I wonder what those of us who never get COViD will be called?

[RB TexLa]

[nykym]

1. Alive and

well

[Ocelot II]

2. Both careful and lucky.

[smirkymonkey]

89. Yes, I would agree with this.

I have not been completely isolated and have been out and about a bit, but only with a mask and only in areas that are low-risk and not congested.

I even went to Maine for Christmas (where we took rapid Covid tests upon arrival after having a PCR test a week prior). We have all been very careful and very lucky.

I took Amtrak business class both ways so there was no through traffic in the car and they were very serious about people keeping their masks on (I saw a conductor reprimand someone who was being careless and there was an intercom message that anyone who did not comply would be dumped at the next station, which I appreciated.)

I have barely been in contact w/ anyone since I have been back and people in our building are exceptionally careful. In fact, people in my neighborhood, which I rarely leave these days have been very cautious, so I feel fortunate. I can't imagine what it must be like to live in a red area where people just don't take this seriously.

[intrepidity]

3. Hermits nt

[CrispyQ]

10. LOL.

But I think you're right. It will take more than luck to avoid Covid in the many forms we are going to see.

[Ms. Toad]

32. I'm far more at risk at home than when I'm out and about.

I'm pretty confident in my ability to protect myself when I am out in public. I always wear a mask - I've never stopped. I've shifted to KN94 masks now that Omicron is here. I've been at work an average of 6 days a week since August 2020, in rooms with as many as 120 others for 3 hours at a time.

Until a mask order was in place (pre-vacccine) I limited my shopping trips to a single trip every other week. Post mask orders, and especially post-vaccine I haven't restricted trips out at all, with the single exception that I don't eat out. (I can still count on my 10 fingers the number of times I've eaten in an indoor setting when people I don't live with were present since March 2020.) If being social requires being where food is present, I socialize, but just don't eat.

My main risk is that my family members are not as careful. That makes my biggest risk being a hermit, hanging out at home unmasked with a daughter currently dating a COVIDiot, and a spouse with enough mental impairment that she takes risks she condemns other people for taking. While I do mask at home when I am aware of a specific risk (spouse hung out for hours, mostly unmasked, at an event with people from 20+ households, from multiple states; daughter's COVIDiot boyfriend's baby mama tested positive), most of the time I don't mask at home. If I catch COVID, it will most likely be from secondary exposure via my daughter or spouse.

So IF I get through this without getting COVID, it will be precisely because I am NOT being a hermit (and am spending far more time away from home than at home).

[uncle ray]

52. you may not know what a hermit is.

it's more likely that you are one of the people who seem to have a natural immunity to covid.

[Ms. Toad]

53. It is more likely I am extremely cautious.

I don't take any significant risks where it comes to COVID. Not to mention that am extremely susceptible to colds, many of which are caused by corona viruses, so it is unlikely I have a natural immunity to them.

And as to knowing what a hermit is, in the context it has been bandied about in connection with COVID it refers to someone who doesn't leave their house. My house is the least safe place for me because of the careless behavior of my co-occupants.

[intrepidity]

59. Well there's the problem

A *true* hermit lives alone.

[MuseRider]

4. Smart.

[OLDMDDEM]

12. I agree

Smart and not gullible.

[MuseRider]

14. I suppose lucky should be added

because some people get it anyway so....Smart and Lucky.

[OLDMDDEM]

15. Yes, you are correct. Thanks.

[Croney]

5. I've applied for membership in that club, but I heard it takes a lifetime

to get approved.

[Travel Hat]

6. Intelligent

[Elessar Zappa]

7. Lucky.

I would reckon that almost everyone will catch COVID at some point.

[dchill]

8. I'm not counting any chickens, yet.

[jmbar2]

9. Vaccinated, masked and distanced

The "unfree"?

[FakeNoose]

11. It's never going away

Those of us who are vaccinated against Covid, we won't need to fear it. (Most of us, that is.)

