To ask if you are still avoiding covid?

Hi OP. I think it's quite rational to not deliberately want to harm your friends/family and vice versa. A recent yougov poll found the same. What isn't rational to me is five years in, people saying it needs to be a cold as though that would make it true!

When covid first hit, lots of people were taking their kids out of school, many firms were suggesting wfh in advance of lockdown, as they were unsure of the impacts. As time has gone on, more and more research shows the harmful longer term impact covid infections have on health (including mental health). When we now have two million with long covid in England, a doubling of long covid in kids since last year, when long term sickness is off the charts, with around half a million studies showing the harms of covid, with decision-makers updating indoor air (including Parliament) for themselves, with people feeling 'ok' on their first infection but getting long covid from a later infection, when the financial press are flagging up the costs of long covid on the economy, it seems absolutely beyond bonkers to equate that with a cold! Who is more anxious - the person who chooses to ignore what covid is doing or the one who acknowledges it?

The phrase 'living with covid' implies that we weren't living with it when it first hit, including in lockdown. I think the way we are currently living with it is reckless - we could be addressing indoor air especially in places with high onward transmission like schools, better infection control in healthcare, supported isolation. Alternatively, we do as we currently are and spend public funds on some of the fallout of not doing those things, whilst destroying a much higher number of people's health, employment and education than was necessary...whilst also ensuring we still have shite pandemic preparedness should another pandemic hit.

I didn't stop living my life. Going to bars and busy places is not "living life" for everyone. In fact I've never enjoyed it, some of us are introverts. I'm quite happy with my life, and I'm living largely as before the pandemic. The main difference being I put a mask on my face before I enter a public place, which is not a big inconvenience, and I test before I meet with friends and family, which takes 30 minutes. Apart from that, I work, I travel, I go to things that an introvert like me enjoys (exhibitions, small classical concerts, library events etc), I do wild swimming, etc.

Why do you care? I don't do them either, but no skin off my arse if someone else does.

I am recovering from Covid. It is possibly the worst strain I had so far. Previously I’ve only had mild cold symptoms. I pick it up every Sep/Oct, end of summer holidays and when the schools go back. Caught it off DS who also found it debilitating, previously he’s has a sore throat for 24hrs and then been fine.
We dropped him off at uni over a week ago then DH and I noticed symptoms a couple of days later. I only tested because I had a couple of tests in the cupboard ( HCP so still get them free) and got a big fat positive.
As I said I’ve been quite poorly with this strain but maybe I was run down, stressed by the build up to DS leaving for uni and all the prep and also after finding out my younger sister has terminal cancer which was totally out of the blue.

Whatever the reason I would say this strain is closer to flu than any previous one. But I can relax now, knowing we probably have 6mnths immunity taking us through the winter months.

And for anyone in the Cardiff area, my sincere apologies. My DS and his friends have probably spread it effectively through the student population during freshers week. It’s highly likely that they picked it up nightclubbing in our local uni city during their freshers week which was the week before.

If I know someone has covid I won't get close, just as the same as if they had any illness. I don't want to catch any cold/virus/flu but at the same time I don't stop going about my day to avoid it.

But I don't do any of those things and have never had Covid. I'm rarely ill. Why stop living your life just for something that's not going to kill you.

We are asked to test if we have symptoms and not go into the office if we have Covid. The CEO lost a previously healthy family member to it and another member of the management team’s wife is still ill from long covid after 2 years, so they are very cautious.

I don't miss out on "any sort of social interaction". As mentioned, I meet with people I care about, and who care about me: family members and close friends. We don't meet if anyone is feeling ill or has ill people in their household, and we all test beforehand. It's not a big effort. I've mostly dropped people who object to this, but will sometimes meet them outdoors in a park or something like that.

I'm not the kind of person who enjoys doing loud, busy things surrounded by loads of strangers as a social activity, so it works out rather nicely for me. I also spend a lot of time in nature and doing outdoor sports, which is lovely (and also good for my health).

This the same as I would keep away from Noraviris or something really contagious like that. It's only sensible.

We have all had Covid once at the very beginning. Dd had it again in 2021 but only knew when her friends she had been with one evening started to get ill and they all tested positive for covid. She tested positive.
Dd didn't have a single symptom. I had been sitting next to Dd watching tv, given her a kiss and hug each night. I tested negative.

Exh was the only one of us who had the vaccine, but he only ever had the first jab.

We as a family (apart from exh) work in venues where there are between 400-1500 people in close proximity. Covid doesn't cross anyone's minds

I don't know anyone apart from those who get all the vaccines who have had Covid since 2022

I avoid people with colds because without tonsils any cold I get goes straight to a chest infection.

But I was doing that pre Covid.

Is it worth it if you’re missing out constantly on any sort of social interaction?

I give it absolutely no thought. Wouldn’t occur to me to test. I don’t imagine many others would test if they were ill either. You just do what you normally do when you’re ill, and rest.

The idea of testing and isolating now seems absolutely bizarre.

