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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

This. There is almost nobody I want to see so much that I’m happy to accept a week of feeling shit afterwards, so if I know they’re ill I’ll avoid them. And I’m not a hypocrite so if I’m ill I keep myself to myself. Whether it’s covid or a nasty cold is neither here nor there.

No. Even if I wanted to - I don't have the luxury of it, and a large part of my job involves mealtime assessments where I'm watching people cough from close up (I assess swallowing as part of my job), so, in combination with school-aged kids in the house - if it's coming my way, it's coming my way. Thankfully in general I have a good immune system, although it's guaranteed that I'll always get one shitty bug a year that establishes squatting rights in my sinuses and makes me miserable - and that one's holed up there at present resisting eviction attempts - and the others I'll shift pretty quick.

What I do do, is if I'm unwell I'll cancel my patient visits (or offer them the option of this) and reschedule them and switch to WFH so I don't unnecessarily share the germy love. I would test when we had access to free tests, but I'm not going to be paying out for snot sticks out of pocket now we're expected to pay - sorry so I just adopt the general policy of if I feel shite don't spread it around... 2019 style essentially.

I think for most of us that is what "living with covid" actually boils down to - unlike on here where people seem to claim in faux-horrified tones that we're all running around licking and actively snotting on people in some kind of germ infested orgy.

@usernother But it DOES still kill a number of people. If you've never had COVID then you're really fortunate and you've clearly got a very much stronger immune system than many people. I've had it twice and both times I really was extremely ill, as was my husband recently, despite being fully vaccinated. For many people it is so much worse than 'just a cold' or flu.

We obeyed all the restrictions during the pandemic because it was the right thing to do and because both of our mothers were in their nineties and in care homes for most of this time; my husband is also very vulnerable. But thst didn't stop us 'living our lives', despite the fact that COVID really could have killed one of us or one of our mothers. But we took sensible precautions with what we did and still do now, although not as strictly now that our mothers have both died, but we still have a responsibility to the rest of the community to try to avoid spreading COVID to people who may have vulnerabilities thst we don't know about or who have vulnerable family members.

@LoobyDoop2 the thing is for a lot of people it being a cold v Covid does matter.

My work don't offer enhanced sick pay. It's statutory sick pay after 3 days. So I have to choose, every time I'm ill - "is this worth £80 to me". Which means that more often than not, I'm unfortunately at work with a cold. I'm not allowed to WFH - despite the rest of my department being WFH. I have a different job title and therefore WFH isn't offered. Some of us aren't cold, callous people, but people just trying to survive as well.

Yes and no, I'm not avoiding doing anything in case I catch covid, but I had covid last year and was really quite ill, and my mother had it recently and was also ill and took a few weeks to get back to normal.
So it's not something I want to catch again if I can help it and I wouldn't want to pass it on to anyone else - the same as not wanting to pass on a cold or flu.
I think it's common courtesy to not pass on your germs if you can

I completely ignore it and cannot understand why anyone bothers testing any more.

If you had Covid but felt well enough to work, would you have to go in?

Because people are still dying from it or becoming extremely ill. Just because you haven't been badly affected doesn't mean that other people react the same. I couldn't live with myself if I had COVID and knowingly mixed with other people without warning them and then spread it to people who may go on to die or be seriously ill. If you have COVID symptoms, it takes a few minutes to do a test, which are still readily and cheaply available. I think some people are incredibly selfish.

COVID is also different from flu insofar as flu tests aren't available easily, and if you've got proper flu then you can't go out and spread it because you're too ill, unlike COVID where you might have mild symptoms but can still make someone else extremely unwell.

@Growlybear83 but so can so many other illnesses. If you go out and about while feeling even slightly under the weather you could, theoretically, kill somebody

No I have not been worried about covid for years. I practise good hygiene in general , to minimise the risks of picking up any bug. If I feel ill with a cold now I wouldnt test , but I would just avoid seeing any elderly family which I would have done pre covid anyway.

I sympathise - I was hospitalised with glandular fever many years ago and was very ill for a long time. Post viral fatigue/syndrome is not a new invention, despite it being repackaged as 'long covid'; I caught a viral infection and was unlucky to have been one of a minority that reacted badly to it.

I've had covid four or five times that I know of (the first time was in early March 2020 like a PP, so no testing) and had no problems at all bar feeling rough and having a couple of days in bed on one occasion (on two occasions I would never have known without doing a test), but if I had been more seriously affected I would accept it as one of those things. We can't eliminate all illnesses, and nor can we predict what will happen when we get them.

I believe that is the guidance, yes. I need to check.

I avoid sick people (well all people really!) No one I know is still testing so I don't know if they have Covid but if friends and family tell me they are ill I wish them well virtually and then stay away until they are no longer gross. I don't need your germs!

If I knew I had it (and I wouldn’t test, so I doubt I’d know), I’d probably steer clear of anyone who I knew to very very elderly or vulnerable. That said, I’d do that if I had a bad cold, so no real difference, and no, I don’t avoid it any more than I do anything else.

We should all be doing this! It's common sense... I really don't understand why anyone would not actively avoid getting sick and/or spreading any virus!

I do understand why a lot of people don't test for all the reasons stated above, but having caught Covid for the first time in September 22, I was horrifically poorly and only just over the threshold for hospitalisation. I now have fibromyalgia, areas of inflammatory arthritis and previous active inflammation has eaten a lot of my knee joints away. My life has changed immeasurably. I am on medication that lowers my immune system so I just want to know if anyone is poorly so I can avoid the contact. I know it is impossible to avoid altogether.

I have never taken a covid test except for going on holiday when that was required for travel.

I haven't had symptoms or signs of covid/flu/cold since about 2018 when I was bed bound with flu. I'll act accordingly if I get poorly and I still won't test for covid because, well, why would I?

I won't be doing anything to 'avoid' getting any similar ailment.

Of course not! I never have. It's not a big deal, it's never been a big deal. And I wouldn't test, so if I had some sort of cold/flu type thing, I'd have no idea whether it was Covid or not.
Just get on with your life, OP, and don't stress about trivia.