Well guess what. Both of us tested positive yesterday. No idea where we got it. We only went to the pharmacy. We have groceries delivered. No One we know has it. We are vaxed and boosted. On antivirals now for 5 days. We thought it was allergies because cedar pollen is very high. Sinus congestion and cough only symptoms. Very surprised. We rarely leave the house.

Apparently it's hitting pretty hard now. Doctor said it's been a mild strain. Hopefully we get through it easily. I have asthma so it's worrisome. 🙏🙏

If one becomes a hermit (one who lives in solitude), they don't need a mask because they have no way to get COVID. Solitude means alone.

You can wear a mask all the time.

Or, there will be a time you don't (no matter how briefly), and you'll get COVID. At some point.

That's all I meant.

Raven, I'm sorry. I hope all goes well and you are both better soon. Mild strain sounds positive. What I'm reading is this last one is really exceptionally contagious.

DH is feeling well today from having a cold. He tested and it was a cold. But he was disappointed to think he'd let his guard down somewhere and caught a virus of any kind. Its been more than three years - for either of us.

He did keep an appointment with his endo last week. I'd forgotten that Providence clinic also has the same entrance, waiting area, for Urgent Care walk ins. I stayed in the parking lot, but he said the waiting/check in area was really full. And he could hear lots of coughing going on, was annoyed with one young woman who was laying down across about three chairs. I told him 'lighten up', she may not have felt well enough to sit....

FWIW, in re: the mysterious acquiring of COVID - I'm always mindful of the fact that this virus is transmitted through the air, and one can't always know if someone infected passed through an area prior to them.

That, and insufficiently protective masks, whether due to construction and material, or poor fit.

Even the highest quality masks are not 100% virus proof barriers.

P.S. I'm also mindful that while chance of COVID infection from surfaces is lower than airborne, it's not zero.

To answer the original post I've never tested positive. I've also been vaccinated 4 times and never stopped masking.

Ravencajun, so glad you are having a mild case!

DH and I avoided it for three years and are sick with it now. He is bouncing back quickly. I am pretty much down. We are taking antiviral pills so I am hoping they kick in soon.

The drDr told me this is the most contagious strain they have seen. Also that it is mild to moderate. My lungs are involved now. Coughing up a lot of stuff from my lungs. Bacterial so also on Amoxicillin. Husband is doing much better. He is on Paxlovid I am on lagerviro because of interactions with my medications. It is not a good experience! 😒

Phooey. I'm glad you're getting good care raven. I'm sorry you need it.

Still avoiding covid here but my older sister and her hubby (both mid 80's) caught it over the holidaze. She said it was really rough on them both but they've recovered ok now. Both are fully vaxed like us.

Well, we've been ok until now. Fully vaxxed. DH just tested positive. I tested negative. Fingers crossed that he'll have minor illness and that I'll escape.

Letting your guard down. Wanting it to be over. It isn't.

People are getting it and in my back side of nowhere sparsely populated county seven 7 ! people have died, as in actually dead, this week. What is going on here? There is no way for me to find out. Were they vaccinated? Almost no one masks. Everyone is tired of being careful or being forced to be. This makes me sick. I hope not literally. I am so tired of having to be so fanatically careful because the people around me will not be. I am high risk. I cant afford to get this disease. I do feel for those like me who get it because people in this country do no care about them and me.

Everyone is tired of being careful or being forced to be

But people aren't being careful anymore. That's the problem. People are thinking that they're vaccinated (if they are), so they won't end up on a ventilator in a hospital so catching Covid won't be all that bad. It's the long-haul after affects that are concerning. Some people are experiencing terrible things after having Covid.

People ARE tired of being careful. In the beginning as an employee working retail in a drugstore, I can tell you that EVERY SINGLE PERSON who walked into the store asked three questions:

1: Do you have sanitizer?

2: Do you have masks?

3: Do you have gloves?

I'm not exaggerating either. For months nobody, not even Walmart, could get hand sanitizer or masks. And we got yelled at so many times a day. And when we tried to explain that in Canada there are 38 million people and a new pandemic (that hadn't actually hit our province yet) finding these things was going to be nearly impossible. Also: we told them gloves are the worst for cross contamination you don't need them.

Fast forward to now. We have full end caps of hand sanitizer. And we've expired out thousands of bottles. Into the trash. While we used to have an end cap of face masks too, now we get 3 - 6 boxes a week. Maybe. The vast majority of our customers do not mask. I do. I will be honest though in that I mask at work, I rarely do when out and about shopping as I do social distance as much as is humanly possible. I don't go to busy malls and I avoid people like........ well...... the plague. But at work where most of our customers are sick with one thing or another (it's a drugstore) and coughing and sneezing near me constantly (our cashiers no longer and the protective shields anymore either, so they're literally face to face with the sick people), I feel it's in my best interest to mask at work. When too many people are in one aisle, I leave the aisle. Mask or no mask, I only have 9 hours of sick pay left and I need them in two weeks.

