I work in nursing homes. Someone brings it in and next thing you know, it's spreading through the whole building. And you can spread it before you have symptoms. It usually has to run it's course for 2 or so weeks.
Some of the early strains approach measles level of contagious. Truly wild to think about. Not so much now though. Still highly contagious but not the monster it was. Makes you kind of glad that most circulating strains now belong to the omicron lineage.
I was going to say! We just hear about it less because virtually everyone has some degree of immune response from vaccination, prior infections or both
The flu killed a friend this year. Because it went from flu, to pneumonia, to bacterial pneumonia, and then started killing off his feet and arms. I died after spending a week in the hospital. He was only 55 and in good physical health.
Anecdotally, I literally put a tape barrier around my desk, used the sanitizers frequently and wore a mask religiously. Didn’t get sick. Around May 2020, I began relaxing those protocols and I got sick immediately.
This is not how COVID spreads. COVID spreads through the air. If you want to avoid it, you need decent ventilation + a respirator (aka, Kn95 or N95 or N99, etc).
That’s kinda like saying, wear gloves for safe sex but don’t worry about a condom. Yes, you will be slightly less likely to catch something. But there’s a much better way…
No I was saying you should also maintain proper hand hygiene WHILE using proper PPE. You can wear an N95 mask all you want but if you aren’t using proper hand hygiene you can spread germs from contaminated surfaces you were in contact with.
Whoooole house got it extremely early in Jan-Feb 2020. We genuinely were all down at the same time and only some people were able to struggle through basic functions. 2.5 weeks of hell and some community help later we all pulled through.
Oof I thankfully got the vaccine fairly early. I still got it three times and it sucked but was just really bad flu like symptoms with bad fever. So it wasn’t “the worst.”
The worst was it went through the whole family and it was never that bad but if you tested positive then the kids were out of school for two weeks.
I caught it a month after my vaccine. I was a bit peeved about that.
Some times the strains were so mild though that I just thought it was a cold. Our work makes us test if we have symptoms and that's the only way I knew it was COVID.
6 times for me, the first one in July 2020 was the absolute worst, I truly felt like I was dying (and objectively I was in pretty good shape compared to others).
I have never been that sick. The first 72hrs were the worst. But I was run down and sick for like 2 weeks. And it took several months to get over it.
I was training for my 2nd Ironman when COVID hit. 2 weeks later, (after my isolation etc was over) I went for an hr long walk, and came home and had a nap for 3hrs because I was exhausted.
Pretty sure I had that over the new year going into 2020 before it was officially recognised in my country. Worst flu type thing I’ve ever had and I’m young and healthy. Dr was about to order chest X-rays to check for pneumonia. Took me a month to get over it.
Took about 3 years to then “officially” get covid and it was nothing in comparison
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u/HelgaGeePataki 12h ago
I caught the 2020 COVID strain at Thanksgiving time. That strain was the worst. I've had it 7 times but nothing like the first time.