I’ve probably gotten it at least once, since most people are asymptomatic. I’ve never had symptoms and never tested positive. Still, I feel like there’s a good chance I just got it and it was never detected.
I do think that is true. I’ve worked in a clinic through the whole pandemic, which meant mandatory tests everyday. Cought two asymptomatic infections this way. With the first one I had a very light headache - I would have thought absolutely nothing of it if it weren’t for the test. Second time I’ve got no symptoms whatsoever. I then got it again for round three and that one suuucked.
I’m pretty sure there are plenty of people that think they never got it, but just had zero (or almost zero) symptoms and just never knew.
My son was born 4 months before the pandemic. Because he went to daycare me and my wife always felt like we had a cold or something. I tested and tested and tested even more. For me it was also really late (at least 2021, maybe even later) that one was positive. The actual thing was so much more mild than all those flu’s and colds we had before.
Depends I guess how you define “getting” something. We’re constantly getting things, viruses and small infections, and having no idea about them. Especially if you’re in a cubicle at work near somebody with young kids, oh meh gerd. I wouldn’t want to know about everything my body is fighting off on a daily basis.
You don’t know who Anthony Fauci is? You must be under the same amnesia he’s currently experiencing - “Show me a school that I shut down and show me a factory that I shut down. Never. I never did”
I was serving in the last couple years of my military career when the pandemic started. The military took it very seriously, because we still have a mission that needs to be accomplished. Anyone dropping out for a severe illness would compromise our capabilities.
So we went on full lockdown. No one was allowed to leave military bases unless you lived off-base, in which you were only authorized to go straight home and then back to work. It was highly recommended you order delivery services for groceries and stock up so you wouldn’t need to leave home. Going to the grocery store was the only exception to the lockdown, but it was considered an extreme risk and should be avoided if possible.
Our work shifts (in my unit, anyway) were split in half. Half the crew came in for the morning shift, then thoroughly disinfected the office, locked up, and went home. Then 30 minutes later, the second shift would come in and do the afternoon shift. The 30-minute break ensured no physical contact between shifts. The split-shift allowed a shift to take over full work days in case someone on the other shift got sick. Their whole shift would stay home for 2 weeks to ensure the contagious period passed before sending them back into the office to resume split shifts.
We would’ve moved to work-from-home (WFH), but unfortunately, I happened to be working in an Intelligence unit at the time and 90% of their job was on classified computer systems, which we couldn’t access from outside the office. I was an IT guy, fixing the Intel guys’ computers, so I did WFH for a few months, managing their unclassified computer accounts from a laptop. But eventually, I was needed in the office for their other systems.
We were also required to wear masks outside of our homes at all times. Anyone caught without a mask anywhere - even sitting in our car on the drive to or from work - could be punished for violating a direct order from our base commander. We used to make fun of conservatives who bitched about how uncomfortable the masks were and how they couldn’t breathe while wearing them. We had to wear them all day without breaks, from the moment we left home until the moment we got home. I empathize with emergency room workers; it was brutal, but it wasn’t impossible to do, and we got used to it eventually. After a while, I started to feel naked without my mask on.
In the last 2 years I served, we had a few people drop out with COVID-19 (their civilian families brought it home from their work/school), but the majority of us stayed COVID-free.
When I retired last summer, I moved in with my elderly hermit dad who lives out in the countryside. He avoided leaving his house for the whole pandemic, and even now rarely goes into town. He, my wife, and I are still COVID-free to this day.
My sister and her family caught it 3 times! But my sister married into an ultra-conservative religious family who thought the pandemic was a hoax and continued to hold religious parties and barbeques for the neighborhood all throughout the pandemic (They were anti-vaxxers too; something my sister fought with her husband about long before the pandemic occurred). There were a few scares when she came to care for our father and then got diagnosed with COVID-19 a day or two later. But somehow, my dad never tested positive for COVID antibodies. And despite my sister’s husband losing his sense of taste and smell (which is still not fully recovered to this day), her whole family has thankfully survived their run-in with COVID.
I only had one round of brain surgery and worked in a convince store all through COVID taking slander from all the customers in my super red county. Did not get COVID!
I think this number is a lot lower than people may think. From personal experience I have had covid more than four times (not testing anymore), I was only actually symptomatic to any degree with the first one. By contrast, my partner has never once actually tested positive, despite certainly having it at least once, having caught it from me, and being very symptomatic. Some people shed a lot of the virus, and some people shed not any basically whatsoever, since the tests are based on actually shedding the virus, many people who simply don’t shed the virus have caught covid-19 and simply don’t realize it or won’t ever test positive
I am sure, at this point, for some people the tests don’t work. I have lupus and take immune suppression medication and my only means of transportation is public transport. Normally, I collect every germ possible. But somehow not COVID? Nah.
For me, the vaccine seemed to prevent catching the first few variants quite well, but i eventually caught the Omicron (probably, idk for sure) variant. My SO showed symptoms first, and neither of us tested (nasal swab) positive until ~24hrs after symptoms appeared.
Managed to avoid it for a long time, but then got it from sitting shoulder by shoulder in uni after mask mandates were phased out. It was not pleasant, but luckily I didn’t get any really bad symptoms.
That’s me. I stayed home, avoided events, and waited to go to restaurants until cases were down. When I did go places, I went when it wasn’t busy and sat outside. Avoiding COVID wasn’t rocket science, all you had to do was follow the basic principles of disease prevention.
Now try it with kids or a partner who works in health care. Personally I was quite strict like you, but had it a couple of times due to external factors becoming internal factors.
I won’t pretend that luck wasn’t a big factor, but my wife worked at a senior living facility and I managed to avoid catching it. Hell my wife even caught it, but she moved into the guest room and we just treated it like a clean room
My wife is an ER nurse and I never got it. Funny thing is she didn’t get it until she was in the hospital getting her gall bladder out. We also had two kids in elementary at the time, and they never got it either.
I honestly think I’m immune or something. I pretty much followed all the lockdown rules, though I didn’t go disinfecting my groceries like some people I know. After things loosened up I went on a day trip with a group of friends, and we all had dinner & drinks together afterwards. One woman unknowing had COVID, and over the next few days everyone else came down with it. Except me. Last Christmas I spent with close friends, lots of kissing and hugging - COVID for them but not me. I still get all my shots (five so far), I’m scared of long COVID more than anything. I’m too busy to be long-term sick.
Edit just to add that I tested negative every day for a week after those exposures.
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