My parents haven't had covid. They're 88 and 90 (I think I've mentioned that 100 times lol) and my mom said while Covid isn't going away, (she's right) it's not as bad as it was. I had to remind her that while people are still dying from covid and the Covid units are running at capacity it's still just as bad. It's just not being reported. Even they have stopped masking anywhere!

I'm 100% vaxed and boosted. My husband got his bivalent shot yesterday so he too is fully vaxed and boosted. I for one am also sick and tired of being careful. But: until this turns into what the flu finally evolved into, we need to be careful for those who are vulnerable.

And @ravencajun Zone 8b TX I hope you recover quickly! I drank tons of Powerade and went through a lot of tylenol for the sinus pressure.

Well-said, Witty! (Did you change your name here?)

@sjerin yes, a few times. LOL

Hope you both (Elizabeth and Ravencajun) get better soon.

Just want to add this picture. Five people in this photo. Cough/Cold anelgesics aisle. I'm trying to fill the lozenges and man puts his shopping cart right in front of where I was working, pushing me aside. Literally. He want's Robax pills. Two ladies on the right are trying to pick cough medicine. All I had at the time was a bit of Nyquil and maybe 3 choices of pills mostly store brand. Two people on the left (I think you can only see one though) looking for childrens Tylenol. We have some but it seems to take people 20 minutes to figure out which one. They're really all the same, just different flavours but nobody can figure that out. I left the aisle. I'm masked. Are they?

Wear a good mask, that's what I'm still doing and I never got the flu or the virus.

FWIW, I saw a report today that a study finds a relationship between physical inactivity and long COVID.

I do find it very disappointing to see so many people around here who seem to've thrown all caution to the wind. Why anyone would want to gamble with their and their community's health this way, I really can't say...

I was surprised when I went to my bi-annual appointment with my Rheumatologist on Tuesday and masking was optional. I had one with me so went ahead and wore it in the waiting room but took it off during the appointment. The nurse and doctor were not wearing one either.

Polls showed in Dec 2022 only 30 percent said they wore a mask some of the time, and only 10 percent saying they used masks all the time while outside. The "everyone NEEDS to wear a MASK all the time out in public" group seems to be a small minority in America right now and attacking 90% of America is just plan wrong.

In china after 90.2% of people totally vaccinated with years of lock downs, travel bands and mandatory masks 24/7 got them years of mental anguish and a delay of the inevitable. A tsunami of Covid infections now across china so eventually the virus will win even with 100% compliance to masks and isolation but I see some want to be just like china.

XBB 1.5 sub variant of omicron is expected to infect 80% of people and the most transmissible sub-variant so far. From the 100's of millions of infections we will bound to have additional variants will come from it, so what will be next? I may die from Covid but better than ending up with terminal cancer or some other cruel way of dying, and a heart attack would be great compared to some of the ways I witnessed people dying from.

Last month I visited my health clinic, and the next day an ER room with a overnight stay in the hospital because of pneumonia. No flu or covid, just pneumonia and guess what? NOT one doctor, nurse or staff member was wearing a mask. They all told me not to worry about masking up, and they didn't worry about masking up in an environment of sick people for some odd reason, but didn't care and only wanted to breath. The stand alone pneumonia was causing drastic breathing problems with fatigue, near fainting and brain fog. The point is something is going to get you and it doesn't need to be covid so why worry about it? So give up the feelings of desperation, paranoia and using other people as scapegoats. It's not nice, selfish and robs you of and good times you could be having now.

We have not gotten it. My husband and I have all the vaccinations and boosters, as well as the flu shot. We go out to eat with family about once a month. We have tried to continue walking every day (outside if the weather allows). In bad weather, we drive to the mall and walk, but we avoided it the weeks before and after Christmas, as it felt too crowded. Our dentist has long Covid and lost weight. She tried to come back to work and nearly fainted when cleaning my teeth. We are worried for her.

The Centers for Disease Control said Friday afternoon it had received 130 reports of ischemic stroke in people over 65 who had received the new Pfizer jab less than three weeks before. An ischemic stroke occurs when a blood clot blocks the flow of oxygen to the brain.

Do some math, ron. Factoring in the many tens of millions of people who have received that medicine, what percentage does the 130 number represent? It's too small to fathom.

How many of those people are alive or had reduced severity of illness because of the immune system boost they received? A much, much greater number.

I'll accept that what you say is true but facts often need to be put into context. And can be misleading without doing so.

There is also the how many people over the age of 65 who will get an ischemic stroke no matter what they did in the previous three weeks.

Kevin, what sort of pneumonia did you have?

