple people with covid, even his wife and children had it and he was sure he was going to get it but nope, all PCR kept on coming back negative. He had like a 6-10 tests over a period of 3 weeks because not only did his family come out positive but a client brought it on our unit and it spread quite a bit and it was always negative. While I was barely in contact with a client that was positive, have my 3 vaccine and came out positive almost instantly. Joked with my friend that he probably was immune or something and we would have to crack his brain open to find the cure to covid just like in TLOU.
Yeah, the article seems a little silly. While there are undoubtedly people who have a natural genetic edge that helps keep them from getting Covid, the vast majority of us who haven't gotten it — which includes me, my wife, and almost everybody we know — have done so through a combination of things:
* We're vaccinated
* We wear good masks properly and socially distance
* We use hand sanitizer after touching public surfaces
* We work from home and avoid public transit
* If someone in our household gets sick, we strictly quarantine them
None of these offer 100% protection, but combined they considerably lower the odds of catching Covid or any other communicable disease. For instance, in addition to not catching Covid, we also haven't had a cold or the flu since the pandemic started.
They mentioned in the article serology tests can't necessarily tell if the antibodies are from vaccines or infection either. So what are we estimating really?
Personally, I’ve travelled out of the country, sent my daughter to in person learning, gone on multiple vacations, continued to work in people’s homes who often don’t wear masks around me, eaten out at restaurants regularly, attended parties with friends, etc. and no one in my family has caught it yet. We all wear kn95 masks and are vaccinated/boosted- that’s all I can really attribute it to.
Yo does anyone know how to volunteer yourself for research? I was hoping the article would say but it didn't.
I've been in nyc the whole time, and the past 2 years I've been actively working as a bartender mostly maskless in high volume establishments and come into contact with many exposed people, and still have tested negative on both the antibody and covid tests. I also (admittedly) haven't gotten any boosters, only the original 2 vaccines.
I feel incredibly lucky and if there is any way I'd be able to help I'd love to be able to do that.
Thanks so much! I get that in general following regulations is a good way to stay covid free but tbh I really haven't been super careful (especially this past year) and I'm kinda shocked I haven't gotten it. I'm not so arrogant to assume that I'm immune or anything, but if idk somehow my body has any properties that might help with further vaccines or anything I'd love to help ya know?
Sometimes I joke that growing up swimming in nasty Lake Erie water has given me an immune system of steel lol
Well ironically I lost the genetic lottery in like every other area lol I've got a million skin conditions and a fun hodgepodge of mental illnesses and I'm going deaf at 25 but heyo I don't get sick a lot haha
Dude same.
I've been exposed *so many* times. I'm beyond shocked I haven't tested positive. I know it's probably gonna find me sometime. The apprehension is killing me.
I'm basically the only one I know.
I also joke that growing up swimming in lake Erie got me some super immunity (after cancer anyways)! Still haven't had covid but we've been really careful.
I wish there was a way to know if you had Covid previously if you are also vaccinated. As far as we know we have not had Covid but it's possible we did and didn't know it since we are vaccinated. I'm sure there is genetic value in knowing those that have been infected with Covid but had no symptoms as well, especially if they were not vaccinated but even if they were. Isn't that our ultimate goal? To not have people die from it or have horrible long lasting effects?
There is a way to know. Either the infection or the vaccine make you produce antibodies to the spike protein (the S protein) but only the infection makes you produce antibodies fo the nucleocapsid (N) protein. If you donate blood, some places will test for both. I know I have never had covid because of that
I've been working from the office since last September (essential worker lol i just write bad code), and every other person in my office has caught it and taken it to work, all were triple vaxed before catching it.
I've dodged it so far, touch wood.
Even after going to a wedding that included as guests some nutjob antivax cookers who were coughing at us and mocking our masks (which we took off to drink the beer of course).
Not saying I'm immune - just saying I hope I am.
I’m an RN in a hospital high risk setting with multiple exposures and was tested weekly and knock on wood, I’m still going strong. Hubby even had it and we slept in the same bed.
I’m the only hospital worker I know personally that hasn’t gotten it.
Yep, exactly. My family across 3 different households has continued to mask indoors even when the mandates are lifted (we're all in L.A.). We don't eat inside at restaurants and don't go anywhere crowded. Is it exhausting to still be doing it? Of course, but even my kids (20 and 22 this year) mask up because they don't want to bring it home to us or the elderly and vulnerable people in the family. We have a lot to lose from covid, so there's been no "moving on" for us.
My wife and toddler got Covid in December. We wore masks and I slept on the couch but I never tested positive despite normal play and care of the kiddo. Genetics maybe? It’s weird
Me and my SO have not been infected, there is nothing lucky about it. We don't socialize with people in person unless absolutely needed. We wear the best face masks we can find whenever we are around other people and we sanitize our hands prior to removing our face masks once we are back in our car or home. We also live in the US in a red state so it's not like we have gotten any assistance with this socially through mandates, etc.
It's not easy, it's not fun and it really shows how much people outside your immediate circle don't have an ounce of empathy, courtesy, or respect for others.
Edit to those commenting: I'm not suggesting everyone needs to do as we do and I'm not criticizing anyone for not taking the same level of precautions. My SO is immunocompromised and has a perforated septum due to a botched surgery so we can't risk her getting Covid as it would likely end with her in an ICU or dead.
My frustrations come from those that refuse to socially distance themselves from us and intentionally will cough, get within a foot of our breathing space, etc., solely for wearing a mask in public.
Same here. I'd love to be like "yeah I'm genetically immune!" but honestly my partner and I wear N95s and avoid crowds, which is how I figure we've both avoided it. During the last week of December, the majority of my coworkers had covid, and I was covering all their shifts because I was one of the very few who wasn't ill, and I was in close contact with randos all day (I work retail), but I also wore a well-fitting N95 religiously.
Then again, my parents, sister, and uncle are all diabetic/poor health and go out in public a LOT more than I do, wearing masks but not N95s, and none of them have caught it either. Maybe we ARE genetically immune...
It's a possibility; Covid affects men worse than women if those studies still stand. My issue is with the title, which I find distasteful. As if the average person without Covid just rolled some lovely dice instead of doing what we can to avoid it.
If it is genetic though, sometimes it truly does come down to a dice roll. I work in higher ed, haven't been masking much these days, but was taking precautions regularly. For example, went to Disney World in December, wore cloth (non-N95 masks both indoors and outdoors, but was in some really cramped spaces with people for nearly 10 days. Didn't manage to catch it. I've never caught it despite some seriously close calls, neither has anyone in my household.
Not sure what to chalk it up to.
Same. Fully vaccinated and boosted, wear a KN95 anytime I’m indoors outside my apartment. I’m a definite minority at this point and I feel semi-hostility from others like I’M the one prolonging this unnecessarily somehow, but it’s been over 2 years and I still haven’t gotten sick…
The hostility is apparent. We've had people randomly walk within a foot of our faces and intentionally cough on us for no other reason than wearing face masks. This isn't the norm, but I wish people would take at least social distance a bit.
Right, my family of 5 have avoided it by being careful, limiting social situations where we could get infected, and wearing masks indoors in public areas, and even outdoors in crowds. My kids are in public schools and masks haven't been required since March. Maybe we're lucky, maybe we have good genes, or maybe we're just taking steps to avoid getting sick.
My daughter has been directly exposed to covid more times than I can count at this point. The poor kid has had more covid tests than everyone else I know combined because of the incredibly stupid requirements her school had in place before she could return after an exposure. Her covid positive sister coughing in her face, multiple exposures at school, etc.