I wear FFP3 masks in public places and I avoid crowds as much as possible. My friends and family know to notify me and cancel our times together if they have any illness symptoms. I haven't had any symptomatic illness in years. I'm lucky that I haven't needed any hospital treatment (hospitals are a hotbed of Covid infection), and I don't have children, so it's been relatively easy for me to avoid getting ill, and I've never liked crowds or busy places anyway. I'm aware it's part luck and circumstance and don't give myself too much credit.

I'm not immunocompromised or otherwise "vulnerable", but I don't want to become it either! I work with data that centralises and evaluates the damage of Covid in a way that isn't discussed in the public sphere anymore (I'm not saying there's a conspiracy, it's just that people get bored easily and have moved on, politicians prioritise economic interests, and most journalists have zero scientific literacy). So I'm more informed than the average person and I know why I don't want to be casual about this. Unfortunately I also know anecdotally several relatively young people whose health state has declined drastically since the pandemic started.

I love feeling healthy and I don't think fitting in socially with people I don't even know or care about is worth risking that, so I do what I can to avoid Covid and I don't care if strangers at the supermarket mock my masking, pity me or think I have "anxiety". I also felt pity for them when I heard them coughing their lungs out even in July, as is "the new normal", but I keep my thoughts to myself.

I currently have covid, I think I caught it at a gig I was at last week. I tested positive yesterday and rang work for them to tell me I still needed to go in and wear a mask. Fine if I worked on my own or away from other people but I work in a shared office on an older persons ward with vulnerable patients and staff. I complained about this but was told I either go off sick or go into work with a mask on even though I can do the job perfectly well at home or in a different office on my own. Its shocking the lack of care around covid now, its still out there and is still deadly to vulnerable people.

No. I've never had it, despite working in a large office all the way through lockdown and socialising as soon as we were able to. I've been with lots of people who had Covid and didn't get it. I don't avoid it all.

Not really. I'm just living my life at home and work. I don't work with the sort of patients who would necessarily think to avoid my clinic because they have Covid, and given how vulnerable they are, I'm glad they don't avoid seeing us. I wouldn't dream of cancelling a clinic unless I was really unwell (flu last year knocked me out for a week.)

I seem a bit prone to Covid. Was an early adopter, unknowingly getting it in February 2020 from skiing (and giving it to my sister, an intensive care doctor, for which she was oddly grateful as she felt safer at work in the from summer of 2020 as she'd had the disease- although I still feel guilty). I have just got over my sixth bout. Still got the cough but feel fine.

DMIL is being treated for TB, so I wouldn't see her if I had any upper respiratory infection. But she is 80, and merrily travels in the tube, goes to her London club, visits museums and restaurants, so it's a pretty fruitless gesture.

Covid doesn’t even enter my mind. I’ve moved on.

I don’t judge those who are more casual about it. I do judge those that are more casual and try to belittle the choices of others.

No, in your little bubble, people have consigned it to memory.

I test because every few days I visit my 102 year old father. Is that bizarre? Or do you think I should take the view “he’s well outlived his normal span”?

I’ve been in bed with LC for 15 months. My liifr is destroyed and I’m suicidal.

Some of us have no choice.

Trying to, but it's not that easy.

I did buy a Covid test yesterday as I was feeling particularly rough, but thankfully it was negative. I'm well aware that any sort of illness would probably kill my dad right now, so I'm taking a view on wearing masks again, but I don't want to be ridiculed.

If I feel very ill I tend to avoid potentially vulnerable people, regardless of whether it's Covid, flu, norovirus or something else. I don't test any more but I've had Covid several times and tend to lose my sense of smell so I know I've got it. I won't go into the office and will work from home. It's just common courtesy to try to avoid passing on your germs to others if you can. I'll always let friends know if I've got a heavy cold before seeing them if they have something nice, like a holiday, planned too. And I won't see my parents if I'm ill.

I had it in March 2020, before you could test, and again in March 2022 and when I tested on the off chance because I was expecting a visitor who cared for elderly FIL.

Now, we take the common sense approach. If we are unwell, we stay home until we are better, and if we know somebody else has Covid, we keep as far away from them as practically possible.

I do however have a friend who is still shielding, despite the fact she was never clinically vulnerable in the first place! As somebody said upthread, this is almost certainly an anxiety issue.

I have it at the moment. I tested because I felt awful, one of my parents is 80+ with a heart condition and we had some tests left from when we went on holiday earlier this year. Never seen a test go so dark positive so quickly!

I’m a teacher and some of my colleagues have been really weird with me about why I tested. Well, maybe if you had when you were wandering around school coughing and snorting I wouldn’t have covid and feel terrible now?! 🤨

I would still be off work if I hadn’t tested positive because I’m not well enough to be there, but when I go back I’ll probably be in a mask until I get a negative, because that’s just the right thing to do, isn’t it? I’m already that teacher that has most of their windows open all the time.

Of course flu isn't inevitable, you can get a Vax against it. I was very cautious about COVID but not terrified, until I contracted it last year,ended up going to hospital by ambulance with cardiac and breathing problems. Prior to that I had flu and pneumonia (I couldn't get a flu jab)about 25 years ago, one virus,no coughs,no colds,sore throats,d and V,inspite of nursing,coming into contacts with these things,looking after dd with chest infections,dgs with d and V. DH with coughs,colds, pneumonia, COVID, I had 2 planned surgeries.. never expected to be so ill.