Studying why some people don’t get Covid. Very few people in my entire family have had Covid (only D2 and my stepfather’s wife). We are all vaxxed (don’t know everyone’s booster status). But I don’t assume it’s genetic; I think it’s a combination of vaccines, generally prudent behavior, and pure luck. And that luck could run out at any time!
There could be genetic factors, as well as vaccines, behavior, and luck, as reasons why some do not get COVID-19.
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My fil spent up close time with someone who tested positive the next day, before vaccines, never got Covid.
My mil got Covid last fall, he never did. They were vaccinated but not boosted.
My mil has been sick for 2.5 weeks, some sort of mystery virus. Fil not sick. Mil has had multiple negative Covid tests but it really mimicked Covid.
Is he incredibly lucky? One of the people who doesn’t get the virus? Hard to say.
But absolutely his luck could run out, he’s not in great shape
I’ve actually had some really close calls and not gotten it. DH as well. Knock wood we end up being some of the lucky few.
I’m sure there are a lot of people who have had Covid and just did not know it. My son tested positive early on in the pandemic (July 2020). He had zero symptoms. The only reason he got tested is b/c one of his friends was symptomatic and tested positive. The rest of his friend group (four of them) then got tested and were positive. My son was the only one who was completely asymptomatic. They all had minor cold symptoms and lost their taste and smell. This was back when finding testing was difficult and he had to sit in a line for two hours to get tested. If not for contact tracing, my son would not have tested since he had no symptoms. We would never have known.
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It really depends on how common breakthrough infections actually are. If vaccinations also increase the chances of an infection being asymptomatic, the number of infected may truly be a lot higher than it is. Unfortunately (or maybe not), it is very difficult to test this. One would have to perform weekly COVID tests on vaccinated individuals for a very long time, and the tests would have to have a very low rate of false negatives and be very sensitive (COVID is often more difficult to detect in asymptomatic cases). It would also have to be through a peak in infections.
We cannot test after the fact, since antibodies will be present whether the people were infected or not.
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Isn’t the solution to this a comprehensive system of waste water management? (I meant to reply to @MWolf .
That could work. I guess it could be possible by comparing the levels of COVID in the wastewater to both the reported infections and the vaccination rates. If the levels found in wastewater from locations with very high vaccination rates seem higher relative to reported infection rates than in places with lower vaccination rates, that could be an indication of a higher rate of undetected asymptomatic cases. The fact that people are probably more likely to report being infected in locations with high vaccination rates would serve to make this signal clearer (since it would reduce the underreporting since it is more likely that people who are symptomatic or have been exposed would be tested).
I am not quite understanding your post. The ~60% of possible Covid infections in the US was based on blood sample data pulled between September 2021 and February 2022. I thought that researchers could tell the difference between a natural Covid infection and people vaccinated against Covid, using CDC serologic testing. Approximately 82 million people have officially tested positive for Covid-19 in the US, but based on blood test data estimates, at least 200 million people have had Covid-19, as of February 2022.
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Here is what antibodies are likely to be found after prior infection or vaccination:
| Event | Spike antibodies | Nucleocapsid antibodies |
|---|---|---|
| Prior infection | Y | Y |
| Vaccination (inactivated whole virus) | Y | Y |
| Vaccination (mRNA, viral vector, protein subunit) | Y | N |
| None | N | N |
Since only mRNA and viral vector vaccines are use in the US, checking for nucleaocapsid antibodies can be used to determine prior infection without getting indication from vaccination. Note that this does not work in places where inactivated whole virus vaccines are commonly used (e.g. China). Presumably, the number of people in the US who got vaccinated with inactivated whole virus vaccines in other countries is small enough not to matter for this purpose.
This CDC page says that about 57.7% of people in the US have been infected as of February 2022. States vary from 28.9% in Vermont to 70.7% in Iowa.
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@ChangeTheGame @ucbalumnus Of course you are both right. In my defense, I’m a bit stupid today…
In any case, I also forgot that when they were monitoring COVID using the waste water here, my wife had already told me that it is impossible to estimate rates of infection from levels of COVID in the waste water, since there is so much variation among infected individuals in the shedding of the viruses, including among asymptomatic individuals.
@MWolf
Breakthrough infections are common. Look at the colleges and boarding schools. Almost 100% vaccinated. 75% of kids testing + for Covid at some point.
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That was not the case at my kid’s college. The school did testing all year. Around 3000 staff/students got Covid out of 15,500. Not all were vaccinated and the 3,000 tracks with the amount of unvaccinated. Some people got Covid twice. There were breakthroughs, but overall they did well. They also masked until March.
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An update on my co-worker: After I expressed surprise that they didn’t test for anything, co-worker went back to the doctor and asked to be tested. Tested positive for strep. They don’t do rapid covid tests, so we still waiting for the PCR test. The results of that wouldn’t surprise me either way. I’d give co-worker a 50-50 chance. It’s a good thing co-worker went back! And I’d be really mad if they made me pay for 2 visits.