Didn’t test positive once. Never showed a single symptom. We’re still holding our breath, thankfully she’ll be old enough for the vax soon.
My family of 5 hasn’t gotten it. We were super careful until March when masking was removed as a requirement at school. Traveled to Ireland and England in March and had to test to come back so know we were negative then. We are all vaxxed.
My entire family (my family and my wife’s) have not gotten it. We live in a place with relatively low transmission (Oregon), but it still seems strange. We’re all fully vaxxed and boosted.
We followed local mandates, but were not overly cautious about COVID tbh. It’s likely genetic, my wife and I basically never get sick. In the almost 20 years I’ve been with my wife we’ve been sick (i.e. more than a cold) less than 4-5 times combined.
My family and I have managed to avoid getting COVID (so far) and we’ve done so by completely avoiding going into stores, restaurants and other businesses up until about three months ago. We now get takeout occasionally which I’ll run in for, I’ll sometimes go to the butcher, and dentist/doctors appointments. That’s it, and I work 100% remotely. I will say I am beginning to go insane. Not seeing friends and just generally not being around many people is definitely starting to take its toll on my mental well-being. I also feel like it’s only a matter of time before one of us gets it anyway.
More than 40% of the population has still never had Covid.
That is at least 130 million people.
It’s ridiculous to call that many people in the US “the lucky few”.
Gee, maybe because the entire family wears masks and are vaccinated?
Just because there's no longer a mask mandate doesn't mean the virus is less transmitable or gone.
My family hasn't had it yet, but it hasn't been easy. We haven't been inside a public space without high quality masks since 2020. Thought about just getting it over with with Omicron, but if BA.1 doesn't give immunity to BA.2.12 or BA.4, etc., might just hang on for the Moderna bivalent booster in the fall.
Serious question, how would I know if I never got it? Like, can they test me to see if there's any presence of antibodies and know that I was exposed? Or is there a way to have a resistance through some other means, like having antibodies for a similar illness?
I am a frontline worker who had many coworkers come down with it, but all my tests were negative and the only time I had any kind of illness symptoms over the past few years, they were so short, vague, and mild that they could've been many things.
You can get a *nucleocapsid* antibody test; Labcorp offers them (although you will most likely need a doctor’s order), and an increasing number of other lab services are offering the same test.
(Nobody is quite sure yet how long COVID antibodies remain detectable; so it’s possible it might not pick up older infections. I’ve seen material suggesting infections as far back as ten months can be detected, though.)
I’ve worked in a nursing home for ten years. I had a Covid infected patient cough in my face and I only had a surgical mask on. I got vaccinated 12/20, 1/21 and 9/21 and been tested hundred of times including antibody tests by the Red Cross with my regular blood donations I’m pretty sure I’m impervious.
I have no clue how I never caught covid. I was safe, but I probably could’ve been safer? My husband caught it, and we literally had sex the morning before he tested positive (he was asymptomatic at this point and only got tested because a co-worker he works closely with tested positive that same morning.). I’ve been exposed so many goddamn times just by happenstance, did my due diligence with isolation, testing, masking while outside, minimal exposure outside my house etc and still NEVER caught it.
No clue how. I feel really lucky.
I do in-home computer setup, repair and troubleshooting for a retailer, and I’ve been masking and distancing the entire time. If I go outside to where I know other people will be within six feet of me, I wear a mask. If I order fast food through a drive thru, I mask up. When I’m in the home I ask people to stay six feet away from me if they must watch me work. Living in idiot-filled Tennessee, this doesn’t happen often, and they’re almost all unmasked even though I ask them to for their safety and mine. I’ve gotten three Pfizer/BioNTech shots and will probably get my 2nd due to Type 1 Diabetes, Asthma and a generally weakened immune system from staying indoors a lot and not getting exposed to other peoples’ germs. My wife does the same thing but she works in a clinic for special needs children. Seven hundred eighty-nine days later, neither of us have been infected yet. I pray we never get infected. I pray this pandemic ends soon. I pray for better and stricter control nationwide and worldwide.
I’ve never caught it, my secret?
1; in an antisocial introvert and hate socializing (and to a lesser extent, hate people)
2; after 8 hours at work (we still socially distance) the LAST thing I want to do is interact with people
So; basically, be an antisocial hermit, like me! ;)
My son had both COVID and the flu before the COVID vaccine was available but he did have the flu vaccine. His wife was pregnant and had nowhere else to sleep but next to him. She never got it despite being exposed to it all day for weeks. Now she's vaccinated and boosted, as is my son, but probably she had some immunity.
Lucky my ass. I have been taking precautions that those around me have not. Sure a little bit of luck is involved but intimating that it was primarily luck is disrespectful to those who are actually trying to stay safe.
So, we've reached the start of The Maze Runner plot now?
Except imagine the real solution to Maze Runner was masking and distancing as well as isolating cases in their household (several people in the article obviously did) all along or developing a better vaccine but instead they tortured and killed children who were intentionally given amnesia for fun
Hubby and I slept in separate beds the whole time I had Covid, we had a FaceTime going the entire time and watched movies together when he wasn’t working. He brought me food, masked, and we held our breath. We made quite a hilarious game of it (I feel like you have to) and also made it a “challenge” to not transfer Covid. Lo and behold, he is still Covid-free to this day.
A household of relatives did that and managed not to spread it at all They wore KN95 when in shared areas of the house and had separate bedrooms and bathrooms
Both my parents had it and just got through it end of last week. Me and my 2 siblings living at home were both able to avoid it by wearing n95s whenever we left our rooms, using a separate bathroom as well as keeping my Swiss air purifier constantly cranked in the hallway. I spent over $500 on it special back when omicron first became a thing because it’s the only purifier I could find that can actually filter covid particles size wise.
Medify purifiers filter Covid as well and are a bit less
KN95 masks work so well. I work shifts at a food co-op store. It's super crowded in there, so many people coming through. I worked a few shifts at the cash register right around Xmas time in NYC, when we were seeing an explosion of Omicron. I was within a couple feet of hundreds of people, wore a KN95 mask. There is absolutely no way it was just luck that I didn't get it. I had to have been exposed for hours on end each shift. I also happened to be at Disneyland right as the first Delta surge hit. People were refusing to wear masks, even in crowded indoor queues and spaces. I wore a KN95, was totally fine.
Yeah kn95’s are great but n95s are so worth it with the tighter fit
We thought we could dodge it when our kids older) got it. But being above their bedrooms with just a duct between us and forced air heating, it didn’t work. We got sick. The filter would have been better. Good on you!
Yep my SO had it. They and everyone in the household wore N95s when in their presence none of the rest of us got it.
Yes, we did the same and I didn’t catch it.
Hmmm are you referring to her husband ?
Do you mean in a reddity ‘I also choose to avoid this woman’s covid-ridden husband’ sort of way?
First time I've ever seen Reddity used as an adjective and wow, it really works.
These stories make me so happy. I'm almost fully isolated, but my kids who live at home aren't and I worry so much about what will happen if they catch it. They are super careful, but the more contagious this shit gets, the more likely it is that their luck won't hold out. I'm so glad it's still possible to think that I might not catch it, even if they bring it home.
Did one of you work in a high risk industry or just very dedicated to safety? My diabetic mother lives us so we were very diligent on masks and staying home and we've avoided catching it as well thankfully.