The Centers for Disease Control said Friday afternoon it had received 130 reports of ischemic stroke in people over 65 who had received the new Pfizer jab less than three weeks before.

OMG - you mean that there were seniors who had strokes in the US?!?

Seriously? 130 people out of about 20 million? That's less than a thousandth of a percent. And every week, on average, over 10,000 people in the US have a stroke for the first time, so think about how many of them also recently had a booster, and you can see how ridiculous a statistic like that is.

Good point, TV. The trite expression, correlation doesn't mean causation.

I wonder how many of those 130 people drank orange juice during the 3 months. Could that have caused it? Or ate a sandwich, a common cause of strokes. And so on.

" 130 people out of about 20 million? "

Not exactly :-) 130 people of the age of 65 or older out of 550,000 recipients of the Pfizer bivalent vaccine. A very different and much more limited data base.

"The number of strokes detected is relatively small, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University and a member of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ Covid-19 Vaccine Work Group.

“These strokes are not a confirmed adverse event at the moment,” he said. “It’s like a radar system. You’re getting a blip on the radar, and you have to do further investigation to discover whether that airplane is friend or foe.”

I have had Pfizer vaccines and boosters exclusively to now. But I have yet to schedule my bivalent vaccine and with experiencing a mild TIA this summer myself, this is enough of a 'warning sign' for me to consider Moderna instead. Just an extra degree of caution :-)

I’ll add this:

And don't forget about throwing out statistics without providing supporting data.

• Polls showed in Dec 2022 only 30 percent said they wore a mask some of the time - what polls? Source?
• Only 10 percent saying they used masks all the time while outside - Source? The National Enquirer?
• In china after 90.2% of people totally vaccinated with years of lock downs, travel bands and mandatory masks 24/7 - Source of this statistic? Who figured the 90.2%?
• XBB 1.5 sub variant of omicron is expected to infect 80% of people - who said 80%?

You see, when people post data like this without citing the source of their information, why should it be believed? It may or may not be true, who knows. But without supporting claims like this with where the statistics are coming from, it's not credible.

And don't tell me to go look it up. It's the poster's responsibility, if they want to be believed, to provide it up front.

@ronminsouthga do you mean this article that says the opposite, or are you getting your information from Faux News?

Click here---> CDC

I'm not your keeper wawa, so I will tell you to look it up, or stay oblivious and dependent on others to care for you like a child.

Gee, I thought I'd prevent the typical answer from people who can't back up their facts by saying "And don't tell me to go look it up. It's the poster's responsibility, if they want to be believed, to provide it up front." People who can't back up the carp they spout always resort to telling people to look it up themselves and then follow up with name calling. Because the statistics you provided are just 💩

You proved my point. Thanks for the confirmation 🙄

And who is wawa? 🤣

Read for yourself, study done in Taiwan. For some reason, just published but was completed in December 2021. Study was done on mostly young males-high school age. A whopping 17.1% of 4928 had complications after 2nd dose of Pfizer vaccine. Taiwan had no covid at the time and only 0.1 covid up until March 31, 2022 so this study's context was definately vaccine-related. Cardiac symptoms can go away for a time, but can definately still do future unknown damage. You cannot deny all the cardiac arrests in young people we are seeing now. Something is going on. This study may help us understand. How anyone could vaccinate their children is just crazy to me.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36602621/

eta: witty, all CDC did was pick and choose past studies done they only want you to see. No new study was done on this. Besides, one day is not enough time to study these complications from this NEW vaccine. How can that be done so quick? Common sense.

I expect anyone - read that again -- anyone - to be able to back up their claims when they're citing "studies," "polls," and/or throwing out specific statistics (30%? 90.2%? 80%?) to back up that information so i can further read about it. It's a courteous thing to do for the reader. Notice journal articles when citing specific data always put a footnote so the reader can read more about what the author is writing. The author doesn't tell readers to look it up themselves.

If Kevin had credible sources - or any source other than made up information, I'd expect him to be able to point to where the information came from. Not tell me to look it up myself.

It's called the world wide web - WWW - meaning there's a whole lotta information out there. Tell me where you're getting the data you're citing.

I spent almost 38 yrs in engineering as an aerospace engineer. I know how to read and understand scientific data, research studies, complex algorithms. I can't understand arbitrary unsupported percentages without supporting backup.

