How Often Can You Be Infected With the Coronavirus?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

A virus that shows no signs of disappearing, variants that are adept at dodging the body’s defenses, and waves of infections two, maybe three times a year — this may be the future of Covid-19, some scientists now fear.

The central problem is that the coronavirus has become more adept at reinfecting people. Already, those infected with the first Omicron variant are reporting second infections with the newer versions of the variant — BA.2 or BA2.12.1 in the United States, or BA.4 and BA.5 in South Africa.

Those people may go on to have third or fourth infections, even within this year, researchers said in interviews. And some small fraction may have symptoms that persist for months or years, a condition known as long Covid.

“It seems likely to me that that’s going to sort of be a long-term pattern,” said Juliet Pulliam, an epidemiologist at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/how-often-can-you-be-infected-with-the-coronavirus/ar-AAXkGNQ

[SoonerPride]

1. How Often Can You Be Infected With A Cold or Flu?

Repeatedly multiple times a year forever.

These viruses have no known "cure" or vaccine that is 100% effective.

Covid is no different.

We will live with it.

I have zero worries about Covid.

[Ms. Toad]

3. COVID is not the cold or flu.

We know having even a mild case of COVID has health consequences for a substantial number of individuals which last for as long as we've known about COVID.

The most recent data indicates that vaccination is not as good at preventing hospitalization and death as in the older variants.

To pretend COVID is as innocuous as colds or flu is extremely naive and dangerous.

[SoonerPride]

4. The severirty of the disease is not what was in question.

The question was "how often can you catch this disease?"

The "common cold" is also a coronavirus. There is no vaccine for it. You catch a cold repeatedly and often.

Covid 19 is like that.

Vaccines will keep you out of the hospital but not prevent you from catching it

Nothing will, except not being around humans ever. Masks can mitigate your risk level, but even then they are not 100% efficacious.

If you never want to ever catch Covid the only solution is to never be around any humans ever.

[Ms. Toad]

7. I was addressing your cavalier attitude toward COVID.

And, increasingly, vaccines will not keep you out of the hospital or from dying Breakthrough cases currently account for 40% of the deaths from COVID.

You are correct that nothing is 100% effective in preventing COVID - but there are many things we can do (short of cutting off all human interaction) which make it less likely. Because COVID is not as trivial as a cold and, even though the flu can be non-trivial, COVID is several times more consequential than the flu, we need to continue to focus on prevention of transmission - not merely on avoiding the hospital or death.

[brooklynite]

10. What was cavalier about the response?

Most people, if infected (as I was) will not have a severe reaction. The population and leadership have decided that isolating is not practical, and masking at all times is not worthwhile. You can disagree, but that would be an increasingly minority opinion.

[Ms. Toad]

16. I'm sure you recall the early days of COVID, when the standard line was it's just a cold or flu,

and is harmless unless you are old or infirm.

Comparing it to the cold and flu (especially combined with, "I have zero worries about it&quot , when we know it is far worse and can cause long term consequences is trivializing it.

You may have been luck and not have had a severe reaction, but that is not the case for a substantial number of people. My employee had a mild case (no fever - just what felt like bad allergies). Seven months later, she still has mental impairment.

Until we know more about those long-term consequences, even in mild cases, we need to continue to focus on minimizing transmission.

I was in the minority when I was predicting when we would hit 100,000 cases - and was off by no more than a day or two. I was in the minority when I started masking, and was proven right when the mandatory masking orders cut new cases dramatically within 2 weeks. The reality that people are unwilling to make the sacrifices now to avoid what will likely be a decades-long drain on public health resources does not make it right.

[SoonerPride]

12. There was nothing cavalier in my post

But you are free to interpret my words however you see fit.

I think Covid is here to stay and each person will have to figure out their risk tolerance and mitigation strategy for themselves.

[Ms. Toad]

18. COVID is a community health issue, not an individual problem.

Just like we require vaccinations against measles because measles is not something we expect individuals to "figure out their risk tolerance and mitigation strategy," we need to address prevention of transmission of COVID as a community - not on an individual basis.

And comparing COVID to colds and the flu is trivializing it, just as it was when the same comparison was made in January/February 2020.

[Doc Sportello]

14. What you call cavalier might be the sane response

First, 2022 is not 2020. We have vaccines and existent and upcoming treatments for those who catch it so it is factually true that Covid today is not the threat it was two years ago. Some seem to want to ignore that fact and act like current outbreaks are as deadly as they were two years ago. They are not.