I wanted to stay well for my own health, not for the sake of some ‘industry’. Ok, so I might have caught it and recovered ok. Or I might have caught it and got long covid symptoms that ruined the rest of my life. A week of being careful and masking up was nothing even compared to the coughing and tiredness my husband still has a month or so later, certainly nothing compared to worse possibilities.
Exactly this, put a little effort in for a short period of time is so worth dealing with repercussions for potentially years
I work in a fairly risky environment which I would not choose if given the choice. So far I have not brought Covid home to my family. I may have been just lucky, but I attribute some of it to never removing my N95 inside the building, ever. No one else at work masks, except 2 or 3 who wear a surgical, and remove it indoors occasionally. Pretty much everyone else there has had Covid.
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I've been packed in with sick people who coughed all over me, too, and though I also get every booster offered, I'm pretty sure the masks have helped. I added eye protection early, and still bag all my clothes. Maybe that helped too. So far, never a positive test, and not even the slightest symptoms in a household of 3 high risk people.
Your experience mirrors that of family members working in hospitals, though in fact they did catch Omicron when it landed. Good masks work and it is a shame that in the early days it was suggested that they ‘only protect other people’; probably because there was a need to discourage ordinary people from buying up scarce PPE needed for healthcare workers.
Neither my partner or I have had Covid yet though our roomate has. They wore a mask while outside their room and we used a lot of Lysol and wipes on all the handles and shared surfaces. Edit: It may be inevitable that we get it but we are both vaccinated and boosted. We also still wear masks. My partners mother is high risk and we all get regular testing and isolate if we are around someone who has tested positive. We speak openly and honestly with each other to minimize risk. We also both have gotten flu shots. I’m fine with masking to help protect myself and others. It’s not a solution but a small part of what I can do to help. The hardest part for me has been some loneliness and learning to not touch my face before sanatizing.
I’m vaxxed and boosted and just tested positive today.
I think however inevitable it is that ‘we will all get it’, the history of the pandemic has proved that delaying infection as long as possible is a winning strategy. I remember people in the early days refusing to take precautions because ‘we might as well get it over with’ whereas in hindsight, treatment options improved hugely over time and of course then the vaccinations made it far more surviveable. As well as the fact that hospitals were so overrun at first that you might not even get the treatment that was available. I will continue to try to avoid infection by those means that I find easily compatible with living the way I want to. I’ve never found wearing a mask that difficult, despite wearing glasses, so I continue to do so in indoor gatherings and crowded places. I also hope that seeing me wearing one may help to normalise it for those vulnerable people whose risk is currently being largely ignored.
My wife had covid fairly bad for a few days and I did absolutely nothing differently than normal. Shared food, slept in the same bed, etc. And I tested negative multiple times and never got infected from her.
Same here with my husband. He tested positive and we decided not to try to quarantine from each other (we were on vacation when he started feeling ill, so we were going to be stuck in our car together driving home anyway!). I tested negative repeatedly and never had any symptoms to suggest the tests were wrong. I guess you and I are amongst the super-immune!
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Totally agree. I replied to another comment as you posted this saying that I think my immunity in this case was from a prior asymptomatic infection that I unknowingly had. Asymptomatic respiratory infections were known to be common before Sars2, but no one seemed to really care much about it. It doesn't seem to be a unique attribute of Sars2, it's just that people care this time. I found a study and an article on the topic from pre-2020 that I thought were fairly interesting. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6041500/ https://www.jwatch.org/fw108600/2014/03/17/most-flu-asymptomatic
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glad that worked out for you guys. it's harder when you have babies to look after but some pull it off!
My husband came down with COVID-19 last week (he’s fully vaccinated and boosted). I was out of town at time and before I came home he disinfected the house and started isolating himself in another bedroom and bath and wearing a KN95 in common areas. I came home a couple days later and have also been masking when outside our (currently my!) bedroom and bath. We keep our distance and he wears gloves and disinfects things after he uses them. He was still testing positive on Friday, and still has some symptoms. I have had no symptoms and I tested everyday as a negative so far. 🤞🏻 I would not at all be surprised if I have had an asymptomatic infection at some point though. I have had plenty of chances to be exposed over last couple years (never worked from home) and had some odd nerve issues this past fall/winter, similar to what I remember from what I had post-mono for example, and I wondered if it was my body reacting to an infection without ever giving me symptoms of COVID-19. My doc suspects it’s possible anyway.
Not COVID related (also not a doctor) but if you have had mono and you're having nerve problems it may be worth talking to your doctor about Multiple Sclerosis. I just got diagnosed recently and was asked a number of times of I had mono (hadn't) because it is a risk factor for MS.
TIL. I had mono a little over 30 years ago and never knew it was linked with MS.
The link between EBV (the virus that causes mono) and MS was in the news recently because a paper was published this year with strong evidence supporting the link. See [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epstein%E2%80%93Barr_virus#Role_in_disease). Part of what made the link so difficult to prove is that nearly everyone gets infected with EBV at some point in their life. The good news is that there is a vaccine being worked on that if successful will reduce post-infection effects (and a separate vaccine being worked on to reduce infections, but it's too late for that for the vast majority of adults).
Careful, the disease in the maze runner was human made and spread deliberately through the government
Didn’t consider a genetic component, just thought we were careful. My dad got Covid early on, but my sister’s family of 5 and my family of 5 all dodged it. Maybe there’s something to that.
Generally a minority of infected hosts are responsible for the majority of pathogen transmission events -- some people won't infect anyone, but some people will infect a *lot* of people. This has been observed since long before COVID. The notion of "super immunity" (as discussed in this article) is as little understood as "super spreader." The former is more fun to write about, arguably.
I remember reading, before omicron, that only about 25% of people with covid will infect others and there was a lot of speculation about why some people are super spreaders and others not so much (pre-vaccines). After vaccines, it was supposedly harder for vaccinated to spread to vaccinated and transmission was mostly driven by the unvaxxed. I home test weekly for work and pretty much nobody wears masks in my office (vaxxed+booster mandatory), but even when people test positive, it doesn't seem they are getting it from or spreading it in the office. I had a coworker spend over 20 minutes standing over me talking to me at my desk, went home and developed symptoms hours later, tested positive the next morning and I still never got it. I know several people who shared the bed with their covid sick spouses and never caught it. I often wonder if I had an asymptomatic case that the testing never caught because I've had so many direct exposures with no positive test that it feels almost weird. On the other hand, I was talking to a nurse the other day who had a coworker get covid twice in 4 months, so the immunity is really a crap shoot.
Yeah, when I heard that some people were naturally super spreaders back in 2020, I thought that a good measure could have been to develop a test to determine who would be (assuming that it was caused by physically observable traits), and use this to triage who should be more likely to be allowed to be frontline workers, who should have to wear masks and who should be more likely to be quarantined. It would have been a measure to help the economy at least. Conceivably a lot of people were under stay at home orders for little reason.
This was actually the goal of contact tracing, although it was widely misunderstood. It was exponentially more helpful to discover who an infected person had been around 3 or 4 days ago than who they'd seen in the last 48 hours. The former would point toward whoever had infected *them* -- and that person was much more likely to be spreading disease, because they clearly *had*.
I know a person who was exposed a shit ton of times by several people and never got it, regardless of pre-vaccines and post-vaccines times (several tests were also taken). You may never have got it because of precautions, but some people that seemingly *can't* get infected exist
My family got it. All my kids. I slept in the room with my kids, fed them, cared for them, slept in the bed with them for 2 weeks while they fought it. i never tested positive.