I imagine in a few years time we all will have gotten the virus and survived it just fine, thanks to the vaccines. It will be like getting over a headcold. The ones who didn't get vaccinated, well, that's another story.

[RB TexLa]

16. I will not get it. And you do not know what it will do to people in

5, 10, or 20 years vaccinated or not.


Edited to add: I'm not indicating I care at all what it does to the unvaccinated at any time.

[Solomon]

19. Exactly. The people who.keep insisting that one day it will be like a cold have no idea what they

are talking about.

[CrackityJones75]

72. Except history being on their side.

[NickB79]

81. The Russian Flu of 1898 is now suspected to have been a coronavirus

And that it became one of our modern day cold viruses in circulation, ie non-lethal and endemic.

[Calculating]

42. Probably 99% of people alive will get this

Unless you distance and wear n95s around people for life, you will be exposed at some point. This is going to be like another of the coronavirus cold variants eventually.

[CrackityJones75]

70. LOL Ok.

[MenloParque]

13. I've been called a Square, Government Simp, and Bootlicker just for receiving the Vaxx.

I’m fine with whatever they call me as long as I’m alive. Sticks and stones y’all.

[CrackityJones75]

17. Lucky.

Really lucky. Covid isn’t going away. Ever. It may weaken to the point it is just mildly annoying but likely everyone will get it at some point. IF you were to avoid it past that point I’d have to seriously question if it was worth the quality of life that you chose. I have had it. Did I make a bad decision and catch it? Nope. It is a highly transmissible disease that even the most cautious people catch. I think your post is pretty lame to be honest with you. Some people have to work. Some people have to be exposed for reasons that do not provide them the ease of avoidance you might have. For the people flaunting their ignorance and catching it I have no sympathy. But flaunting your not catching it amongst people that have been trying and still have caught it or may know someone that had terrible outcomes even when doing all they could…. Lame post.

[RB TexLa]

25. I am not going to feel any shame for being successful in not becoming infected.

[CrackityJones75]

28. You shouldn't

Many others shouldn’t feel it for having caught covid. That’s the point. As I said I would call you extremely lucky.

[milestogo]

21. Mask breathers.

[OhZone]

22. Well, some can catch the virus and be asymptomatic -

So you can have had the new corona virus, but not the covid disease.

Do you mean just the latter?

[RB TexLa]

26. I have not and will not have either.

[CrackityJones75]

29. LOL. Uh huh.

[Elessar Zappa]

30. Unless you never leave your house,

you can catch COVID, even with distancing, vaccines, and N95 masks.

[madville]

40. We'll see stories 10 or 20 years from now about COVID shut-ins

That haven't left their houses since 2020, like the Japanese troops that hid on Pacific Islands for decades after WWII.

[leftstreet]

23. Unpatriotic

The way things are going...

[KY_EnviroGuy]

24. We damn sure won't be called conservatives....

and their head count is dropping every day.......


Stay safe, DU'ers!.......

[Sancho]

27. Brandonaires!

[DFW]

31. Novids

Or some such

[jmbar2]

33. You win - Novids

[brush]

36. That's good. I like it.

[Raftergirl]

34. Sheep

[Harker]

35. Baaaaa. n/t

[Nac Mac Feegle]

37. Lucky

But also remember that fortune favors the prepared.

Make your own luck.

[BlackSkimmer]

38. I had it in August 2020, before vaxxes.

I’ve never been so sick, but I rode it out at home. Nightly fevers of 104, drenching sweats, horrid chills, body aches like I’d been beaten with an iron bar.

I’m one of those people who never gets a cold, and I think I’ve had the flu once. I was isolating, masking, did everything. No idea how I got it.

Now I’m vaxxed and boosted. I hope never to get it again. Good luck!

[FBaggins]

39. Phil

He’ll be the only one

[dweller]

41. The Old Ones

There will be legends told …


✌🏻

[lame54]

43. What haven't they called us?

[madville]

44. Unicorns

Because they will be mythical creatures.

