I was very sick in Dec.2019 and again in Feb 2020. I HOPED it had been Covid, so I could feel a little safer with antibodies. I also got tested. I tested negative. I wasn’t all that surprised since cold viruses are abundant in this country. I would never have told people I already had Covid without some kind of objective data to back it up.
Happy to be vaccinated now.
One of my neighbors will swear she had it in Sept 2019. When I pointed out to her that it hadn’t even been discovered in China at that point she asked me, “Oh come on, do you really believe that? They’ve been covering it up. I know I was sicker than I’ve ever been and for a long time. It had to be Covid.”
So there you have it… (no test of course - none needed).
Long but excellent, IMO.
I have wondered if Covid ran through my office in January 2020. One person came back sick from Iran after the holidays. Her office neighbor and his entire family then got a weird serious pneumonia, resulting in the wife being hospitalized. She has suffered long-covid symptoms ever since. Another entire family got really sick, too.
Everyone has since been vaccinated, so we will never know.
Of course not impossible, but I don’t think it was recorded in Iran till February.
Probably correct. I don’t remember the timing exactly, but she came back mid-January and iirc said there were sick people on the plane.
And it could be possible her trip had nothing to do with everyone else getting sick. It was pretty impressive, though, how fast it spread through the office and how sick people got.
It really doesn’t matter at the end of the day. The office mate whose wife was hospitalized is absolutely convinced though. Said whatever it was, it was no flu. He is far from a drama queen. So if he says it was bad, it was horrible.
However, it may have been circulating in a place before it was noticed.
The first US COVID-19 death was originally believed to have been on February 28, 2020, but by April, it was found that a death on February 6, 2020 was COVID-19 positive, and the deceased had no recent travel history. Subsequently, a small number of deaths in several US states during January 2020 were found to be COVID-19-related.
I.e. just because Iran or the US only started noticing COVID-19 problems in February 2020 does not mean that it was not present in the country earlier.
However, for an individual who wants to know if they really did have COVID-19 in the past, but was not diagnosed at the time, an antibody test (spike protein = previous infection or vaccination, nucleocapsid protein = previous infection, does not indicate vaccination) would be needed.
@ucbalumnus ,
Those nucleocapsid antibodies would wane as well, though, right? Let’s use an example: my friend lost her sense of smell in March/April, 2020, and had a fever, cough, etc. At the time, testing was really, really limited, and the only people getting tested where I live were those who needed to be hospitalized or had shortness of breath, etc. By the time tests were more available (~1 month later), she tested negative, which would make sense given the normal duration of + tests and symptoms. But if she tested for nucleocapsid antibodies now, ~18 months later, they would likely be negative, right? Her MD thinks she likely had covid, but she can’t prove it… Or is my understanding faulty?
Yes, nucleocapsid antibodies do decline, so it it certainly possible that someone who had COVID-19, particularly a mild case, may no longer have them detectable.
Longitudinal follow-up of IgG anti-nucleocapsid antibodies in SARS-CoV-2 infected patients up to eight months after infection - PMC is a study on the subject.
So while a positive nucleocapsid antibody test indicates a previous infection, a negative one may be a false negative in that the nucleocapsid antibodies from a previous infection may have declined below the threshold.
I lean this way too. Luckily I only have 2 couples (who live hours away) who were not vaccinated and the reasons were along the lines of “you are infringing on my constitutional rights”. One couple lost a parent and almost lost a second one. They got vaccinated.
That seems like the stereotype of Marin County, which seemed to be a hotbed of “lefty anti-vax-ish” sentiment (regarding other vaccines like MMR) in the recent past (but then a state law removing non-medical exemptions for listed-in-the-law school vaccinations was enacted), but which more recently seems to have enthusiastically embraced COVID-19 vaccination.
Ok someone tell me when I should test for COVID. I Am double vaccinated with Moderna.
Last Tuesday we had a small sales meeting and everyone who was vaccinated flew into the location on Monday. Because we were all vaccinated we decided to not wear masks on Tuesday for the meeting. Tuesday night we went to dinner and 2 others who are local joined us. It was a crowded popular restaurant. On wed a few of us went into the office in the mornng and wore masks since a local person, who was not vaccinated met with us. There was also a masked local vaccinated person. Neither were with us Tuesday.