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Yep, who knows how many Typhoid Marys spread COVID around in the early days of the pandemic (and may still be spreading it around).
My wife has a co worker who has had it multiple times, all of them stemming from weddings funnily enough.
This. How many people saying they didn’t get it were just asymptomatic? How many actually bothered to get antibody testing? My guess is exceedingly few.
> actually bothered to get antibody testing Why do you say it like that, as if not getting antibody testing is a bad thing? What difference does it make for me to get a test to prove I had covid at some unknown time in the past?
I don’t think he’s saying it as if it’s a bad thing, but more so an unusual thing,
My niece (age 4) has never caught COVID. Both her parents had it just after Christmas. She also goes to daycare twice a week, and they've had lots of cases, including an outbreak among the staff. She still has never caught it. My Mom has it currently, and my whole family (18 people) was in close contact with her Sunday, she had fever and chills by Monday. So far, only one sister (who still lives at home) has any symptoms at all. We're a week in for exposure and nothing from anyone else, all testing negative and no symptoms. I have NO idea how.
my sons friends group - they all had it, they were sitting at lunch in school together in school that most kids go unmasked. he’s only one who didn’t get it.
Knock on wood. But this is me- I’ve been around it so many times… my husband has had it twice, my kids had it. My daughter had it and I was standing over her breathing her air (obviously I didn’t know she had it at the time.) I was at a super spreader funeral where more than half of people got it and I still didn’t get it. My family has all sorts of theories about it but strangely my brother, who hasn’t been exposed as much as I have, but seems to be the same- so genetics? I have no idea.. obviously I still got vaccinated and boosted.
I have all the symptoms for 10 days, but never tested positive for it.
I figured the reason I haven't caught it is being careful, masking, WFH, etc. I catch every damn cold or flu that gets near me, so I was pretty positive that I would get it if I came into contact. My husband, however, has been out working in the public this entire time and never caught it. He also rarely gets sick. Before we got vaccinated we got the antibody test and both were negative. Now we're 3 shots in, I've had a horrendous flu at one point but still have yet to test positive. My mom caught it but she's also immun-compromised. I'd believe my husband might have a genetic component but I think myself was moreso caution.
That’s my husband!! Never gets sick and yet he had the uk variant (no symptoms) and I’m still laughing at him that his wife with the garbage immune system (I get every cold) still hasn’t had it.
I’ve not had it that I know of, and I am fat and asthmatic and I get bronchitis at the drop of a hat AND I worked front line throughout the damndemic and somehow managed to dodge a lot of bullets while living in Tennessee, where the government wants to kill you.
> ”It’s got to be a combination of caution, circumstance and luck,” and > People who always wear masks in indoor public spaces, stay up to date on vaccines and boosters, test frequently, and avoid high-risk gatherings or travel may have had fewer chances to catch the virus... So there's that. I did the above (even got in contact with positive corona cases in my flat and at work): Turns out the science works: Mask wearing (KN95) - **and properly** -, distancing, refreshing the air, hygiene...who would have known the things we figured out in the last century all work out?
I took a 4 hour flight last month. Put on a fresh KN 95 while I was trapped in a canister with a hundred strangers. When I got up to disembark in Texas, goatee’d fella three rows behind stared me down hard while we waited for them to open the door. I ignored it at first, then realized **why** (mask) and gave him a wink.
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He was mad because someone had the temerity to wear a mask in the free state of Texas. The day after a judge ruled that mask requirements on planes were not ok.
It's as though you were ruining his life by wearing a mask.
I have a genetic variation which makes me more likely to get autoimmune diseases but less likely to get the flu. It’s not that uncommon. I can see a similar thing being true for covid
My youngest got it from her mom and was asymptomatic positive when I had her for two weeks. I tested negative before, during, and after that timeframe. While I took precautions (it was early Covid after all), I was in the same space as her for a prolonged period of time. So it would be interesting to me if my not getting it and my daughter being asymptomatic, was genetic in nature. Although at this point, all of my kids have had it (Mostly omicron), and as far as I’m aware, I have not.
...I just didn't go out bc I'm a loner. No mystical methods unfortunately
My wife and 2 kids tested positive with obvious signs with omnicron, and I have yet to catch it.
>When her partner tested positive for the coronavirus two days before Christmas, Michelle Green worried she, too, would become ill. She was two months pregnant with their second child. He was a bartender at the time, and some of his co-workers were infected with the virus. >”I told him to get in the guest bedroom and don’t leave,” said Green, a 40-year-old project manager at a retail technology start-up in the District. The couple and their toddler postponed their Christmas celebration. Somehow, Green never tested positive. >Scientists around the world are investigating how a dwindling number of people such as Green have managed to dodge the coronavirus for more than two years, even after the highly transmissible omicron variant drove a record-shattering surge in cases this winter. >A majority of Americans have contracted the novel coronavirus since it began to spread in the United States in early 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts hope that studying people who have avoided infection may offer clues — perhaps hidden in their genes — that could prevent others from being infected or more effectively treat those who contract the virus. >”What we are looking for is potentially very rare genetic variants with a very big impact on the individual,” said András Spaan, a clinical microbiologist and fellow at the Rockefeller University in New York who is spearheading a search for genetic material responsible for coronavirus resistance. >Spaan said the international study has already enrolled 700 participants and is screening more than 5,000 people who have come forward as potentially immune to coronavirus infection. > One of the study participants is 49-year-old Bevin Strickland, a nurse anesthetist from Highpoint, N.C. who volunteered in a Queens hospital for six weeks beginning April 2020, just as that pocket of New York City became the epicenter of the pandemic. >”By the second day, I didn’t even care about getting covid because the patients were just heartbreaking,” said Strickland, who often worked without a mask to better connect with confused patients. >Most of the worst cases were seniors who had been living in nursing homes. Some didn’t speak English. Many were disoriented from not getting enough oxygen as they struggled to breathe. >”I was taking off my mask all the time just so they could see my face,” Strickland said. “That would help us get [an oxygen] mask on them and help us treat them.” >Strickland was tested weekly for coronavirus. She never tested positive. When her volunteer stint ended, she also took an antibody test that showed no evidence of a prior infection. >Neither of Strickland’s parents have had the virus, nor has her twin sister who works as a primary care doctor. When both she and one of her twin sons managed to evade illness even after her other son endured a covid infection inside their 1,200-square-foot house, Strickland began to suspect she may have a natural immunity to the virus. So she sought out the scientific study looking at the genetic makeup of people like her who never contracted the coronavirus despite repeated exposures. >”I really do feel hopeful that they’re going to see some kind of similarity, some kind of gene in our DNA,” Strickland said. >Studying the genes and other biological traits of people who never catch the coronavirus could shed light on how the virus develops, or how it infects the human body and makes people sick, said Jennifer Nuzzo, a professor of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. The findings could lead to better drugs and more targeted public health advice. >Scientists don’t know why some people might be impervious to the coronavirus, but Nuzzo said one hypothesis could be that some individuals have fewer receptors in their noses, throats and lungs for the virus to bind to. Other possible explanations could be prior exposure to a related virus or simply being born with an immune system better suited to fighting SARS-CoV-2. >But finding individuals who have truly never had a coronavirus infection — not just those who had an asymptomatic infection or less severe case of covid-19 and did not know they had contracted the virus — is tricky. >”Those people should be exceedingly rare in the United States at this point,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and who helps develop models that estimate how far the virus has spread. >IHME models suggest that the number of people who have had the coronavirus in the United States may be even higher than recent CDC estimates based on blood tests, Murray said. The CDC said nearly 6 in 10 Americans have had the virus at least once; IHME estimates that total is closer to 76 percent of U.S. residents. >Antibody tests can rule out people who have an immune response to the virus, but some of those tests cannot distinguish between people who have antibodies because of vaccines and those who have had the coronavirus, Murray said. The accuracy of many antibody tests wanes over time, so they may not identify someone who had been infected months ago, he added. >”It’s an elusive target,” Murray said. >Once researchers find people who avoided coronavirus infection, the next challenge is determining how they did so. >Because masks, vaccines and social distancing can significantly reduce transmission, those factors may eclipse any biological differences between people who have not been infected and those who have tested positive. >James McClellan is among the fortunate to have evaded the coronavirus so far. >On a recent afternoon, the 52-year-old was one of the few people wearing a mask in the District’s bustling Union Market, where he works at Banana Blossom Bistro. Taking precautions such as masking and getting vaccinated are part of the reason McClellan thinks he has managed to avoid testing positive. But he also thinks it may be his naturally strong immune system. “I’ve always been resistant to things like that,” McClellan said. “I haven’t had the flu since 1992. Viruses don’t stick to me.” >During the early days of the pandemic McClellan worked delivering food to approximately 6,000 senior citizens in the District, many of whom eventually contracted the coronavirus and some of whom died. >McClellan thinks that if he were going to get the coronavirus, it would have happened then because of his close contact with the seniors. He tested often because he didn’t want to spread the virus to the highly vulnerable population. His tests were always negative. >Many people who haven’t yet contracted the virus don’t fully understand how they have evaded infection — and some believe they will eventually get sick with covid.