[Calculating]

45. Unless you want to live like an actual hermit you're getting this

It's gonna be like the cold for the vaccinated, a minor inconvenience but unlikely to be a serious threat. Unless you plan on staying home for life, not working, not being around anyone, and having all your food delivered to your door it's all but a given that you'll be exposed eventually.

[RB TexLa]

46. No, I will not be getting infected.

Sorry to burst your bubble.

[Calculating]

48. Have you ever had a cold?

You're basically saying you're going to never catch a cold for the rest of your life, and COVID is more contagious than the cold.

[RB TexLa]

54. Your negativity has no affect on my success

Try that on someone else.

[localroger]

57. Every person who has received a Herman Cain Award thought they would never get infected

Their positivity had no effect (not affect) on their fate.

[RB TexLa]

60. I do not take the risk Herman Cain did. And I will not get it

I see no reason for this to cause any friction. I am very happy for myself and all others who have avoided infection.

[localroger]

62. Many HCA awardees didn't take "the risk HC did" either. They just shitposted then died.

You have not actually said anything about why you are so confident that you will not get the virus. Considering that so many of the others who have gotten it didn't think they would ever get it, and so many of us got it without even realizing we had it (in my case before testing was widely available), and current professional estimates that just about everyone alive will be nearly certain to get omicron within the next few months, your optimism seems misplaced unless there is something unique to you which nobody else has managed to duplicate. If you've got something that effective I'm sure lots of us would like a clue how to get it ourselves.

[RB TexLa]

63. You can go rain on other people

This post is a happy post about people who will not be infected. I do not have to explain anything about my confidence to you.

In fact you actually sound jealous of people’s success in avoiding infection and are trying to say it somehow must not be possible if you were unable to do it. Go hate on someone else.

[localroger]

65. On the contrary

I am delighted that I got it and had only mild symptoms, not even realizing I had it until it was past. I am even happier to be vaccinated with a miraculous formulation that couldn't have been made ten years ago, because the people who were making it were actually trying to figure out how to kill cancer cells and Covid turned out to be a lot easier.

I am protected by a combination of luck and technology. If you think you are protected by your positive attitude, well, I've studied such things rather extensively. Some people do have rather remarkable results with such offshoots of the general practice of sympathetic magic. Unfortunately, those results tend to be rather irregular and not reliable in the long term.

When they tell me to get another vaccine booster, I'll be at the head of the line. That shit has proven to work very reliably, and that really improves my positive attitude.

[RB TexLa]

67. Once again I have no need to explain my precautions to you.

Nor is anything based on magic as you insulting put it.

And I have had 3 Madura shots and 1 Astrazeneca shot.

[localroger]

71. Well, that did seem like the start of an explanation

And a quite good one. Glad to hear you are not one of the poor deluded followers of Norman Vincent Peale and his ilk.

And I meant no insult by implying that you might be; for nearly all of human history magic is all we had and we are attracted to it, and sometimes it does appear to work. But less for modern people because we don't do it right, and not as well as science because well it's not science.

But I have no intent to rain on your parade, just was wondering why you were so confident. I hope you realize how your way of making that claim is calculated to inflame others' curiosity. You're right, you have no obligation to explain yourself, but at the same time nobody would be asking for an explanation if you hadn't made what seems like a quite extraordinary claim.

[The Revolution]

93. Why get vaxed then?

If you are that confident you won't get infected, then the vaccine won't help you...it doesn't prevent infection. Getting the vaccine is actually acknowledgement that you might get it.

That's the whole point. We get vaccinated knowing we might be infected, but our immune system will take care of it before we can spread it to someone else (like someone who can't get the vaccine or for whom it doesn't work).

[Ace Rothstein]

49. LOL

[Quixote1818]

91. Just based on probability you will likely get infected. This virus will be around the rest of your

life. In a few years it will be off the news and just another of the over 100 types of colds. In 5, 10, 20 etc. years from now it will be off the news and just another circulating cold. You won't ever know you got it. You might be asymptomatic or get a cold. Just like the Spanish Flu is still around and many who didn't get it 100 years from now, can still get it today but it's not deadly now.