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My kids school = 100% vax’d. At least 3/4 of students and teachers have now had Covid at least one time. They have never been unmasked. Kind of makes you go hmm. Actually apparently it doesn’t but it really should.
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A lot of kids caught Covid at our school well before they were eligible to be vaxxed. Technically the school was supposed to have everyone masked, but anyone who applied for it was given an exemption and teachers were not allowed to segregate mask wearers from non-mask wearers, even by table.
Covid made the rounds prior to kids being eligible. A couple of parents, aunts/uncles, and some grandparents didn’t survive - as far as I know, all unvaxxed, but I can’t be sure on all of them. Our county has a low fully vaxxed rate. No kids died. I’m not sure if any have long Covid issues.
I only know of one fully vaxxed person who didn’t survive locally. He was healthy, in his 50s, but did have a couple of comorbidities with weight and diabetes. He was a friend of ours… as in, kids grew up together, we sometimes traveled together, went to church together, etc, friend.
Covid can be ugly. If people haven’t had a chance to personally see that side of it, consider yourself lucky.
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I have, and no boarding school or college that was reporting their COVID rates came even close to those numbers, either at a single point or cumulative. Most boarding school do not have a public page, but of those that do: Andover reported under 3% across spring term, Hotchkiss has a 3.3% rate of positive for this spring term, and Groton had a serious surge which reached 9.5%, and cumulatively around 15% this Spring. Over 2021, they only reported 12 total cases.
As for colleges:
At Middlebury, there is a 99% student vaccination rate and 98% employee vaccination rate, more relaxed rules, and a higher risk of infection (the students are older). Over the spring Term, there were a total of 458 positive cases. Because of students who took a gap year and came back, there were, on campus, around 2,800 students, and there are 1,200 total staff. So there were 458 confirmed COVID cases among roughly 4,000 students and staff. So maybe 12% of the entire population was infected during this peak.
In the Winter before, there were 284 cases, fall 2021, there were 98 cases, Spring 2021 18 cases, and fall 2020, there were 5 case.
So, over the pandemic, there were 863 cases, from 1,200 + 2,800 + 756 who graduated in June 2021.
That comes out to around 18% of the population infected. That also includes those who returned to campus while infected, but not those who were sick during Summer 2021 and recovered before returning.
Other NESCACs have similar rates - no more than 5% positivity at any point, no more than 20% of the entire students + staff having tested positive across the pandemic.
Of course, places without enforcement of vaccination and/or masking, totals can be higher.
My wife is on the COVID response team for the University she works at, which has a lot more lax COVID rules than your kid’s school, and at no point was there a positivity rate of over 11%. Around 15% of the students and staff tested positive across the entire pandemic (or less, they report reinfections as new infections). So the actual number is likely 20%-25% across two years of pandemic.
So I think that you are wayyyy overestimating the numbers.
Is this what you think is going on, or is it confirmed by the school? Most schools will post a dashboard of cases, so it is possible to actually see whether the numbers match your perception. People are actually pretty bad at calculating the prevalence of any phenomena because we rely on anecdotal data.
So check your kid’s school’s dashboard, and look at either the number of cases detected every week or at the percentages, and add them up. However, you need to make sure that you aren’t double counting - look only at new cases. If the school tests everybody, than assume that all positive cases will test positive the next week, and that most will still be positive for at least 10 days.
Finally, the vaccinating is 67% effective at preventing infection by Omicron, and this wanes within 3 months. However, it remains 95% effective against hospitalization and death for far longer.
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A school mask mandate doesn’t guarantee a thing if they are not compliant elsewhere. Most likely a certain number of these people are not wearing masks outside of school.
The fact that in my large extended family, only 2 of us have tested positive for Covid so far kind of makes me go hmmmm…I have no idea why we have come out so unscathed. We are all vaxxed and are reasonably prudent, but most have been going about their lives as normal ever since the vaccines came out.
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Only two people in my extended family have tested positive, also. My son overseas and my elderly aunt by marriage. My aunt was not vaccinated at all.
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My kids Covid Dashboard shows 2 years of Covid Data on-campus even though almost all students were remote during the 2020-2021 School year. For the 2021-2022 school year, students at my kid’s university had 2408 positive cases of Covid out of it’s student body size of 10,859 students with 100% of the on-campus student body fully vaccinated and 99% of the total student body either fully vaccinated, received an exemption, or were only in online classes. All students who came back for the Spring 2022 semester had to be boosted (or receive booster shot after the 6 month mark of receiving initial vaccination series). The university had masking policies in all indoor settings throughout the school year in one of the strictest cities (Washington DC) and the overall Covid Positive test rate was 2.27% with a high week of 15% in early January 2022.