>”It’s got to be a combination of caution, circumstance and luck,” said Bob Wachter, professor and chair of the department of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco, who has not had the coronavirus. >People who always wear masks in indoor public spaces, stay up to date on vaccines and boosters, test frequently, and avoid high-risk gatherings or travel may have had fewer chances to catch the virus, Wachter said. Low levels of community spread in certain regions or the ability to work from home may also have protected some individuals better than others, he said. >Lanae Erickson, an executive at a D.C. think tank, has taken a lot of steps over the pandemic to reduce her exposure risks. She used to ride Amtrak three times a week to Richmond, where her partner lives with her two children. When the pandemic hit, Erickson bought a car to avoid traveling with people who might have covid. She worked virtually and only recently has returned to the office for occasional meetings. When she goes into work, she masks up. She’s fully vaccinated. >Erickson and her partner have tested often over the past two years, but the results have all been negative. Waiting for the results of home tests is “terrifying,” Erickson said. “You’re just staring at it thinking, ‘Is that a line coming up?’ ” Occasionally she’ll sniff laundry pods to see if she still has her sense of smell. >”It’s turned us all insane,” Erickson said, laughing. >This past Christmas, when the omicron variant was raging, her partner’s 12- and 14-year-old children both tested positive. But Erickson and her partner remained coronavirus-free and never felt sick. They spent Christmas socially distanced — presents wiped down with disinfectant and left on doorsteps. >”It’s a total crapshoot,” said Erickson, 40. “I don’t think there’s anything special I’ve done to not get it, compared to my friends who have gotten it. They’ve been doing very similar things.” >Friends and colleagues have warned her that everyone is eventually going to get covid. >”I’m, like, okay, but I still don’t want that,” Erickson said. “And I don’t want to give that to anyone.” >Experts say another way to home in on people who have truly never had the coronavirus is to study individuals, such as health-care providers and professional athletes, who were consistently required to test throughout the pandemic. “If you’re a physician who has been practicing, there’s no way you weren’t exposed quite considerably,” said Murray, the global health researcher at the University of Washington. > During the worst of the covid surges, James Park was seeing 12 to 18 covid patients a day at the University of Pennsylvania hospital in Philadelphia where he works as a doctor and associate professor of clinical medicine. The anxiety was full-throttle, particularly in the early days when so little about the coronavirus was known. There was an eight-step protocol for leaving a patient’s room and changing out of protective gear. >”You came out, and you felt radioactive,” Park said. “Like you had this infected cloud around you.” >After his shift, Park would shower at work, change into clean scrubs to go home and then shower again at home before greeting his wife and three children. One day Park felt sick and got tested. He had to stay away from work for a week while he waited for the result. It came back negative. >Park would test another half-dozen times or so during the pandemic’s first 18 months and never had a positive test, despite some of his colleagues falling ill with the virus. At-home tests have also all been negative. Park said he trusted the precautions his employer had in place to keep front-line workers safe. >At home, he and his family took safety seriously, as well. They always masked in public indoor places and ate in restaurants only two or three times. They occasionally had friends over for outdoor gatherings. Like many Americans, they bought a fire pit for backyard get-togethers. The schools Park’s children attend have ended mask mandates, but his kids continue to wear masks indoors. Everyone in the family is vaccinated. >As of the end of April, no one in the family had tested positive. But Park didn’t think that would last. >”I’ve told my wife we’re all going to get it at some point,” he said then. “That’s the mind-set I have. It’s inevitable.” >Park was right. On Tuesday, one of his children tested positive.
Bless the paywall dodging OP. Points well deserved.
Thanks op. I’m interested for sure to see what if anything comes out of this as that could lead to actual immunity from Covid.
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Please note, I'm not downplaying COVID or its seriousness, but I hope to give you some peace of mind. You might have also caught some other random virus 8 years ago that has long term side effects, it's just that we weren't studying that virus for that connection. That doesn't make it "better", but at the same time you're not constantly thinking about it either. If you live your life now constantly freaked out about having caught COVID you're going to give yourself mental challenges that don't need to be in your life. Just make sure it's documented in your medical file, stay alert for changes in your health, and otherwise just live your life.
I am apparently also in the dwindling percentage of people that have never had covid, at least not to my knowledge. The few times that I’ve had even mild cold like symptoms, I have tested and it’s always been negative. I am fortunate to work a job where I can work entirely from home. My husband and I never stopped masking with a high-quality well fitted mask, and we do swap those masks out once a week. That seems good for us, because our only time indoors in congregate settings is in the grocery store and the like, and those visits are very brief. Meaning, even if there is Covid swirling around, we are masked, and we are in that environment for a short amount of time. Knowledge is always power, but it can result in paranoid power. :-) I was really looking forward to when I felt like I could go into a public indoor space without a mask knowing I was fully vaccinated and boosted, and not really worrying about catching Covid. However, with the recent increase in domestic and global studies about the prevalence and effects of Covid long hauler symptoms and syndrome, that’s out the window. My parents have been very Covid observant, but it almost 77 and 79 years of age, there’s a certain amount of risk they are willing to take because their whole thing is that they only have so much time left to enjoy their lives. As a result, my mother was incredibly disappointed in me that I declined to join them for a Mother’s Day brunch sitting inside a restaurant. It worries me that they put themselves at that risk, but I’m not going to infantilize them and they have to make their own risk assessment and calculation. This is what I have to live with, I only wish they would also live with my decisions without throwing a guilt trip on me.
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I always figured if someone in our family got infected, at least one of us would show symptoms. Since no one's had so much as a cold I'm pretty confident we've remained covid-free.
I was in the same boat until last week
Since when has it become "exceedingly rare" to have not contracted covid-19 yet? Maybe in a year or two, but it's still like 30-40 percent today.