On friday apparently someone felt ill and got covid tested and found out over the weekend that they are positive. I am not told whom and if from the Tuesday or Wed group (privacy). I found out this morning.
I took one of the home rapid tests this morning and it was negative. My last exposure would have been masked Wednesday morning with the potential positive.
I plan on getting tested again tomorrow from CVS/Urgent care, but questions
My fully moderna vaccinated husband (6 months out) had a similar experience. Last Tuesday he had a 15 minute meeting in a conference room with a fully vaccinated person unmasked but distanced. Then Wednesday he attended an outdoor conference event, vaccines required but no masks. Thursday morning he received a text that his Tuesday meeting person tested positive for covid on the Wednesday following their meeting (lost his sense of smell on his flight home to LA).
He decided to quarantine away from from our family. He’s been away for 6 days and had no symptoms. He took his first binax test today (day 6 since the Tuesday exposure) and it was negative. He’s coming home and will continue to mask and take another test around day 10 and if that’s negative then he’s good. Might be a bit overly cautious but better safe than sorry in my book.
I looked on the CDC website regarding testing and it says fully vaccinated people should get tested 5-7 days after their exposure, even if they don’t have symptoms and wear a mask indoors in public for 14 days following exposure or until their test result is negative.
Not sure that means testing at day 5-7 AND 14 for a negative result or if once you get a negative result with the first test you’re good to go.
My PCP says get tested five days after exposure…symptoms or not. Further says…the rapid tests are coming back negative a lot…with the regular test coming back positive. We know more than a handful of folks this has happened to.
The problem is when one doesnt know they were exposed until the person finds out they have covid, so it has been 5 or 6 days from TOE, and I had not been wearing a mask all the time. Now I will Quarantine at home. I was negative today. Trickier part is DH is going back to office for the first time tomorrow. I wonder if he should tell his boss that there is a slim chance of exposure and just stay home. (he wont wear a mask the whole time, as he is on conference calls for hours on end and he gets very uncomfortable, and only returning to office as masks not required when seated at a desk and fully vaccinated).
If you haven’t listened to MSNBC’s podcast Southlake, I’d recommend it. Not just because it’s very strong documentary on American racism, but because it slows down and freeze-frames how people who’d been in normal-civil-range in conversation and action, but feel put upon in some way, can flip incredibly hard and fast when presented with the right narrative and small box of phrases, and how easy it is to whip people in that state up into a conviction that they’re in a fight to the death and have a positive duty to carry it out – and how easy it is to carry that fight from one issue to the next, because in the end they’re all about the same thing. The craziest part of it: you can tell that the words that they’re shouting and arguing and urging with such conviction and earnestness are irrelevant. The words’ actual meanings don’t matter. The cartoon meaning overlaid on them: that matters. Which is why you can talk yourself blue explaining that these words actually mean ____ or that they can’t be true because _____, or make all the jokes you want about how dumb these people are for saying one thing and then its opposite two seconds later without any seeming awareness at all, and it doesn’t matter. And I think that’s a very difficult thing for people who take argument seriously to take in. The words themselves are not important. The thing the words are a proxy for: very important, whether or not it’s reasonable or justifiable.
Reading this sort of thing restores some faith in humanity…where I am, hardly anyone would think twice about heading right back out, maskless, vax or no. And not mentioning the exposure to anyone.
Poll worker today was wearing a mask because he was in a school, where we (for now) have a mask mandate, but dude refused to include his nose in the mask party. Old guy. I’m like: you. You’re why I have this duckbill N95 on. Stay away. We did have an anti-masker on the ballot for school board, but she was trounced, hope she doesn’t come back. She’s upset about the signs encouraging kids to wear their masks, says it shames them.
Our ten-year-old niece in Annapolis has just been diagnosed with COVID. So far, she has only a mild cough. When we were with her family in Pennsylvania in August, her parents were very strict about her and her older brother wearing masks. He was vaccinated since he was eligible. Ugh, I can’t believe she got it just before vaccines were approved for kids her age.
I just checked, and parents can’t sign their kids up for vaccinations at CVS or Walgreens in our area. It’s not availability - when I plugged in a birthdate for an older person, there were plenty of appointments. I would be annoyed if I were a parent.
strange, as our local (SoCal) CVS shows appointments for kids, available this afternoon.