Are people still isolating?

[LikeSilentRaindrops]

Been Googling like mad but everything seems so subjective online 😫

DH has felt awful all week and tested yesterday - positive. I’ve not been feeling great and symptoms have properly kicked in today - sore throat, cough, photosensitivity, fever - negative.

I have an incredibly important week at work coming up, including time-sensitive meetings that can’t be rescheduled. Obviously if I feel like I do today, I won’t be doing them, but if the symptoms settle, should I go? Tell anyone?

I tested positive this morning (after avoiding it for 3 years) and I'm staying at home

@LikeSilentRaindrops you sound like a considerate person wrestling with a dilemma. Can I say, as someone whose DH is a transplant recipient, I would really really appreciate an advance warning.

I wouldn't necessarily expect you to miss important meetings but a heads-up would enable me to decide whether I would attend or not, which might depend on location/venue etc.

How come you have tested? I would imagine most people in your position wouldn’t have tested and think they have a cold

I lost my baby due to covid as it set my HG off to a crazy level and nearly died. So for me i would be fuming if someone met me and announced they had covid. But I know not everyone feels the same or had such a traumatic experience.

I would want to know so I can make the decision not to attend

I'm so sorry.

This is the same as us. My youngest is very vulnerable (she’s been in ICU because of covid previously) so we’d appreciate the heads up so we could risk assess for ourselves if we should attend or miss out.

I have covid, first time for me. DH is vulnerable, I tested, which confirmed it. I'm off work, and work still has a policy in place. The guy who brought it in knew he had it but still came in. His wife tested, but he didn't. He wanted the overtime, and his decision has impacted the whole team.
DH has now got it.

The right thing to do is stay home.

I hope people with bad colds/flu/sickness bugs would also stay home, it’s not just covid. If you have an infectious illness, you should be at home.

I currently have covid, I test because a close family member is currently vulnerable due to chemo and radiotherapy, I couldn’t with good conscious still go about my daily life and risk spreading it to people, especially when I don’t know who has vulnerable family members or may be vulnerable themselves.

I tend to let people know when I'm I'll with anything to be honest. I can't bare being Ill and absolutely hate it when people don't give me prior warning so I can decide if I want to spend the next week feeling awful.

I don't isolate but i would attempt to keep my germs to myself if possible.

If you feel ill you stay at home. The same as with anything else. Treat it like flu. You wouldn't go to a party with flu, you wouldn't visit your granny with flu.

So yes isolating a little bit just the same as you would for flu

I would certainly mention it. You don't know the circumstances of other people at the meeting. I tested positive recently and stayed home.

I'm on day four of this and not fit to leave the house if I wanted to. It's horrible.

And unfortunately was unknowingly very likely positive on a flight with it too.

I either caught it on a flight last Friday, or like you was unknowingly positive on a flight.

Ditto. So I'm blaming one or both of you now 😁. Or alternatively you can both blame me…

@archimedesconstant there are plenty of reasons why someone might still test – in my case it was because I was due to go to very vulnerable BIL's birthday party later in the week. Epidemiologist DD (who lives with me) suggested I should.

Is your test negative?

I don’t think people have ever been expected to isolate with negative tests

I was in bed really sick with it for 4 days last week. Current guidance says to try to isolate for 5 days if you can which is what I did although I didn't travel into work until I tested negative this week. My colleagues really wouldn't have thanked me if I had spread it to them & my DF is clinically vulnerable so I am quite sensitive of the thought of accidentally infecting others.
I would say that this strain seems a particularly nasty one and far worse than when I last had it so I would be cautious of passing it on.

Where are you all getting tests from?

I work in a hospital caring for patients and we have to go in if we have covid, unless we have a high temperature. So no I wouldn’t isolate

Our work policy is not to come in if you are ill, covid or not, so your plan to go in would not be acceptable at ours. If the meetings are that time sensitive then convert them to a virtual meeting. Going in when you are contagious, cold or otherwise, is very antisocial and you don't know if someone is particularly vulnerable or has a vulnerable family member.

Please just stay home if you are sick. It doesn’t matter if it is Covid, the flu, strep, or anything else.

I clicked on this thread thinking the title referenced people going back into isolation, as in self-imposed lockdown. Our family can’t go into full lockdown because we have a teenager, but DH and I are having to switch to staying as isolated as possible again as we head into cold and flu season because he is extremely vulnerable. It wouldn’t be necessary for us to curtail our lives so much if people were just the tiniest bit considerate.

Wanted to add, my workplace has a policy that no one is allowed on-site with any illness symptoms.

I would love to not go to work if I had a bad cold like someone upthread suggested but realistically I’d get into trouble if I took time off for that. Do other workplaces really support that? Our work policy is to go to work with covid so unfortunately I had to go in.

@Ponderingwindow do you have any jobs going?

DH has it now. We're keeping distance from him and lots of windows open. He's wfh this week.

Timing is awful as DS is moving out to start uni on Saturday