Have you had COVID?

[The_Achiever]

Just tested negative today. First time testing per my office's requirements. Can't touch me, 'vid!

[Transmogrified Tiger]

This is no judgment whatsoever to anyone here, but I find it absolutely baffling when I hear people have never once been tested. Really it's just so much....dissonance? Culture shock? I don't even know the right term. I stopped keeping track a while ago, but safe estimate for me is somewhere in the 20s since this all started. Between having it, close family members testing positive, day care regulations, what limited travel we did, etc...

Some of it comes down to circumstances. My wife and I both work from home, don't have kids, and haven't flown since the pandemic started. Living in a red state there hasn't been any testing requirements I've been exposed to. Only one person I'm close to(my dad) has had a positive test and it wasn't in a window where we had been in their company. Throw in not having any symptoms to check on and getting vaxxed and boosted quickly and it's just not been something we've had reason to do, though I imagine we're fairly unique with the WFM/no kids/red state/no social life combo. Any one of those being different would likely have changed things at some point in the last 2 years.

[chopsx9]

This is no judgment whatsoever to anyone here, but I find it absolutely baffling when I hear people have never once been tested. Really it's just so much....dissonance? Culture shock? I don't even know the right term. I stopped keeping track a while ago, but safe estimate for me is somewhere in the 20s since this all started. Between having it, close family members testing positive, day care regulations, what limited travel we did, etc...

I've been tested a bunch but my father is in a home and I now have to be tested every time I see him (about twice a week). No positive tests so far. I'm in Canada so it may be different but you have to have a reason to get tested - direct contact with someone positive or sick, but I know some people who have become ill (with no known direct contact) and had their tests cancelled and been told just to isolate.

[JudasIscariotTheBird]

This is no judgment whatsoever to anyone here, but I find it absolutely baffling when I hear people have never once been tested. Really it's just so much....dissonance? Culture shock? I don't even know the right term. I stopped keeping track a while ago, but safe estimate for me is somewhere in the 20s since this all started. Between having it, close family members testing positive, day care regulations, what limited travel we did, etc...

My kids have been tested a bunch, but I seriously don't have any contacts. Hell, I'd be exposing myself to 4X my normal exposure in the process of getting tested. There isn't any point for me.

[WrigleyField 22]

This is no judgment whatsoever to anyone here, but I find it absolutely baffling when I hear people have never once been tested. Really it's just so much....dissonance? Culture shock? I don't even know the right term. I stopped keeping track a while ago, but safe estimate for me is somewhere in the 20s since this all started. Between having it, close family members testing positive, day care regulations, what limited travel we did, etc...

20s sound like a lot unless you've had mandates to.

I think I'm only at 4. Twice self elected to based on symptoms and twice this holiday as a gathering precaution. I think I've tested the most in my family. Certainly being able to work almost exclusively from home helps. But even with two in daycare the need to hasn't really arisen.

[WrigleyField 22]

So let me tell you my COVID story cuz its wild and expensive. Unfortunately its impossible to tell this story and make it reflect well on me. It involves me getting very sick for like 2 months and pretty much working and playing right through it. I even played a 500+ player poker tournament at the height of it. Against a bunch of old people in Florida. Its not a good look. I'm gonna address that criticism now instead of having to respond to the comments that call me out for it. I know. I was stupid. I know.

First thing you should know is that I give tests to students at several schools throughout central/south Florida. Its about a 5-6 hour test during which we are obviously in very close proximity. A lot of these students are from Southeast Asia and a lot of them travel to and from home on occasion.

Its the 2nd week of October, 2019. Approximately 3 weeks ago I have given a test to a student from Wuhan, China. My wife goes on vacation out to California leaving me with the dogs and house to take care of and also a full work schedule. I say this to bring pity to me, not blame to her. This was planned well in advance. I did two tests a day normally at that time, it was a 10-13 hour work day once all was said and done. One of the last words I said to her before she left was "man, I feel something in the back of my throat, I hope I'm not getting sick..."

I got sick. I got really, really sick. While working 12 hour days and taking care of everything at home by myself. When she got home she could tell that I was not in a good place. But I'm pretty tough, and relatively dumb, so I didn't do anything crazy like miss work or rest or anything. I figured I'd be better the next week. And I was, to a degree. But then the week after was even worse than the original week. The best I've ever been able to describe it was "it was like having bronchitis and laryngitis at the same time that you have the flu." And it came in waves. I'd never fully recover, but I'd get super bad and then better, and then bad again. The first week of November, 2019, I called in sick to work for the first time in my life. I ended up missing 3 days in a row, the only reason it wasn't 6 was because I had previously scheduled those 3 days off.

