Will we all end up getting covid?

[TPMB12]

Is covid simply something that everyone will get eventually and we just need to delay that day as long as possible to limit its effects?

[rafletcher]

Yep.

[numbnuts]

So far so good.....

[Jaded]

Yes, and probably several times.

[Polar Bear]

Actually it isn't inevitable.  If the holy grail of herd immunity is achieved assuming that it might in fact be achievable then it is not inevitable that everybody will catch covid.

My own (and mllePB's) experience of a severe winter cold / flu these past two weeks surprise and disappoint me in equal measure that we have managed on very little mixing* to catch flu but once again dodge covid**. 

*  We have been sensibly and extremely cautious since March 2020 and even when the shackles were off we mixed very little indeed.  Until our bout of flu we have both been completely sniffle free.

**  Tested.

[Mrs Pingu]

Ok, stupid question, if you can catch a cold or flu then why do you think that means you won't get covid?

[MikeFromLFE]

My own (and mllePB's) experience of a severe winter cold / flu these past two weeks surprise and disappoint me in equal measure that we have managed on very little mixing* to catch flu but once again dodge covid**. 

**  Tested.

I too have had a cold - tested negative twice - I'm convinced that I caught it on a crowded bus I was on for less than 10 minutes.
It's the first illness I've caught germ-wise in maybe 18 months.

My guess is that the next variant will be milder, but just as transmissible. Rinse & repeat. It will be thought of as a 'normal infection' - but if it encourages people (& employers) to accept that staying at home with cold/ flu symptoms for 10 days is the right thing to do, then I'm all for it

[Hot Flatus]

For those thinking they have a cold, the estimate is that 75% of colds currently are covid.

Swab your tonsils.

[Kim]

Ok, stupid question, if you can catch a cold or flu then why do you think that means you won't get covid?

Quite.

I'm still baffled by the lurgy I had the other week.  Negative for COVID-19 on both lateral flow and PCR tests.  Barakta hypothesises that it's like when teachers get ill at half-term, because it coincided with her needing less care.

[Jaded]

For those thinking they have a cold, the estimate is that 75% of colds currently are covid.

Swab your tonsils.

This.

Or try a Chinese anal swab.

[grams]

For those thinking they have a cold, the estimate is that 75% of colds currently are covid.

Swab your tonsils.

Hang on, if everyone's got covid already...

[Polar Bear]

But they haven't and getting one variant doesn't preclude you getting another variant.  Also, it has been shown that you can catch the same variant more than once thus even if you are less I'll you are still a potential spreader.

Having said that Prof. JVT's second Royal Lecture (BBC4 very recently) gives a good if well dumbed down analysis of how contageon process.  Mildly amusing and educational after dinner viewing we found.

[MikeFromLFE]

For those thinking they have a cold, the estimate is that 75% of colds currently are covid.

Swab your tonsils.

In my case PCR and LFTs were negative. It is certain that covid, cold & influenza are coexisting and will continue to do so.

My hope is that in public health terms the distinction between covid and cold will become less and less important (it's wishful thinking but hijacked from something I read somewhere).

Similar to flu, though, there likely will be variants occurring, or remaining, particularly outside population centres tgat have greater mortality. The vaccine programmes should be able to keep these in check even if it means 'firefighting'.

[Polar Bear]

I thought that it was more like half of all "colds" were likely to be covid but I guess as Omicron spreads rapidly that ratio will change.

[barakta]

A GP trainee friend doing a video for her practice based on a morning's phone clinic (which she did from home cos she's awaiting PCR results): https://twitter.com/Ashfield_grange/status/1476920549574168577

Uncaptioned but the gist of the message is:
1) If you have any symptoms including snotty nose, sore throat and significant headache you need a PCR as lateral flows are for screening asymptomatic people and are unreliable in symptomatic people.

2) If you have had Covid vaccinations you can STILL get Covid. It is a bit less likely and a lot less likely to be severe, but you can still contract and transmit it. As per above, if symptomatic, get a PCR (and stay away from others).

3) If you have had Covid before with or without jabs, you can still get Covid again, see (1) re PCR for symptoms.

Of course whether you can GET PCRs at the moment is in doubt, but I guess the trick is to keep trying.

While you may have Covid mildly, there is no guarantee that another person you could transmit it to would also be mildly ill. We don't have stats on likely Long Covid from Omicron and while it is "less severe for most people" it is so transmissible that high levels of it in the community correlate to high NHS demand.

I don't think we're at the "can ignore it" and don't think we'll get there until we've vaccinated more of the world and been sensible. I expect 2022 to be a repeat of 2021 and not to be Covid free.

[Peter]

That's pretty straightforward, Barakta - a good post.  Have you thought of giving/selling that succinct summary to the governbent?