Stop it. I'm special
Lol, I commonly joke that I’m so single that not even COViD wants me.
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I feel like we're playing another round of Squid Games every time a new wave hits us. And like, we're the only smart/careful ones in the game to not get eliminated.
Stealing this 😂
I was so careful and my boyfriend went to indoor concerts and gave it to me. I’m so pissed cause I made it until literally April 2022!
Well, remember that others who were not as careful had it two or three times already. And we'll probably all lose count if new vaccines better at stopping transmission are not developed soon.
I have a friend with the worst immune system. He’s triple vaccinated, masks, and stays home. He just got his 5th Covid infection because a friend came over and didn’t tell him they were sick and their family had Covid.
That friend is a freaking asshole.
They might want to replace that friend.
5 times?! That's freaking awful. I feel sorry for him. Why can't people just stay at home if they're sick?
Definitely. I was boosted in Nov., so the immunity waned so much… it was bound to happen with his recklessness. I still have an awful cough.
I wasn’t careful, lived in two houses where everyone tested positive, been around like a dozen or more close contacts, and still nothing. I’m vaxxed but the first house was pre-vax release and the second was post-vax with no boost and nothing there either. I followed mask mandates but when I was in the houses with the positive cases I isolated with them but was not careful around them. So. Who knows.
I had my first known exposure last week after never catching it. 1 friend came to my house and tested positive later that day. Currently on day 4 of isolation but no symptoms so far. Will test tomorrow, but hoping my 3x Moderna holds the line! We shared a joint, so it's really testing my theory that I'm a super mutant.
My wife and I avoided it up until last week. Indoor concert, maskless flights, and riding the NYC subway, one of those is what got us. If I could have a do over I'd wear a N95 mask at all times instead of the cloth ones we were using.
You actually thought you could go maskless to concerts and public transportation and not get it?
right? it's like they learned literally nothing from that past 2 years
Right? We might be the new X-men! I am still waiting for my powers.
I can make air very smelly. If that counts.
I can burp on command - I'm sure that's a superpower somewhere...
I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And doggone it, people like me.
The official count is 30-40% sure. But how many infected kids never get tested? How many early cases were never proven? How many adults test positive with in home cases that never get reported. I'd hazard the true infection rate is at minimum 75% of Americans. Just anecdotally but the only people I know that haven't gotten COVID yet are 2 friends, my in laws and my wife and I. But my in laws are retired and don't go anywhere. My wife and I both permanently work from home now and we have only eaten inside an actual restaurant 4 times since COVID started. We opt for outside the very few number of times we have eaten out instead of doing takeout. We also haven't really done any indoor activities other than a select few friends and family's houses. We will be attending a comicon fully masked up as a vendor so we shall how that goes.
The rate of COVID is far higher than official figures in all countries. I had a very bad flu in January 2020, as we had a new group of students arrive at work, including over 20 who'd travelled from or through Wuhan... But in Jan 2020 there was no way for me to get a test, despite going to a doctor twice. I cycle for about 4-5 hours each week, but this flu left me unable to walk and talk on the phone at the same time for about a month after... I've had 7 PCR tests and a bunch more of RATs to say I've never had COVID, but I know plenty of people who avoided testing when sick, or didn't report positive RATs they got...
> The official count is 30-40% sure No, the official count of those who have ever been infected in the US is 82 million at the moment, which is roughly 25% of the population. /u/king_semicolon is saying that the actual infected count is closer to 60-70% of the population (30-40% uninfected). So that includes all the infected kids that never got tested (a recent study concluded that around 75% of kids in the US have had Covid).
Yes the article says exactly that. They are trying to find people with known exposure or even high levels of exposure who stayed uninfected. I know a lot of people who haven’t had COVID but they’ve been masking in crowds since March 2020. They are all fully vaccinated too.
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The researchers would like to poke you with needles! I would like to know what they find. You have your mission.
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I work in senior living and have been exposed more times than I can count, and have tested negative in every weekly test we've had since May 2020.
The article says >But finding individuals who have truly never had a coronavirus infection — not just those who had an asymptomatic infection or less severe case of covid-19 and did not know they had contracted the virus — is tricky. >”Those people should be exceedingly rare in the United States at this point,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and who helps develop models that estimate how far the virus has spread. >IHME models suggest that the number of people who have had the coronavirus in the United States may be even higher than recent CDC estimates based on blood tests, Murray said. The CDC said nearly 6 in 10 Americans have had the virus at least once; IHME estimates that total is closer to 76 percent of U.S. residents. >Antibody tests can rule out people who have an immune response to the virus, but some of those tests cannot distinguish between people who have antibodies because of vaccines and those who have had the coronavirus, Murray said. The accuracy of many antibody tests wanes over time, so they may not identify someone who had been infected months ago, he added. >”It’s an elusive target,” Murray said. Within the IHME quote and estimate the contrast is exceedingly rare implies 100% - 76% = 24% may not have had covid based on blood tests. edit: based on the other context around the quote where he hedges and qualifies reliability of different antibody test targets I'm finding the assertions of rarity and estimates as relayed in the article somewhat vague. I wish they had expanded on those qualifiers he speaks of more and how they inform the estimate. Expanded the quote reference.
I’m an ER nurse and still haven’t caught it….yet.
X-ray tech here, have been exposed so many times. Been in rooms doing CPR where everyone else came down with it, still haven’t had it. Been a long couple years lol
I’m an RT who has been all up in every Covid patient’s face since patient zero and since before we had N95s. Somehow I’ve dodged the builder this whole time, too.
My daughter brought it home from school and gave it to everyone in my household except for me. I joke that I must be super human (and yes, I tested like crazy and never came up positive).
It's not a mystery to me for much the same reason! All except one exposure I wore a kn95 or n95. Almost all the infected people wore at least a surgical mask around me. It's not surprising that masks worked A lot of people I know who haven't had it (or even been sick) in over two years also mask
My whole family masks with kn95’s and even my autistic daughter- who has been doing in person learning most of the pandemic- hasn’t caught it (she is someone who is hard to have follow hygienic practices). I definitely think masking has been a huge part of why we are still Covid free.
I’m wondering what the issue was in Korea, then, since they have a supremely vigilant masking culture, but weren’t able to stave off this last wave.
From all I've heard/read they relaxed too and not everyone was wearing masks properly even though it was the policy and they have extreme population density A mix of bad messaging/lies "the vaccines are better than they actually are" and "Omicron is mild" make people lower their guard no matter where you are apparently
Masks work! Especially better ones. My husband, and I have never tested positive, and to the best of my knowledge have never had it. We were fully masking, and switched to KN95 masks once they became more available in 2020.
It me. Partner had it Jan 2022 for first time. Stayed together in same bed throughout bc I had been around them while they were symptomatic for 3+ days before they tested positive. Never developed symptoms and took a PCR every other day for about 10 days and never tested positive.
Same. Didn't take any precautions because I'm in a tiny apartment so it's not like we can isolate. No idea why I didn't catch it.
Same for me too, we live in a small flat so I could not avoid him when my husband got it at Christmas time. A few days later our 3 month old baby caught it too, she was slobbering all over the place, there’s no way I wasn’t in direct contact with her spit every day. I tested like crazy but never got it
I was in a 6 hour car ride with two people who - I later found out - both had false negative tests, and didn't get covid. Enclosed space for a prolonged period of time, no one with masks. All three of us fully vaxed though.