Ive literally never in my life been to a doctor for anything other than "hey I might be dying, man." That's not a brag, that's me being dumb again. This is no longer true. I have learned my lesson on this issue. So, Second week of November, 2019, a full month into this, I break down and go to urgent care. The lymph nodes in my neck feel like they are golf ball size. They protrude from the skin. They aren't comfortable. Also that's a super bad sign and I think I might be dying. The nurse walked into the room, turned around to look at me and literally said, "....whoa." I also take this as a bad sign. They tested me for influenza and for strep and that came back negative. My wife falls ill around this time too with what looks like the same illness and she also tests negative for both and she says they did a test for laryngitis too which came back negative, but i'm not 100% on if there was a laryngitis test given or if that's even a thing. She didn't get as sick as I did and recovered much quicker. The urgent care doctor gives me....some medicine and a steroid...and says I should probably get an appointment at my normal doctor.

3rd-4th week of November and I finally feel human again. My doctor can finally squeeze me in. I almost canceled the appointment. To be honest I wish I had, because what happens next is where it gets expensive. My lymph nodes in my neck, armpit and groin are still quite enlarged and that concerns her. She sends me for an MRI (I think). MRI shows some concerning results, which leads to a PET scan (that's a cancer scan) which shows concerning results. I'm pretty much flat out told that I have lymphoma. Well, that sucks. All of that leads to a Christmas Eve 2019 biopsy which shows....absolutely nothing. A followup PET scan maybe 5-6 weeks later shows absolutely nothing. No strep, no influenza, no laryngitis, no cancer.

By this point we're in probably April of 2020, I'm about $10,000 out of pocket deep into finding out that I don't have cancer. My cancer doc, now communicating mostly through the phone, throws up his arms and says 'we'll do one more PET scan in early 2021 to make sure but other than that we have no idea.' Then I tell him about my profession and that I work directly with people who live and travel to and from southeast asia. I ask if there is any way that I was essentially ground zero for COVID in the state of Florida. I'm fully expecting him to shoot this idea down with "no, its more likely that your body successfully fought off this blah blah" or something. But instead he goes back over my symptoms and asks if he can call me back a bit later. When he calls me back he all but diagnosed it as COVID. "I can't tell you that it was COVID because...you know...but yeah that makes a whole lot of sense." Something like that.

We can never prove it. None of the blood that was drawn around the time was kept. I suppose the lymph node from the biopsy was probably in a freezer somewhere but that's not able to be tested I guess. But my cancer doc was so convinced of it that he told me not to bother with the follow up PET scan.

So my official answer is that I haven't had COVID. But I did have COVID-like symptoms for months just prior to it officially existing.

Well that definitely wasn't as bad as the disclaimer made me think it was about to be. I'm sure many of us didn't take illnesses as seriously pre covid as we hopefully will going forward. Glad you don't have cancer.

[Bote McBoteface]

Well that definitely wasn't as bad as the disclaimer made me think it was about to be. I'm sure many of us didn't take illnesses as seriously pre covid as we hopefully will going forward. Glad you don't have cancer.

I don't wanna hear any of sammy sofa's comments, man. haha.

Work is work and I don't know how I would have kept my job if I had just taken 8 weeks off. I feel bad about the poker tournament. If I had been scheduled to work that day, I would have taken off. I can't imagine a better way to spread disease than a poker tournament. Every chip and card in that room passed through my hands. I was texting my friend, in a text that aged REALLY poorly. Almost exactly quoting myself:

"I have 80,000 chips. Man, I feel like trash."
"I have 150,000 chips. I feel like dog horsefeathers tho and I'm actively spreading a disease"
"I have 250,000 chips. Done for the day. Day 2 is Sunday. I'm so glad I get to go home"

Its rough to read through. I hope nobody there got sick because of me but I know that they did.

Since I've revealed that much I entered day 2 in 4th place overall with 23K going to 1st place. About 2 hours into day 2 I lost 2 big hands in a row and did not win any money.

[Bote McBoteface]

*disappointed sigh*

Spoiler: show

[Sammy Sofa]

This is no judgment whatsoever to anyone here, but I find it absolutely baffling when I hear people have never once been tested. Really it's just so much....dissonance? Culture shock? I don't even know the right term. I stopped keeping track a while ago, but safe estimate for me is somewhere in the 20s since this all started. Between having it, close family members testing positive, day care regulations, what limited travel we did, etc...

If I had felt sick with the common symptoms I would have, but I never did, and my girlfriend and I really separated ourselves from everyone else at the various worst times outside of running errands.

[TomtheBombadil]

“Finally” tested positive….Fever is down (reached as high as 101.6 yesterday AM) but still have body aches, a new little dry cough, and last night felt maybe a little more internal inflammation (lungs? I assume). I work with pretty garbage conditions for pretty gross people, one of the perks of being the first of a first generation who didn’t walk the tightest and/or most expensive line possible I assume, so that isn’t happening the rest of the week. I’m the third in my family to test positive this week and easily experiencing the most symptoms (likely partially due to the garbage work conditions but who’s asking)

I’m mostly so horsefeathering frustrated