To ask if you are still avoiding covid?

[Sleepyinnewyork]

I know it’s everywhere but are people still avoiding seeing friends / family if they know it’s definitely covid? Or is no one worried anymore?
I feel like I wouldn’t want to put myself in the line of fire knowingly as it’s made me bed bound twice - not seriously ill or anything but like a flu - but I don’t know if I’m over the top about it given that it’s now just everywhere in the community anyway.

I am. I’m the person people laugh at when I wear a mask in the shops.
My MIL has leukaemia and my mum had a stroke last year so both fall in the vulnerable category.
My 9 year old has asthma and had whooping cough in the summer. Any slight respiratory problem and he coughs until he retches and gasps for breath. The Dr advised we take extra precautions where possible while his lungs recuperate.
So I just do my bit to make sure I don’t catch anything and pass it on to them.
I lost an otherwise healthy friend to it in 2022 (in his 40’s) so I’ve seen how dangerous it can be.
I don’t judge those who are more casual about it. It’s up to them. I just do what I feel is right for those around me.

I have never knowingly had Covid, and DH has had it twice. We test at any cold symptoms, as we regularly visit a care home. The residents could end up in intensive care with it, and while the staff could carry it in, we don’t want to be responsible ourselves, when we could avoid it.

If I have it, I don't mix with people. If I know someone has it, I give them a wide berth.

But this is the case with any contagious illness.

The only person I know who still tests is my DM (she works in a hospital) I'd avoid someone if I knew they definitely had it, but I would do that with any other contagious illness because I don't want to get ill.

If someone had it, I would avoid them like I do if they have a cold or any illness

Yes, just as I wouldn’t go and meet up with someone who knkwkignky had flu or diarrhoea and vomiting. You can catch anything anywhere but I wouldn’t go out of my way to catch something that is going to make me and my family ill. So known covid? Hell no. The same with flu and absolutely stomach bug, nope.

Treat it the same as colds.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Some of us have no choice.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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).