Is it now impossible to avoid?

[MrsKDB]

My feeling is that the cat is completely out of the bag now and we are all getting covid, with symptoms or without, at some point. I’ve expressed this to colleagues / friends who have agreed but a few have looked very shocked at the idea and seem to think ‘being careful’ means they won’t ever catch covid.

What do you think? An inevitability or possible to avoid for your entire life?

I have no idea if I’ve had covid in the past and now double jabbed. Have one secondary aged child and one at uni whose living away but been home a bit.
But in the last few weeks we’ve had norovirus and now all have the worst colds - sore throats - PCR done all negative. One child now has tonsillitis. I feel absolutely rubbish - yet covid hasn’t entered the house.
They need to come up with a bloomin cold vaccine I can barely leave the sofa!!!

I worked for years in day nurseries and then the last few years in retail so i think i built up natural immunity. Im not worried about catching it and never have been.

@SummerHouse

No. We will not all get it. Some people have natural immunity. Most people are double jabbed (doesn't protect you entirely but makes it less likely you will get it). I know households with children (so not isolating positive case) where family members haven't caught it - from people they were with 24/7. If that's the case how could we all possibly get it. Did you mean literally? I don't understand how anyone would think that possible.

We don't know about natural immunity. And I don't think you can say that because you were in close contact and didn't catch it means you probably have natural immunity.

Goodness knows how many times I was in close contact with chickenpox (including siblings sharing a room) as a child. I didn't catch it until I was 20-and then I don't know who I caught it from. It can only have been someone I had walked past in the street or similar, and I had it really badly.

"I've never had the flu which I've had much more exposure to over the past thirty odd years.

I'm not very concerned"

I've never had the flu virus Either despite being a teacher for 15 years. Covid and particularly delta is far more infectious.

It only took about 8 weeks to catch covid last autumn. School infection levels are much worse now. I guess there might be something about the superspreader theory. Maybe some people don't spread it particularly effectively but sooner or later you'll come across someone who does...

It is ripping through the schools in my area. Until September we had really low infection rates and high level vaccination, plus lots of people here lucky to wfh etc and avoid exposure. We've been really careful throughout the pandemic and now the DC have brought it home. We're positive. 1/3 of their classes are currently testing positive.

DSis is opposite side of country, has been frontline and has managed to avoid by being careful. She's been working in PPE throughout and going to quite some length to avoid bringing it home. Her DS just brought it home and infected both parents too.

We are all fully vaccinated but it's hard to avoid when you need to care for your own DC and aren't aware they're positive until it's too late.

Vaccination is important though. I'm recently out of the covid ward. All the vaccinated folk I met were only in for a few days, and relatively well, but the unvaccinated were shockingly ill and in for weeks.

Why do you think the prevalence will stay the same forever? We don’t all get measles eventually or TB because mass vaccination means they are not widespread.

With Covid there’s the risk of variants and in that sense it may become more like flu with a new vaccine needed each winter but again, not everyone gets flu by any means.

I agree it may be almost inevitable to get it because we haven’t vaccinated enough people, particularly young people, but if and when we have why would it still be circulating at current levels, even accepting that some fully vaccinated people get the disease and can pass it on?

I’m frankly terrified about this winter because I’m in the third trimester of a high risk pregnancy with a cev partner and cv young child. We’re fully vaccinated but I’m still so scared because of the way it’s running through schools and student communities.

I think it is inevitable that everyone will get it.

I've somehow managed to avoid it despite my parents, kids and every one of my friends having caught it.

I've not been particularly careful - have been on holiday, on a plane, pubs, restaurants, theatres, festivals.

Have taken 2 antibodies tests 6 months apart so I definitely don't think I've had it.

Only had my first vaccine last week due to pressure from work.

Sure it will catch up with me at some point!

I've just got it. From my daughter who got it in school. She just had a runny nose so we picked it up from lateral flow then confirmed on pcr. School told us many parents don't test and send children in sick. Because it's making its way through each of us 5 days apart our isolation period is stretching over two weeks at least. My daughter might be able to go back to school but not if we can't take her

@MrsKDB

My feeling is that the cat is completely out of the bag now and we are all getting covid, with symptoms or without, at some point. I’ve expressed this to colleagues / friends who have agreed but a few have looked very shocked at the idea and seem to think ‘being careful’ means they won’t ever catch covid.

What do you think? An inevitability or possible to avoid for your entire life?

This was always going to be the case, pretty much the only way to avoid catching Covid-19 in your life was to die before you got infected and the reality is that means dying within the next two years. Personally I would rather live for another 40+ years and have a bit of a cold with Covid.

As sooon as they scrapped masks in schools and isolation for double jabbed and under 18s then I knew as soon as we hit cold/flu season then it would only be a matter of time before we got it in our house. DH and I have it at the moment. I don't THINK our teens have it - they've had negative PCRs. But wierdly, both have had awful "colds", exactly the same as DH and I. I'm not sure if cases are evading detection because of mis-timing PCR tests. So I reckon kids are maybe going into school with "colds" (hidden COVID) and negative PCRs but then passing it on unknowingly to others.