Sorry, that's just a fact.

[ARPad95]

47. There's a virus that up to 85% of adults (per American Red Cross) have contracted.

Cytomegalovirus or CMV

https://www.cdc.gov/cmv/overview.html

In the United States, nearly one in three children are already infected with CMV by age five. Over half of adults have been infected with CMV by age 40. Once CMV is in a person’s body, it stays there for life and can reactivate. A person can also be re-infected with a different strain (variety) of the virus. Most people with CMV infection have no symptoms and aren’t aware that they have been infected.

I have remained CMV negative for all of my 6+ decades of life even though there's no vaccine available for it. The American Red Cross calls me a "Heroes for Babies" blood donor. https://www.redcrossblood.org/donate-blood/how-to-donate/types-of-blood-donations/whole-blood-donation/helpbabies.html

Hopefully, I also have a good shot at remaining COVID-19 negative. [See what I did there?]

[ecstatic]

80. Wow. Never heard of that before. nt

[ARPad95]

84. Most people haven't, but CMV infection can be very serious for the newly infected and when it

Last edited Thu Dec 30, 2021, 07:49 PM - Edit history (2)

reactivates. The former are usually newborns infected during pregnancy and the later are immuno-compromised patients.

https://www.merckmanuals.com/home/infections/herpesvirus-infections/cytomegalovirus-cmv-infection

Infection with cytomegalovirus (CMV) is very common. CMV is a type of herpesvirus (herpesvirus type 5). Blood tests show that 60 to 90% of adults have had a CMV infection at some time.

CMV may cause symptoms soon after infection. Also, it remains dormant (inactive) in various tissues for life. Various stimuli can reactivate the dormant CMV, resulting in virus growth which can sometimes cause disease. The lungs, gastrointestinal tract, brain, spinal cord, or eyes may be infected.

Usually, CMV infection causes no symptoms. Serious infections typically develop only in infants infected before birth and in people with a weakened immune system—for example, people with AIDS or those who have received an organ transplant. In people with a weakened immune system, disease often results from reactivation of the dormant virus.

Research is being done to determine if the severity of COVID-19 in some patients may be partially due to CMV reactivation.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8268671/

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) has infected the majority of people globally. The reactivation of CMV occurs in 30% of immunocompetent patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and is associated with increased mortality.2 CMV reactivation is especially concerning in patients with COVID-19 because ARDS is a common complication of severe COVID-19. However, data on CMV infection in critically ill patients with COVID-19 is scarce. Therefore, we evaluated the frequency and clinical characteristics of CMV cases in COVID-19 patients who required mechanical ventilation.

[skip]

CMV reactivation and virus-induced immune dysfunction may be overlooked as a cause of immunomodulation in patients with severe COVID-19.9 Considering that the lung is a major reservoir for CMV and patients with COVID-19 are at risk for CMV disease,10 CMV pneumonia may be underestimated in critically ill patients with COVID-19 pneumonia.11 Untreated infection can lead to rapid deterioration and fatal outcomes. Therefore, routine monitoring for CMV infection may help improve outcomes in COVID-19 patients in the ICU setting.

[NickB79]

82. CMV is spread by fluid transfer

If 85% of all Americans contract it in their lifetimes, the odds of avoiding a more transmissible airborne virus like COVID for an entire lifetime are essentially nil.

[pwb]

50. Young

?

[boston bean]

51. Covid deniers?

Just making a joke.

[Torchlight]

55. Dishonest.

[MrsCoffee]

56. Say what?

[ornotna]

58. Explanation?

[Vinca]

61. Collectibles? We can sell ourselves on ebay to the highest bidder.

[JCMach1]

64. Greeks called that, hubris...

Probably you should sacrifice a goat or something...