And this response of "we need to do this" seems to me to be ignoring reality. We have a third or more of the population who will not get immunized or wear masks, or do anything to mitigate the disease. What's the foolproof plan to deal with them? Concentration camps? Then you have the people like me who have had all four shots and gotten the diesease but are going on about our lives. People are going to concerts and ballgames and parties. Try shuttting everything down and see what happens. This will be interpeted by some as "giving up". No it is merely ackowledging the situation as it is. And that is how Sooner Pride described it.

[SoonerPride]

15. Very well stated. Thank you.

[Doc Sportello]

17. You're welcome and something I left out

Do people here want to win the mid-terms? Well one way to lose them is to keep acting like the sky is falling and the Democrats efforts are a failure. They are not. The success against Covid should be touted, along with the aid packages and a rerturn to sane foreign policies. It is not wrong to do so when the facts back it up. Hope I'm not ranting.

[liberal_mama]

22. I believe the election and politics are the whole reason for the desire to sweep Covid under the rug

I understand that. I certainly don't want Trump back in the White House.

But there should be a way to message that Covid is still a danger to many people.

People can get infected even if vaccinated and boosted. People can die even if vaccinated. I was shocked when I heard that 42% of the people who died were vaccinated. People can get long haul Covid and severe complications. People can get reinfected pretty quickly.

A family member who is a supervisor in a large public health agency was just telling me yesterday about a coworker in her early 30s who had Covid a month ago. Now she has serious heart damage.

In my area, everyone is acting like Covid is over and we're actually in high transmission with a 7 day positivity rate of 20%. It's surreal. With home testing, who knows how high it actually is.

My husband was going to Home Depot and I said, "Make sure you wear a good mask." He says, "There's no mask mandate," and gives me an attitude about it. I said, "There is no mask mandate because of politics! That doesn't mean you should go maskless with cases as high as they are right now!"

Some people will always be reckless and refuse to wear masks. We've been dealing with them for the entire pandemic. However, I see posts in various groups from people who weren't wearing a mask and got infected and they are surprised because they thought it was safe to go without a mask if they were vaccinated.

Whether people like it or not, there is still a pandemic going on and people who don't want to get Covid should definitely still wear a good mask and social distance.

I'm stocking up on some more boxes of 3m N95 Auras and my favorite brands of KF94s today. Officials are already warning of possibly having 100 million Covid infections in the fall (I'm sure this will be after the midterms are over), while pretty much ignoring what is going on in many areas now. The prices on N95 masks are good now and they will probably be way more expensive after the election when we will be able to talk about how dangerous Covid is again.

[Doc Sportello]

24. Never said a word about sweeping it under the rug

Said we should tout the suceesses. Try reading it again. But some people seem to want to live in perpetual fear, regardless of the facts. So have at it.

[Ms. Toad]

20. We really have no idea whether COVID is the threat today that it was two years ago.

Certainly the immediate consequences are lower, but increasingly breakthrough cases are killing people. 40% of the deaths in February were among vaccinated individuals.

What we are confirming now is what many of us expected all along: there are long term health consequences and increased risks from even mild cases. We know there are long-term lung, heart, and mental impairment consequences. Those are the ones which have been studied. I have not seen any proposed long-term consequence which has been disproven. We will learn of more going forward, as we have time to study a disease which doctors have described as impacting more body systems than any ther.

I have been living my life as normal, with two exceptions, since August 2020. I wear masks indoors when the community new case level is >50/100,000 over 14 days. I don't eat indoors with anyone other than family I live with, based on the same standards.

There are a lot of things we should be doing to encourage safely going about our business - the thing we should not be doing is adopting the binary thinking of the other side: total lock-down or pretend COVID doesn't exist.

[Doc Sportello]

23. Your headline is so wrong there isn't much else to say

Pulling some number out of a hat to make the point that we are in the same place as two years ago is just well, ridiculous. And you are guilty of what you claim I was in your last line. No one ever said pretend it doesn't exist. You make proclamations about mitigation without any such reality-based notion, which is what one side is wanting in spite of the reality. Time to wake up and smell the coffee, no matter how attached you are to going back to 2020.

[AZProgressive]

8. I never want to catch it

Which is why I vaccinate, wear masks, and social distance.

I haven’t even been sick from anything which makes me think that what I’m doing is working

[Johnny2X2X]

2. Get vaccinated! Get Boosted!

It's not talked about enough, but only 30.2 of the US population has gotten a booster. 2 shots helps a lot, and you're unlikely to end up hospitalized if you've had 2 shots, but the risk is still there. If you've been boosted though, the risk for serious Covid is exceedingly small.

Yet 70% of the country isn't boosted. Needs to change, and this number needs to start becoming the Covid story in the US.

Keep getting the boosters and Covid will not be a significant threat to you. That 70% number is alarming to me, means we have posters here refusing the booster. The booster makes a huge difference.

