> what you have changed about your diet, medication or anything else either in May or shortly before that
Well, there are only 2 things I can think of. Firstly, due to covid I had been working at home from March to May. Before covid I would still go out a lot to cafes/social workspaces and get sunlight. And around mid-march I started running. By May I was running about 5k-7k daily throughout my neighborhood.
So we initially thought it was a bug related thing, but everything came back clean. We tried eliminating food, but nothing really seemed to have an effect after a week or two.
I spoke to my immunologist and he believes it's not food related as I already have food related allergies (peanuts), so eating something else should give me quick reactions like peanuts do. Also, he said it's rare for adults to spontaneously develop something like that. Bloodwork has been inconclusive because my IgE is so high that it's causing false positives. I did a diff of my allergy bloodwork from and back in October, and multiple values did increase.
I have tried basically everything- getting more sunlight, using sensitive detergent (3 different brands), cutting out coffee/gluten etc. Hell, we even replaced the carpet in my parents house with hardwood, and once I moved into my house we cut out the carpet as well.
Unless you can contract trace yourself to someone who worked in Wuhan (or you worked in China then) this is fantastically unlikely and makes you a Unicorn.
It is thousands of times more likely that you got one of the numerous flu like viruses going around in Jan 2020, and post-viral sequalae from viruses is not unique to SARS-CoV-2.
And you can have allergies to so many things that it is impossible to escape them. I have allergies to dust mites, grass, mold, Birch and a few East Coast trees. Without testing I wouldn't be able to deduce what I was allergic to at all.
> The pandemic has been great for my personal health
Have had exactly the same experience: walked and cycled more (and progressively faster); eaten better home-cooked food (presumably adding less fat, salt and sugar than city-center lunch food); enjoyed the fresh air of open windows and a balcony instead of the stultifying atmosphere of an air-conditioned office; and generally rested, focused and felt better than ever.
Went back to the office last week buckling under the drive from senior colleagues to get back to “normal”.
Now have a cold and a mild chest-infection.
> They are either paucisymptomatic (you have mild symptoms - maybe too mild to notice)
Or you notice them but because they also match symptoms of colds and allergies, and you’ve been getting them on and off for months, you assume they aren’t COVID.
I don’t think there has been an interval longer than a week since February during which I didn’t have at least a couple symptoms that could have been COVID.
I’ve not had the taste/smell loss, and all my contact with other people has been masked and brief, and I’m in an area where spread has been low, so I’ve probably not had it, but I wish we had widespread cheap testing so I could know.
> Or maybe just go get Covid and trust those results?
I believe I already had it. I have experienced unusual body temperature fluctuations and really unusual heart quirks on a weekend some months ago. My boss got tested (out of curiosity) positive for the antibodies. The numbers are huge and I meet a huge lot of people every day (nobody I've met in person reported any symptoms though). It seems logical to me all of us (people I know) have already had light/asymptomatic covid. I never meet old or fat people, I miss some but prefer not to risk.
> but simply having a positive test result isn’t the sign of long term immunity people assume
You were overly dismissive in your first mention of this. Do you have data behind the tests being false positive? Multiple positive tests + symptoms are surely sufficient
> That being said I also know someone who got Covid 2 times, once in march 2020 and once in april 2021. (Confirmed by PCR the 2 times). The second time was much milder, but still she had to stop working for a week (versus one month the first time). It is still possible it was a defective test the second time, and something else than Covid.
For what it's worth my girlfriend is currently recovering from her second bout of covid. She had it first about a year ago and then second about a month and a half ago. Confirmed by PCR test and antibody tests afterwards as well as totally consistent symptoms. The first time knocked her out totally about a week and left her tired for a few weeks while the second time knocked her out totally for maybe 2 1/2 weeks and she's still quite weak now 6 weeks later, so the second case has been much worse.
Obviously just anecdotal, but getting it twice does happen and the second time apparently can be worse.
> I currently have coronavirus. I'm a young male in my 20s (don't want to divulge too much info), 6'1", 170 lbs, non-smoker, rarely drink, pretty healthy. Waiting on test results.
Wait... how do you know it's COVID?
