Doesn’t every additional infection also reduce the likelihood of you getting it again or even noticing you got it as it gets milder?
If I hadn't tested I would not have guessed that the mild cold I just got was my second covid infection. My first covid infection was quite bad even with 3 vaccinations.
I've had covid 3 times. Would rather get it 3 more times than get the flu a single time. Other than paranoia about having it, the actual symptoms have been a mild to bad cold for all my family/friends.
Anecdotally I know a family where every member tested positive for COVID in the spring with severe symptoms at the time. They recovered, then over thanksgiving they started experiencing very mild symptoms (some none at all, others loss of taste and smell to more typical cold like symptoms), and all tested positive once again.
It might be that after you contracted COVID once, or a particular strain of COVID once, that you have a heightened immune response and less severe symptoms when you do catch the disease again. It is hard to say for sure what is going on from an isolated case, but this certainly doesn't bode well.
I've had COVID 5 times since mid 2022 and have had total loss of taste and smell 3 times. The only reason I think two of those infections were mild is because they were almost back to back (3 infections within 10 weeks at the start of this year).
Yeah, this is anecdotal of course but I was double vaxxed + boosted by last October, and I got covid for the first time in late December 2021, and the second time early April 2022. The first time was extremely mild (no real symptoms beyond the sniffles) and the second time was like getting the flu (fever, sore throat, persistent cough and lots of mucus).
I've had 3 shots of Moderna and got my first infection of COVID 3 weeks later. I've had COVID 2 more times after that, the most recent being about a month ago.
The first two times were sore throat with congestion. The last time was sore throat with congestion and sore joints for a day with fever. All symptoms except for congestion lasted for a day, and congestion lasted for a week. Annoying but nothing more than a bad cold for me.
Just a personal anecdote: I got covid a total of four times (tested for and verified insofar as such tests are reliable) Two of these were post-vaccination with Pfizer. Each time was lighter than the previous occasion. The first time felt like a nasty but short case of the flu, the second one like a moderate cold with very low fever, and the latter two times like minor head colds basically with no fever at all. In my case I only lost my sense of smell and taste the first time, but only for a few days, similar to how the flu can sometimes do as well. Never got so-called long-COVID, which seems to be rather ambiguous as a clinical condition (not arguing it doesn't exist, but there's lots left to investigate and much self-reported diagnosis that I frankly don't trust around many reports of it)
Some people get it differently from others and even now it can hit certain individuals ferociously, but it always was absurd to think that this virus would simply go away, as some people argued. That it should evolve into a milder variant like many other seasonal cold-like viruses made sense given the vast number of people it infected, allowing it to keep evolving dynamically. Some widespread viruses don't do this quite so much of course. Smallpox being an infamous example that never stopped being extremely deadly until it was eradicated, but that doesn't mean it can't reliably happen to other types of viral infections in certain biological categories.
I had a friend think he had it 3 times (and the third time was probably legitimate). The symptoms the first two times? Typical cold symptoms. No fever. No major cough. No real loss of taste. I had another friend do the same thing.
This was back before tests were widely available. I have genuinely had it twice myself, but people largely have though for the past two years that if they were sick it was COVID.
It's closer to the cold than the flu, so like the cold people have been reported to have been infected after having had it, then not had it, then to have it once more. Though, at this point it's not known if it was dormant or through new infection.
Extrapolating from other coronaviruses, it's probably that you CAN catch it again but it's "very unlikely" to produce serious consequences after the first time.
So basically only first time you will experience more serious symptoms like a fever, the subsequent infections would be trivial common cold.
That's interesting because after the first time I got COVID, I honestly felt OK. It was after the second time that I felt like "hmm, have I fully recovered?"
After the third time, that's when I felt for SURE I was struggling relative to before. Granted, I've had other infections over the last 3 years so it's hard to say it was all COVID.
It could be that the body is able to fight off the infection better, so they only have mild symptoms. Maybe they don't even know they have it again. The data in this study was based on health care workers who were tested every 2 to 4 weeks (i.e. not just when they felt really sick).
For vaccinated individuals, being sick for two weeks is unusual. When I got covid the first time, before vaccines were available, I was sick less than a week. I had a few weeks of brain fog after that but it cleared up. I got it again last week and I was sick for only a day. Not any worse than any cold I’ve had before. Indeed I’ve had fewer sick days the last couple of years than I did the year my daughter started daycare.
I’m not going to go around wearing a mask all the time to avoid a couple of days of cold symptoms every other year. Getting colds is part of the human condition.
My hypothesis is that people who got Covid once and recovered feel safe, thus start doing more risky things and have more exposure to potential Covid carriers.
So the second time the viral load may be much higher, which leads to worse symptoms.
Do you think this is true in your anecdotal experience?
Ah, yeah, you're right. It was probably just the cold that myself, my son, and my wife got after being exposed to someone that had symptomatic, PCR tested Covid. I'm sure it was just a coincidence that we then all three tested positive for covid.
One side effect of following COVID precautions is that I haven't had a cold at all this year. Usually I have 3 or 4 a year. I'm wondering if I'll get them less even after COVID, due to being more cognizant of stuff like washing my hands and not touching my face.
Hopefully all this will also normalize more people staying home or wearing a mask if they feel sick.
First time: severe headaches, severe chills (like ice cold in a 68? room), annoying gastrointestinal issues. Lasted 72 hours. Very early in the epidemic. Didn’t know to check SpO2 or temperature. Only diagnosed as Covid retrospectively when comparing symptoms I’d reported before we knew what Covid was.
Second time: approximately four months after first bout. Lost sense of smell for 48 hours. Winded walking up stairs or walking briskly. Temperature barely moved. Had “brain fog” for about three months.
Neither infection has been formally confirmed, by the time I took an antibody test over a year had passed from the first infection and close to eight months from the second.
Have since been vaccinated with Moderna, haven’t had any noticeable symptoms since.
My wife and I both had COVID while unvaccinated. I actually had it twice.
She started off like a cold with extremely mild symptoms, but eventually developed a fever which was cut short by monoclonal antibodies.
The first go-round for me I had a few days of being tired with poor taste, and then it it full force making me incredibly tired with a fever of 102 for 2 weeks. The second time was largely the same but with less of a lead up - the tiredness hit right away.
If I hadn't tested I would not have guessed that the mild cold I just got was my second covid infection. My first covid infection was quite bad even with 3 vaccinations.
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