My easily WfH job has been getting more threatening about going into the office for a majority of the week. There had been some nudges previously, but most everyone had been ignoring it. Recently they announced a new policy that seemed more likely to have teeth to it.
So I started going into the office a few days a week, but just for about half the workday. My boss indicated this was fine. It seems like the point of the policy is to justify keeping the offices open or some other nonsense via forcing everyone to go in more often.
So this Friday, I went in for one of my obligatory days. There was only 4-5 people in the office, and only one coworker that sits adjacent to me. Everyone left by about 4pm, except my adjacent coworker. As I was preparing to leave after 5pm, went to use the bathroom before catching the bus home. When I came back to my desk, my coworker was completely asleep in their chair. I decided to not wake them since no one was around, and they had their middle school kid playing minecraft at one of the empty cubes nearby. My internal debate settled on just letting them get a nap if they needed it, since no one was around to get them in trouble over it.
Caught the bus home, and brought my n95 mask (that I had not worn at work), and wore it the entire long packed bus ride home. Had to walk about a mile from the bus stop to get home. I started to feel pretty exhausted from the day, and took about an hour long nap early Friday evening. Had a nice relaxed evening at home.
Saturday I felt pretty fine, went on a bike ride and short hike. But now, Sunday morning, I got an email from work saying my adjacent coworker has COVID. They started feeling tired Friday morning, and they were completely exhausted by the end of the day. So my sleeping coworker was coming down with the plague. Now I'm pretty worried I probably got it. I'm not feeling bad yet, but I'm very anxious about it. I don't want to spread it to partner or anyone else.
If I catch it, it will be the second time that I know of. I'm really hating this BS, and it's a real reminder that all this forcing things back to normal is totally insane.
Really hoping I got miraculously lucky and don't get it, but also feeling extra :doomer: as well. The at-home tests I have expired like 9 months ago.
Anyone know decent info on how likely I am to have been exposed? I don't recall my coworker coughing or sneezing at all if that means anything.
Taking some vitamins and supplements already, and waiting to see if any symptoms arise today.
Thanks for reading about my corner of :amerikkka: :agony-deep: .
If it's SARS-CoV-2, then one of its defining elements in causing the pandemic is how easily it is spread before an infected person has symptoms. Folks that think they are perfectly healthy will be churning out huge amounts of virus, and in aerosol form.
If your coworker was infected and already had some symptoms (lethargy), it's very likely you were exposed because of how the virus works. But I don't know whether your coworker was infected with it, of course. For all I know they were just tired or have a different illness.
Personally, I would take modest quarantine measures at home, at minimum, beginning with masking up with an N95 in any shared space. If your goal is to not pass it along to your partner, doing that for 3-5 days is probably enough, given how long thr incubation period usually is. If you wanted to be completely safe, such as if you have someone who is immune compromised living with you, you'd want to fully isolate for up to 10 days.
I haven't followed how well at-home tests perform nowadays outside of random anecdotes about testing negative until trying different areas to swab and getting a positive. I personally treat them as a viral load proxy: it'll probably show positive if your load is high, but I don't trust it for early stages with lower load. PCR-based testing is still extremely accurate and sensitive, but these pieces of shit started making people pay for their own tests, so keep that in mind.
You can get more free at-home tests this month, I believe. I think this is the very last month you can. And pharmacies will give them to you if you provide some kind of identifying info (I'm not 100% on top of the process).
Just to add - Swab throat + nares, on third day of symptoms for highest accuracy.
It's cool they're probably fine. It's just the most contagious virus ever recorded in the history of infectious disease. No big
No real advice, but sending healthy vibes & solidarity. Easier said than done, but try not to stress too much. Take precautions for your partner, take care of yourself, and test in the next couple days if you can. It’s really just a waiting game now and it sucks.
I’m coming off the tail end of my second infection, and this post is very much echoing what my past week has been like. I feel your worries. If the anecdote helps, even though I got it, my partner has managed to test negative the whole time, despite sharing a household. I hope you manage to have avoided it, or it’s at least mild otherwise. good luck comrade :Care-Comrade:
ugh. parts of this felt like they were written by me in my mind.
i had this totally "should have been an email" meeting in late january. bullshit was 4 hours long and the bosses were insistant that all of us had to be there in person. the very next morning someone at the meeting fesses to having COVID which they got from hanging out with infected friends. this is the second meeting they have pulled an "oops, i did a covid" on everyone.
i've been WFH as much as i can get away with, but the pressure to return has been rearing its head more than ever this year. even though every time i come in, it's a ghost town and i get all my shit done easily from home. i'm like stupid productive and available to walk my team through all kinds of shit that the organization does not train them for, but asks them to do anyway and just throws them to the wolves. super dysfunctional org that has become a disaster with all the institutional knowledge that has walked out the door in the last 24 months.
i had planned on a strategic RTO move like you, where i came in early and did like half days. that way i could make meals at home, save bucks, and be around the office in the morning in case anybody there bothered to give a shit. but, as soon as i start that, my office workstation goes on the fritz requiring some replacement stuff. and the people who handle purchasing are critically understaffed with a shitload of new people, so the story has been "you'll be able to order this $150 item soon" for literally 6 weeks. so i've been WFH using my own equipment. everything is a clusterfuck all the time, i swear to god.
The number of times you are infected, and how frequently you are infected, impact your chances of severe health outcome.
Also there are folks who have avoided it entirely, still, and they tend to be folks that get vaxxed, wear masks, and avoid crowded indoor spaces.
The number of times you are infected, and how frequently you are infected, impact your chances of severe health outcome.
Yup, I believe this is the study you're referring to : https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02051-3/figures/5
That's one of them!
There are a host of studies out there pointing in this general direction, and it makes sense as a null hypothesis that a disease that has a relatively high chance of severe outcomes will translate into a more severe outcomes with more frequent infection so long as immunity wanes on a timescale that keeps infection levels high (exactly our situation). Throw some other facts on top and it makes sense to continue avoiding infection with the few, individualistic tools left to us by capital. Some of those facts:
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Higher viral load correlates with worse outcomes.
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The virus gets into nervous tissue and can hang out for a long time.
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It seems to fuck with T cells for a long time - months at minimum. Not for every person, but wouldn't want to kedp rolling the dice every 4-6 months.
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Protections conferred by immunity are waning - vaccine or post-infection.
Hmm sounds like some serious shit, almost like we shouldn't be minimizing COVID--in a COVID-conscious community, no less--by saying unhelpful shit like "we're all gonna get it eventually".
Yes, I agree.
The ease with which Western leftists have adopted the liberal status quo on this is worth analyzing. It's something of a structure test that we have all collectively failed. The extent to which we can (1) reject the liberal status quo and (2) do it in unison is absolutely essential to having any sort of long-term success. We can't even get communists to wear masks indoors with one another during a global pandemic because liberals normalized taking them off. Can't even make our spaces accessible to disabled or immune compromised folks because Brandon said, "pandemic is over" and we are just falling in line.
Basically... we shouldn't underestimate the power of soft peer pressure in our own organizations. Both in handling external sources of it and in crafting our own.
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Good thing there's no known cure for long COVID then! Also, so far there doesn't appear to be any limit to the number of times we can get reinfected, and COVID has evolved to be so transmissible that some people are now coming down with COVID at least a couple or few times per year. For comparison, the average adult gets the flu once every five years.
Furthermore, COVID tests, vaccines, and treatments are about to become a lot less inaccessible, especially to the poorest and most vulnerable, once all those things are kicked to the private market soon.