[Silent3]

66. Many of us will have had COVID and never known it

I'm not even sure if any of the available tests can show if you've ever had COVID if many weeks or months have passed since you were infected.

[beaglelover]

73. Exactly. OP may have already had COVID and never known it.

[RB TexLa]

87. I have not.

[newdayneeded]

96. blood test

They can prick your finger and see if you have certain antibodies to show if you had it in the past. These posters are correct, there might have been 1 day 4 months ago you had a snotty nose. Super mild symptoms......but you may of had it.

Please don't curse yourself and say you won't catch it. Fate doesn't like phrases like that.

Say "I hope I don't catch it" instead. I hope you don't/ or didn't catch as well.

[ARPad95]

74. The American Red Cross tested all blood donations for COVID-19 antibodies up until June of 2021

so I know for certain I had not been infected through June 2021.* I assume I'm still testing negative for COVID-19 infection because my special blood donations (blood type O/Rh negative and CMV negative) go to babies (even fetuses) and cancer and other immuno-compromised patients. I doubt the American Red Cross wants to take the chance that blood donations that are COVID-19 positive from infection might sicken the most vulnerable patients.

*I had received my 1st and 2nd Moderna vaccinations before the end of April 2021. My May 2021 blood donation was reactive to only one of the two COVID-19 antibody tests meaning I produced antibodies in response to COVID-19 vaccination and I did not have a COVID-19 infection.

[Silent3]

75. Having COVID at some time doesn't make you illegible to donate blood forever

You just have to have cleared the virus from your system enough to not be contagious via blood anymore. A blood test for a donation only needs to test for current transmissibility, not historical infection.

In a case like yours you get much more frequent testing than most people. My point was that people who aren't frequently tested (which is most of us) might never know if they've ever been infected as some point.

[ARPad95]

76. The point I was making is that some of us do know for certain we haven't been infected. I agree that

most people will not know because they were asymptomatic and, therefore, had no reason to test.

"Having COVID at some time doesn't make you illegible to donate blood forever"

Where did I state or even come close to implying that? (I obviously know what you meant, but the correct word is ineligible.)

[beaglelover]

68. Who cares?

[Deuce]

69. Cautious & Lucky....

[tritsofme]

77. They will only exist in fiction.

Covid will touch nearly everyone, at some point.

[ecstatic]

78. Is there any way to know for sure though?

I've never had a positive test but based on how much exposure I've had over the past year or two, I could be one of the asymptomatics.

[Earth-shine]

79. Nevergetters!

Someone had to say it.

[634-5789]

83. Alive?

[Renew Deal]

85. Newts

[Hekate]

86. Survivors. Grieving survivors.

[A HERETIC I AM]

88. I've been traveling steadily since the onset, so...lucky, I guess.

I was in California when the mask mandates for domestic flights went into effect early last year. I flew out from Florida and didn't need one and 2 weeks later, bingo!

I've taken more than 50 individual airline flights (24 or so round trips with 2 or more segments each) in the last 2 years, have been inside scores of truck stops and USPS facilities since the beginning of all this, and though I have been vaxxed and boosted, I have yet to have a single symptom.

And I have to fly again on Monday.

So I'm calling myself lucky.

[MustLoveBeagles]

90. Lucky

You can do everything right and still catch it.

[The Revolution]

92. Nearly nonexistent

I think it will hit most people eventually. Remember when the lockdowns first started, it was about "flattening the curve", slowing the rate of infection, not stopping it in its tracks.

Eventually maybe the number of people that are vaccinated plus have some kind of resistance from having had it might be enough to where it doesn't spread out of control anymore, or it will mutate into more mild forms.

But like we saw with anti-vax movements before the pandemic, it didn't take all that much for things like measles to come back, so I think COVID-19 will be with us in some form or another for a long time to come.

Remember that vaccination doesn't prevent infection, it just primes your immune system to fight it when it happens.

[Shellback Squid]

94. really, you're sure? god mode is fantasy

[The King of Prussia]

95. Sensible.