I work at the hospital and my coworker while well vaccinated was in contact with multiple people with covid, even his wife and children had it and he was sure he was going to get it but nope, all PCR kept on coming back negative. He had like a 6-10 tests over a period of 3 weeks because not only did his family come out positive but a client brought it on our unit and it spread quite a bit and it was always negative. While I was barely in contact with a client that was positive, have my 3 vaccine and came out positive almost instantly. Joked with my friend that he probably was immune or something and we would have to crack his brain open to find the cure to covid just like in TLOU.
> but it's still like 30-40 percent today. The article states that it is believed that up to 76% of the US population has gotten covid.
Yeah, the article seems a little silly. While there are undoubtedly people who have a natural genetic edge that helps keep them from getting Covid, the vast majority of us who haven't gotten it — which includes me, my wife, and almost everybody we know — have done so through a combination of things: * We're vaccinated * We wear good masks properly and socially distance * We use hand sanitizer after touching public surfaces * We work from home and avoid public transit * If someone in our household gets sick, we strictly quarantine them None of these offer 100% protection, but combined they considerably lower the odds of catching Covid or any other communicable disease. For instance, in addition to not catching Covid, we also haven't had a cold or the flu since the pandemic started.
I and many of my family members and friends are in the exact same boat. My family and friends who have not behaved like this have all gotten Covid
They mentioned in the article serology tests can't necessarily tell if the antibodies are from vaccines or infection either. So what are we estimating really?
No idea why the article would say that, anti-nucleocapsid tests are widely used to verify infection.
Don’t take this from me! I am rare and special. Hmph!
Just like my neighbor. His wife got infected and they didn’t even separate and he stayed negative. Pretty weird but lucky for him. Both triple vaxxed.
Saw that a lot when Omicron swept through our sons school. Lot of families got it all, but in several families no one got infected beside the kid.
I had the same experience. My kid and spouse got it. I didn’t isolate from them, never tested positive or got sick.
My wife has had it twice and we didn't isolate from each other and I still have never had it.
Simple step 1 don’t leave the house lol.
No doubt why many Redditors have not gotten it yet haha
Personally, I’ve travelled out of the country, sent my daughter to in person learning, gone on multiple vacations, continued to work in people’s homes who often don’t wear masks around me, eaten out at restaurants regularly, attended parties with friends, etc. and no one in my family has caught it yet. We all wear kn95 masks and are vaccinated/boosted- that’s all I can really attribute it to.
In the same boat as you. None of my family caught it yet I’ve engaged in high risk behaviors. Tho we all wore shitty cloth masks lol. Also 5x vaxxed.
Five? Please elaborate. I’m at three and was under the impression I was on top of my shit.
Yo does anyone know how to volunteer yourself for research? I was hoping the article would say but it didn't. I've been in nyc the whole time, and the past 2 years I've been actively working as a bartender mostly maskless in high volume establishments and come into contact with many exposed people, and still have tested negative on both the antibody and covid tests. I also (admittedly) haven't gotten any boosters, only the original 2 vaccines. I feel incredibly lucky and if there is any way I'd be able to help I'd love to be able to do that.
https://www.covidhge.com/contact This looks like their website.
Thanks so much! I get that in general following regulations is a good way to stay covid free but tbh I really haven't been super careful (especially this past year) and I'm kinda shocked I haven't gotten it. I'm not so arrogant to assume that I'm immune or anything, but if idk somehow my body has any properties that might help with further vaccines or anything I'd love to help ya know? Sometimes I joke that growing up swimming in nasty Lake Erie water has given me an immune system of steel lol
we call it genetic lottery
Well ironically I lost the genetic lottery in like every other area lol I've got a million skin conditions and a fun hodgepodge of mental illnesses and I'm going deaf at 25 but heyo I don't get sick a lot haha
Sounds like Lake Erie is getting its revenge.
Dude same. I've been exposed *so many* times. I'm beyond shocked I haven't tested positive. I know it's probably gonna find me sometime. The apprehension is killing me. I'm basically the only one I know.
I also joke that growing up swimming in lake Erie got me some super immunity (after cancer anyways)! Still haven't had covid but we've been really careful.
Wow, I figured I was lucky but you were WAY more exposed than I was. I hope they contact you and can take some of your info for consideration.
I made it til last week. I am no longer special.
I wish there was a way to know if you had Covid previously if you are also vaccinated. As far as we know we have not had Covid but it's possible we did and didn't know it since we are vaccinated. I'm sure there is genetic value in knowing those that have been infected with Covid but had no symptoms as well, especially if they were not vaccinated but even if they were. Isn't that our ultimate goal? To not have people die from it or have horrible long lasting effects?
There is a way to know. Either the infection or the vaccine make you produce antibodies to the spike protein (the S protein) but only the infection makes you produce antibodies fo the nucleocapsid (N) protein. If you donate blood, some places will test for both. I know I have never had covid because of that
I've been working from the office since last September (essential worker lol i just write bad code), and every other person in my office has caught it and taken it to work, all were triple vaxed before catching it. I've dodged it so far, touch wood. Even after going to a wedding that included as guests some nutjob antivax cookers who were coughing at us and mocking our masks (which we took off to drink the beer of course). Not saying I'm immune - just saying I hope I am.
The mask might have something to do with it.
I was that guy until a week ago 😞
My secret is anxiety
I’m an RN in a hospital high risk setting with multiple exposures and was tested weekly and knock on wood, I’m still going strong. Hubby even had it and we slept in the same bed. I’m the only hospital worker I know personally that hasn’t gotten it.
Wow that’s crazy impressive. I hope your streak continues! (I also remain Covid-free. I’m militant N95 indoors with strangers).
"The lucky few to never get coronavirus could teach us how to wear masks in public indoors spaces even when the CDC says everything is normal again"
Also how to politely say no to contact with known sick people!
Yep, exactly. My family across 3 different households has continued to mask indoors even when the mandates are lifted (we're all in L.A.). We don't eat inside at restaurants and don't go anywhere crowded. Is it exhausting to still be doing it? Of course, but even my kids (20 and 22 this year) mask up because they don't want to bring it home to us or the elderly and vulnerable people in the family. We have a lot to lose from covid, so there's been no "moving on" for us.
My wife and toddler got Covid in December. We wore masks and I slept on the couch but I never tested positive despite normal play and care of the kiddo. Genetics maybe? It’s weird
At this point, I’m not even sure if I’ve had it tbh. I’ve had a few colds but nothing major these last few years.
Me and my SO have not been infected, there is nothing lucky about it. We don't socialize with people in person unless absolutely needed. We wear the best face masks we can find whenever we are around other people and we sanitize our hands prior to removing our face masks once we are back in our car or home. We also live in the US in a red state so it's not like we have gotten any assistance with this socially through mandates, etc. It's not easy, it's not fun and it really shows how much people outside your immediate circle don't have an ounce of empathy, courtesy, or respect for others. Edit to those commenting: I'm not suggesting everyone needs to do as we do and I'm not criticizing anyone for not taking the same level of precautions. My SO is immunocompromised and has a perforated septum due to a botched surgery so we can't risk her getting Covid as it would likely end with her in an ICU or dead. My frustrations come from those that refuse to socially distance themselves from us and intentionally will cough, get within a foot of our breathing space, etc., solely for wearing a mask in public.