I mean, given how prevalent it is right now it certainly could be COVID, but to your own point, a rash isn't a particularly common symptom, in the ~15% range. Fever, chills, cough, night sweats, breathing problems. Could be any of a range of upper respiratory diseases. In any other year I'd say you have bronchitis - there's 3 million cases of that every year in the US too.
> I am constantly exposed to Covid positive people, including my own wife who got Covid, 24x7 and I did not do any social distancing at all. I still don't get Covid.
You did get Covid, you were just asymptomatic and probably didn't have a high enough viral load in your nose for the tests to detect it. If you even did test.
> If you have a dirty filter it may be actually making your air quality worse (in some ways) than just not running the filter at all.
I might have to check the air filter. I’ve been having the worst sinus issues I’ve ever had outside a sinus infection. My eyes constantly tear up, my nose will on occasionally completely shuts, and I’ve been having back to back sneezing attacks.
I originally chalked it up to seasonal allergies, as pollen count is quite high, but I’ve been suspicious of indoor air quality as well. To add to the confusion I got COVID around the same time it started.
> They say that children who grow up on farms have stronger immune systems because they are exposed to the natural environment more. Weirdly, they also have low incidence of food allergies.
I have many siblings (more than 9). All of us grew up on an active farm except the youngest one. None have had any food allergies except from my youngest brother.
> I also wonder about doctor's who work in the emergency room. How are they not constantly sick with some kind of common cold / flu / bronchitis?
A colleague of mine told me his wife would eat anything that had expired best before date etc while she was in training, just to build her defenses.
I cannot vouch for this theory but maybe someone else can tell if it is a common tactic.
Yes, it was a bad flu season, with possibly more than one of the bad cold or flu in the winter of 2019-2020. I was ill 3 times in the last 3 months of 2019. On the last one I went to a doctor who basically said "there's a lot of it about".
Also, the last cold that I had, was in February 2020.
> Even worse... many women from the community I grew up in have developed strange autoimmune disorders in their 40s and 50s.
Interesting myself, my wife, and a number of friends have remarked on how a lot of people around us are getting sick with difficult to explain neurological illness in the past few years.
I try to keep my skeptical hat on and say it’s all probably within some base rate, and we are just older, etc. but it doesn’t feel like it and multiple people are having the same bad feeling.
There’s little overlap the people affected though. (The closest thing to a cluster would be Silicon Valley.) I really do hope that the health agencies and CDC are properly doing their job and we’re not missing some response developing to a fairly widespread unrecognized pollutant.
>Did you test? I had a bad cold several weeks back and after 3 tests it's clear that it wasn't COVID.
I did not, but multiple family members did. Not much point anymore unless you're high risk. We've all got it, and no one's going back to wearing masks again.
An acquaintance of mine was actually sick in November with COVID-like symptoms. They had a dry cough that was so nasty, doctors tested them for whooping cough (pertussis) and it was negative. And, it actually was not too long after their office got a visit from some overseas partners from China. IIRC, they even said one of the Chinese visitors had a bit of a cough at the time. I think this is pretty strong circumstantial evidence that they may have had the virus. At the very least, it's enough evidence that this person should definitely get an antibody test as soon as practical.
Edit: I initially forgot to include that the pertussis test was negative, although that was certainly implied.
Well, there are only 2 things I can think of. Firstly, due to covid I had been working at home from March to May. Before covid I would still go out a lot to cafes/social workspaces and get sunlight. And around mid-march I started running. By May I was running about 5k-7k daily throughout my neighborhood.
So we initially thought it was a bug related thing, but everything came back clean. We tried eliminating food, but nothing really seemed to have an effect after a week or two.
I spoke to my immunologist and he believes it's not food related as I already have food related allergies (peanuts), so eating something else should give me quick reactions like peanuts do. Also, he said it's rare for adults to spontaneously develop something like that. Bloodwork has been inconclusive because my IgE is so high that it's causing false positives. I did a diff of my allergy bloodwork from and back in October, and multiple values did increase.
I have tried basically everything- getting more sunlight, using sensitive detergent (3 different brands), cutting out coffee/gluten etc. Hell, we even replaced the carpet in my parents house with hardwood, and once I moved into my house we cut out the carpet as well.
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