And let's face the other fact, the people dying of Covid right now, are almost all unvaccinated idiot Trump supporters.

[Ms. Toad]

5. Not accurate.

"And let's face the other fact, the people dying of Covid right now, are almost all unvaccinated idiot Trump supporters."

In August of 2021, about 18.9% of COVID-19 deaths occurred among the vaccinated. Six months later, in February 2022, that proportional percent of deaths had increased to more than 40%.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/breakthrough-deaths-comprise-increasing-proportion-died-covid-19/story?id=84627182

That means 60% are unvaccinated - most, but not all, are also idiot Trump supporters. Sixty percent is nowhere close to "almost all."

[Quakerfriend]

11. Yes, 40% of deaths were among vaccinated

individuals in Feb-March. The media is not stressing this enough!

Nor are they reminding the general public that as much as 30% of all Covid cases will experience long covid, in some form- this includes even asymptomatic and very mild cases. This is why we should all continue precautions. You do not want even a mild case of Covid.

[VarryOn]

6. I know a few that's had it twice and one that's had it...

three times. And she has been vaccinated and boosted since it was available.

My wife and I were discussing last night that we've gone 6 or 7 weeks of not knowing anyone who currently has COVID. There for a while, we knew numerous at one time.

My wife and I just returned for a week in Turks & Caicos. The day before we left, we had to get a COVID test before we could re-enter the US. Our resort provided the testing, and the guy who did said he had not seen a positive result in a few weeks.

When we got in the immigration/customs line upon arrival in T&C, there were hundreds of people in line. They had the line set up where you zig-zag as you work your way forward. I told my wife, "well, if I'm going to get COVID, this is going to be the place." Hundres of people from various spots on the globe. But, no, never got it!

[Azathoth]

9. Omicron infected entire swaths of boosted individuals

So the likely answer is there will never be "full" immunity, it's another endemic cold/flu. It ain't chickenpox or the measels.

[ananda]

13. Same as common cold.

...

[mackdaddy]

19. My step-daughters family has had Covid three times.

She is a pharma rep visiting dozens of Dr offices, and her husband is a Dr. who sees dozens of patents per day and two middle schoolers in regular classes. So they have a lot of potential exposure.

All have been vaccinated when available.

Worst sickness was second wave after vaccinated, they were all sick for about a week, and no taste/smell for several weeks.

Kids did not show any effects after last bout in Feb of this year and Adults just had chills and headcolds. But stepdaughter had headaches for several weeks and sense of smell still not totally back after a couple of months.

Interesting note, Her husband the Doctor this last time had same chills but tested negative twice on the rapid test, but was positive on the PCR test he had to take before coming back to office.

I think it is important to reiterate that immunity from vaccination or having the virus infection or both just means your body is prepared when you are exposed to the virus and can handle it, hopefully without getting very ill.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

21. Covid is here to stay.

It is like colds and flu in that the virus mutates very rapidly, and people can get sick over and over. The huge difference is that this is a brand new virus, and so almost no one started out with any kind of immunity. The more people who get it and recover, the more who have at least some immunity. Aside from whatever level of immunity the vaccines incur.

What we are really seeing is how very different people's immune systems are. I have a niece who has gotten it twice. I know someone who got it early on and has still not fully recovered. Someone else who got it early on and died. I have not gotten it, unless I was totally asymptomatic, which is possible, but I live where people have been very good about masking and I simply haven't gone out very much in more than two years. I'm also vaccinated and boosted.

And as terrible as Covid can be, it doesn't kill people all that readily. The deaths are as high as they are because again, this is a brand new virus, and it's taken time for decent treatments to be developed. It also does seem to be evolving to be more transmissible but less deadly.

[StarryNite]

25. I'm hoping nasal vaccines will be a game changer.

The state of nasal COVID-19 vaccines: 4 notes

Excerpt:

1. While the primary goal of COVID-19 vaccination is to prevent severe disease, nasal vaccines would aim to prevent infection altogether.

"If we want to change the goal posts, so to speak, and get into really limiting infection and preventing infection, the final bullet point is, we need to change the route of immunization," said Robert Seder, MD, chief of cellular immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, proposing a scenario in which a variant emerged that was as transmissible as omicron and caused more severe illness like delta. "Wouldn't you want a vaccine [against] not just severe disease, but [to] prevent transmission?" he told the Post.

[link:https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/the-state-of-nasal-covid-19-vaccines-4-notes.html|

[senseandsensibility]

26. Hope this comes to fruition

sooner rather than later.

[48656c6c6f20]

27. It's too hard

We can't do anything about it. We can do those things that are easy, because they're easy.