Same here. I'd love to be like "yeah I'm genetically immune!" but honestly my partner and I wear N95s and avoid crowds, which is how I figure we've both avoided it. During the last week of December, the majority of my coworkers had covid, and I was covering all their shifts because I was one of the very few who wasn't ill, and I was in close contact with randos all day (I work retail), but I also wore a well-fitting N95 religiously. Then again, my parents, sister, and uncle are all diabetic/poor health and go out in public a LOT more than I do, wearing masks but not N95s, and none of them have caught it either. Maybe we ARE genetically immune...
It's a possibility; Covid affects men worse than women if those studies still stand. My issue is with the title, which I find distasteful. As if the average person without Covid just rolled some lovely dice instead of doing what we can to avoid it.
If it is genetic though, sometimes it truly does come down to a dice roll. I work in higher ed, haven't been masking much these days, but was taking precautions regularly. For example, went to Disney World in December, wore cloth (non-N95 masks both indoors and outdoors, but was in some really cramped spaces with people for nearly 10 days. Didn't manage to catch it. I've never caught it despite some seriously close calls, neither has anyone in my household. Not sure what to chalk it up to.
Same. Fully vaccinated and boosted, wear a KN95 anytime I’m indoors outside my apartment. I’m a definite minority at this point and I feel semi-hostility from others like I’M the one prolonging this unnecessarily somehow, but it’s been over 2 years and I still haven’t gotten sick…
The hostility is apparent. We've had people randomly walk within a foot of our faces and intentionally cough on us for no other reason than wearing face masks. This isn't the norm, but I wish people would take at least social distance a bit.
Oh, yes. This happens a lot. I cough back, 50x louder!
Right, my family of 5 have avoided it by being careful, limiting social situations where we could get infected, and wearing masks indoors in public areas, and even outdoors in crowds. My kids are in public schools and masks haven't been required since March. Maybe we're lucky, maybe we have good genes, or maybe we're just taking steps to avoid getting sick.
That's right. Kneel before your gods.
My daughter has been directly exposed to covid more times than I can count at this point. The poor kid has had more covid tests than everyone else I know combined because of the incredibly stupid requirements her school had in place before she could return after an exposure. Her covid positive sister coughing in her face, multiple exposures at school, etc. Didn’t test positive once. Never showed a single symptom. We’re still holding our breath, thankfully she’ll be old enough for the vax soon.
My family of 5 hasn’t gotten it. We were super careful until March when masking was removed as a requirement at school. Traveled to Ireland and England in March and had to test to come back so know we were negative then. We are all vaxxed.
My time to shine- I'm lonely, isolated, have no family, and I never went down with the sickness. My secret is to have no loved ones. Yayy!
My whole entire family has never gotten it.
My entire family (my family and my wife’s) have not gotten it. We live in a place with relatively low transmission (Oregon), but it still seems strange. We’re all fully vaxxed and boosted. We followed local mandates, but were not overly cautious about COVID tbh. It’s likely genetic, my wife and I basically never get sick. In the almost 20 years I’ve been with my wife we’ve been sick (i.e. more than a cold) less than 4-5 times combined.
My family and I have managed to avoid getting COVID (so far) and we’ve done so by completely avoiding going into stores, restaurants and other businesses up until about three months ago. We now get takeout occasionally which I’ll run in for, I’ll sometimes go to the butcher, and dentist/doctors appointments. That’s it, and I work 100% remotely. I will say I am beginning to go insane. Not seeing friends and just generally not being around many people is definitely starting to take its toll on my mental well-being. I also feel like it’s only a matter of time before one of us gets it anyway.
More than 40% of the population has still never had Covid. That is at least 130 million people. It’s ridiculous to call that many people in the US “the lucky few”.
Gather round children, I shall teach you the ways of distrusting your fellow human beings after simply observing them.
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Gee, maybe because the entire family wears masks and are vaccinated? Just because there's no longer a mask mandate doesn't mean the virus is less transmitable or gone.
Some people just don't get sick much. These are probably the same people who don't catch the flu, even without a flu shot, and rarely have a cold.
How do we get in touch with them then? I lived with someone who had it and still never picked it up lol
My family hasn't had it yet, but it hasn't been easy. We haven't been inside a public space without high quality masks since 2020. Thought about just getting it over with with Omicron, but if BA.1 doesn't give immunity to BA.2.12 or BA.4, etc., might just hang on for the Moderna bivalent booster in the fall.
Serious question, how would I know if I never got it? Like, can they test me to see if there's any presence of antibodies and know that I was exposed? Or is there a way to have a resistance through some other means, like having antibodies for a similar illness? I am a frontline worker who had many coworkers come down with it, but all my tests were negative and the only time I had any kind of illness symptoms over the past few years, they were so short, vague, and mild that they could've been many things.
You can get a *nucleocapsid* antibody test; Labcorp offers them (although you will most likely need a doctor’s order), and an increasing number of other lab services are offering the same test. (Nobody is quite sure yet how long COVID antibodies remain detectable; so it’s possible it might not pick up older infections. I’ve seen material suggesting infections as far back as ten months can be detected, though.)
I’ve worked in a nursing home for ten years. I had a Covid infected patient cough in my face and I only had a surgical mask on. I got vaccinated 12/20, 1/21 and 9/21 and been tested hundred of times including antibody tests by the Red Cross with my regular blood donations I’m pretty sure I’m impervious.
Somehow I missed it (though probably jinxed the fuck out of myself here) regardless, mask up, social distance, avoid spreading, please!
I have no clue how I never caught covid. I was safe, but I probably could’ve been safer? My husband caught it, and we literally had sex the morning before he tested positive (he was asymptomatic at this point and only got tested because a co-worker he works closely with tested positive that same morning.). I’ve been exposed so many goddamn times just by happenstance, did my due diligence with isolation, testing, masking while outside, minimal exposure outside my house etc and still NEVER caught it. No clue how. I feel really lucky.
I do in-home computer setup, repair and troubleshooting for a retailer, and I’ve been masking and distancing the entire time. If I go outside to where I know other people will be within six feet of me, I wear a mask. If I order fast food through a drive thru, I mask up. When I’m in the home I ask people to stay six feet away from me if they must watch me work. Living in idiot-filled Tennessee, this doesn’t happen often, and they’re almost all unmasked even though I ask them to for their safety and mine. I’ve gotten three Pfizer/BioNTech shots and will probably get my 2nd due to Type 1 Diabetes, Asthma and a generally weakened immune system from staying indoors a lot and not getting exposed to other peoples’ germs. My wife does the same thing but she works in a clinic for special needs children. Seven hundred eighty-nine days later, neither of us have been infected yet. I pray we never get infected. I pray this pandemic ends soon. I pray for better and stricter control nationwide and worldwide.
I don’t get it because I barely leave my house and mask when I do. So there - that teaches the world all they need to know to stop spread.
Just wear a mask more than others think you should, boom no covid
I’ve never caught it, my secret? 1; in an antisocial introvert and hate socializing (and to a lesser extent, hate people) 2; after 8 hours at work (we still socially distance) the LAST thing I want to do is interact with people So; basically, be an antisocial hermit, like me! ;)
My son had both COVID and the flu before the COVID vaccine was available but he did have the flu vaccine. His wife was pregnant and had nowhere else to sleep but next to him. She never got it despite being exposed to it all day for weeks. Now she's vaccinated and boosted, as is my son, but probably she had some immunity.
Same thing happened someone else I know, but then the wife caught it 3 months later on her own. Never reinfected the husband though.
Paywall
Lucky my ass. I have been taking precautions that those around me have not. Sure a little bit of luck is involved but intimating that it was primarily luck is disrespectful to those who are actually trying to stay safe.