Either that or if you have a cold at the same time as COVID it somehow affects the tests. I have no idea. I just know that it's so hard to know what's a non-COVID virus and what's COVID at the moment, and kids are going into school coughing and sneezing.

@Invasionofthegutsnatchers

Clinically vulnerable people have my sympathy. Staying in forever is no life.

I'm CV and you're right, staying in is no life. So I've had to choose not to.

It's a shit decision to have to make but there it is.

Isn’t the % of those with antibodies quite high? 80%? Meaning many of us have already had it.

We might get the new delta strain so get it twice. So grateful for the jabs and hoping it won’t be too bad.

I've had it twice, however. Although both times were before I started my current meds, which make me very vulnerable and make the vaccines less effective.

When I took these meds before, flu was a huge threat - I was very ill with it one year. But I didn't stay at home then.

I'll probably get it again and I'll probably be very ill. But nowhere near as ill as I was last winter when my MH was fucked, I was having suicidal thoughts, I was self harming and on antidepressants.

It's the lesser of the two evils, for me.

@MatildaIThink - do you mean in the UK? I accept perhaps virtually everyone in the UK will get it because of decisions we’ve made particularly this winter but I don’t think everyone in, say, New Zealand or South Korea will end up getting it.

[quote ActonBell]@MatildaIThink - do you mean in the UK? I accept perhaps virtually everyone in the UK will get it because of decisions we’ve made particularly this winter but I don’t think everyone in, say, New Zealand or South Korea will end up getting it.[/quote]
Things will change a lot in NZ when vaccination is reached.

I think everyone will get it - although some countries slower than others.

I always said when, not if, for us, as I have two DC at secondaries, inner cities, high risk areas.

DC2 brought it back from school last year, but none of us caught it, and, unsurprisingly, DS1 caught it at school this term and passed it to me (double vaxxed).

DH (also double vaxxed) has evaded it both times...

Ds might have it. Waiting on PCR

His friends do

He has symptoms but not too bad

Inevitable if you're connected to state education, absolutely. Chris Whitty confirmed last week.

Sadly I think many who are doing their best to avoid it may suffer the consequences of infection regardless precisely because of schools and asymptomatic infection.

@MarshaBradyo - why? (Genuinely interested - not claiming expertise here). Do you think that because of new variants?
Vaccines do reduce both infection and transmission so if the vast majority of a population is vaccinated then (setting variants aside) why wouldn’t it become less common to get it?

I think it is as likely as catching a cold at some point in the future. At the moment the vaccine is what most of us are relying on for ammunity but as that wears off we will build up natural ammunity by coming into contact with the virus.

[quote ActonBell]@MarshaBradyo - why? (Genuinely interested - not claiming expertise here). Do you think that because of new variants?
Vaccines do reduce both infection and transmission so if the vast majority of a population is vaccinated then (setting variants aside) why wouldn’t it become less common to get it?[/quote]
I think Delta is too transmissible even with vaccine

But the better news is it vastly reduces incidence of hospitalisation or death

So it’s really good in that way and definitely worth having. But it’ll circulate in every country - Sarah Gilbert has said it will end up quite mild at some point which is good (due to our immunity rather than virus)

If you look at the actual contact tracing studies that have been done transmission is almost exclusively by symptomatic people in specific settings with prolonged contact with same people such as work, school, inside household..... extremely small almost negligible amounts of transmission from random strangers at places like restaurants, theatres, etc.

So if you're not working or youre working from home, don't have kids going to school and aren't visiting family/friends indoors when they have a cough/fever then there is a good chance you won't get it. Sure the odd person might still here and there.

The media has done a good job of putting a lot of really dangerous misinformation out there... a lot of people still think they will catch it by walking by someone on the street when we have no evidence that has even happened 1 time.

The average person is spreading it to 1 person now.... it's been 1-2 people in the past... think about that... that includes all their close contacts... everyone they work with, everyone they go to school with, everyone they live with.... yet they only spread it to 1-2 people....

how high would that number be if they were spreading it to everyone they walked by on the street? probably close to 50-100.....

So no... it's not inevitable everyone will get it... there are groups of people who won't, but yeah the majority still probably will end up getting it from people they work with who don't stay home in their first couple symptomatic days when they are highly infectious, from their family and friends who tell them "It's not covid it's just a cold,/allergies/something in my throat/chronic cough", or from their kids who caught at school.

We've got it now and it isn't too bad. Just a cold really.

@Clusterfckintolerant

Inevitable if you're connected to state education, absolutely. Chris Whitty confirmed last week.

Sadly I think many who are doing their best to avoid it may suffer the consequences of infection regardless precisely because of schools and asymptomatic infection.

asymptomatic infection is usually the end of the chain though, there is very little asymptomatic infected people who pass on the infection if you look at contact tracing studies.

@MarshaBradyo - thank you. That’s helpful. It would be nice if it went the way of Scarlett fever for example and became a much, much milder disease overall.