[Wowbagger]

Our latest batch of LFTs are nasal only. The swabs are too short to reach the tonsils.

[rogerzilla]

A study of NHS staff found some of them didn't seem to be able to catch Covid at all.  There is a hypothesis that this is due to exposure to previous coronaviruses,leaving a strong T-cell response which clears the virus before there is enough of it to be detectable in a test.  Some of them tested negative throughout but had raised T-cell activity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03110-4

[CAMRAMan]

I've generally been sensible with my precautions. I've followed advice and insisted students I deal with face to face are masked. Double jabbed & boosted (AZ/AZ/Pfizer)

I let my guard down once a few weeks ago and went to a gig and caught Covid. There was much singing & dancing and, as it turns out, it was a real spreader event. Several people on the band's small forum also reported contracting Covid - multiply that by the hundreds that were at the gig and I'm sure many more also caught it there. Fortunately, the worst of my symptoms was a very sore throat for a couple of days.

It has made me much more cautious of going anywhere involving crowds in confined spaces.

My nasal LF tests when displaying symptoms showed negative on the Monday following the Friday gig, but positive on Tuesday. I was still showing positive 13 days after the event via LF tests, but negative on days 14 & 15. A PCR test confirmed the positive.

My one gripe is that the NHS track & trace people didn't call me until 8 days after the event. As soon as I got my positive LF test, I contacted everyone I'd had face-to-face contact with since the gig and posted on the band forum. By the time T&T contacted me, the stable door was open and the horse long gone. I posted my Positive LF result on the NHS app the same day I got the positive.

[barakta]

That's pretty straightforward, Barakta - a good post.  Have you thought of giving/selling that succinct summary to the governbent?

We have jokingly said that if we get to take over the world that Dr Hannah Barham-Brown gets to be health minister. If only our government could have some GPs feeding in the common confusions and a clear campaign based on that.

Of course my view is that they don't WANT to be clear, it doesn't suit their let Covid rip and then blame people for being irresponsible agenda.

[TPMB12]

Isn't the virus behind covid a coronavirus like the cold, each variant is a mutation of the virus and yet they're identifying it as different from a cold. What is the difference? If covid is mild but non covid colds can be severe, I've had two real humdingers in my life, then can't you just say a bad cold (coronavirus) is covid? How accurate are assessments of covid? Could some be a non covid coronavirus that simply had bad enough symptoms to get lumped in? I guess the PCR test distinguishes between covid coronavirus and common cold coronavirus on an RNA level or something like that.

The other point,  if covid ends up becoming less severe for most people could colds and flu become more dangerous but covid still gets tighter controls?

[Cudzoziemiec]

Coronavirus is a whole class of viruses with many species, just as humans and gorillas are both apes but different species. The one causing Covid is known as Sars-Cov-2.

[nikki]

Even talking about SARS-CoV-2 in the singular is a bit of a fudge to stop our minds exploding! Check out https://nextstrain.org/ncov/gisaid/global

[quixoticgeek]

I thought I have read that even the common cold and influenza as well as SARS, MERS and other viruses we have heard of are all types of coronaviruses.

Influenza is not a corona virus, but SARS, and MERS are.

It was because of research that was ongoing on SARS and MERS, that we were able to get some of the vaccine stuff out to the public so fast. Remember the plague we currently have is called SARS‑CoV‑2, implying at the very least an existence of SARS-CoV-1.

There are other virii in the coronavirus family, but also "The common cold" actually covers a number of different virii, some are are in the corona family, others are rhinoviruses.

One of the big problems we have hit up against with this plague is the in-specificity of language. "it's just like flu" they said. Except most of what people have that they call "the flu" is not actually Influenza. It's got some flu like symptoms (which covers a whole host of illnesses), but often is not actually caused by Influenza. So when scientists compare SARS-CoV-2 to influenza, what people hear is "Oh, it's like when I had a fever and muscle aches last xmas, so I took a double dose of lemsip and went to work", where as doctors and those who have had influenza go "oh fuck this isn't playing games". A doctor I knew used to say "Unless it felt like you were hit by a train, it wasn't flu". I'd love to see widespread availability of LFT's for the main flu families. So people had a better understanding of wtf it is that they are catching, and spreading.

The list of illnesses with "flu like symptoms" is rather long - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza-like_illness and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_infectious_diseases_causing_flu-like_syndrome


J

[Lightning Phil]

I’ve never had flu, had a cold early last October and cold before that was 2014.  So it’s not inevitable everyone will get a disease from circulating viruses, or if they do, all that frequently.

We also need to distinguish between the virus 🦠 and the disease it causes Covid 19. Like the difference between HIV and AIDS.

It’s quite likely, if it hasn’t happened already that we will all pretty much get exposed to SARS-Cov-2 family of viruses, but it’s not inevitable that we will all get Covid 19 from that.