It doesn't do the reader a service to tell them to look up the information themselves like Kevin did. And then to follow it up with name calling. Wanna be believed? Cite your source when asked. He said whole lot of information without saying where he got it. Maybe my expectation is too sophisticated for him.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but I do have to say, those of you calling on so much of the so-called "conspiracies" have mostly ALL come true! Just sayin...natural immunity; vaccines will keep you from dying; if vaccinated-you cannot spread or get it again; etc...

sephia, again...I don't know how many times I have backed up my comments with studies (that ended up being true), and it was a total waste of time with the posters on these covid threads. Besides, it is everyone's choice to do so or not and should not be "expected" by you or anyone else. Especially, when most on here don't ever "back up" their comments. I am free to believe a comment or not. Just like you are. Your expectation is not too sophisticated (LOL) it is too demanding.

eta: Here is one of Kevin's I looked up. It was easy. I think you could do it too. It is all over the place. Not a study but in USA Today.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2023/01/06/covid-update-xbb-variant-symptoms-reinfection/10995204002/

Why are you calling me out? None of my comments are directed to you. I don't always respond to what you post. No one said anything about conspiracy theories. I don't care if you back up your statements or not because I often just scroll on by. Not sure what your issue is and I'm not sure what you're arguing about. My post was directed to someone else and you couldn't resist jumping in to argue? 🙄

I have to chuckle at the idea of "truths" having seen many of them that have changed during my lifetime. What may be a truth yesterday can easily be seen are incorrect or only partially true. After all Columbus was supposed to have been the first European to land in America until recently when small European settlements have been found. I have often found that when people talk about truth they have stopped looking to see if they could be wrong and often are found to be wrong.

In my opinion posting links to back up what one says is generally useless. The ones who disagree with you won't read them They will either use the stupid "I won't click on a link because it may be a virus" excuse or blame "the source" or if they do read it, cherry pick whatever fits their own agenda. You can't change people driven by fear and narrowmindedness.

I don't even care what other people's opinions are anymore. I live my life and it's worked out very well for me. I am happier, healthier and better off than people who want to beat a dead horse over a virus that is here to stay that everyone will at some point get. At least I didn't sacrifice two years of living. The ones who did can never get those years back. They are gone. I've watched many real life acquaintances put their lives on hold and now they have aged out into other disabilities that confine them even more, not to mention poorer health due to inactivity, weight gain and just plain loneliness.

Kevin, I’m proud to be an “evil comrade of the left”, lol! I’m in good company here. Just wow.

So very true, wildchild! I agree with everything you said!

Noting the elaborate explanations made to justify a lack of proof for assertions. It's a common response, I've seen it many times over the years.

Also noting how posts explaining this deficit are often much longer than simply providing a link would be 🤔

I am going to keep masking, stay away from folks I know are "risky", and take care of my own health. I also have an elderly parent I am trying to predict. I don't care what other people think about my choices.

" What may be a truth yesterday can easily be seen are incorrect or only partially true. "

That's particularly true for a novel, brand spankin' new virus with a) no natural immunity in the population, and b) necessarily at the very start of the scientific studies about it. The fact that those initial statements turned out to be only partially true, or even entirely false, isn't proof of a conspiracy or proof that science is wrong: It's proof that science is right, and that it's working the way it's supposed to. Science tells us what it knows at the time, and then continues to study and test and trial, and therefore new information emerges. Sometimes it confirms past information, sometimes it shows why past information is no longer valid.

I'd be more suspicious if a novel virus appeared and the original advice and information we got didn't change - to me, that would be a sign that either the weren't listening to the science, or that no studies were even being done and science was absent from the scene. .

I've never had it, but several of my friends and neighbours have. It's still out there, my friend told me today that her doctor has it. He's been very ill and has trouble walking, and uses a cane to get around. She had it earlier this year with the same symptoms, and exhaustion being a very prominent side-effect.

It's true there's no requirement to cite sources for one's assertions. But it's nice to have the courtesy to do so when requested. Not doing so, and blustering about it, only makes it seem like fabulation.

^^ this 👍

I got the virus after being vaccinated. It was mild. Felt lousy for two days. My daughter insisted i get tested. I didn't think it was anything except stress due to my husband getting very sick and being in the hospital due to serious prostate problems. My test was positive for Covid and I was fine by the time I got the test results back. I thank the vaccine for my mild symptoms.

This was April 2021.

2021 was the worse year of my life. Prior to the vaccines, the hospital was overwhelmed with Covid patients. My husband was moved to different floors, I was only allowed to visit for 1 hour and could never find him. The nurses were exhausted trying to handle the amount of very sick people.

I think this Country did the right thing.

Look at what is going on in China. They have no effective vaccines and majority of citizens have not been vaccinated. Their death tolls are kept quiet yet surveillance videos show the dead piled up outside crematoria.

The vaccinations in this Country, helped protect those that chose to not get vaccinations by containing the spread.

I was never a fan of flu shots or other vaccinations until I became very sick from the flu and wound up in the hospital. I was healthy and in my 40's until that year. I got a flu shot every year after that experience. I never got the flu again.

We could be China without the vaccine.

Jane

It is common knowledge that there is disinformation, sometimes intentional disinformation, being peddled on the internet and elsewhere, requesting sources makes sense, so that the reader can make a better informed decision of what to believe. A refusal to cite sources obstructs the search for factual information.