Did anybody of you guys have Covid?

Luckily no, and my parents and in-laws have been taking it very seriously, so we’ve all gotten thru unscathed. My wife and I just got the first shot of our vaccines, so we see hope on the horizon. And no the shots didn’t hurt, and there aren’t any side effects! Although weirdly my wifi has been a lot faster... 🤪

Wow, can I say I'm envious? :-) I fell asleep during yesterday's Teams meeting :-) Thankfully I was muted and had the camera off, so I could pretend I had connectivity problems :-)

You guys are lucky you can go outside, we're here in a "temporal" lockdown until January 8th (originally of course, god knows how long will it take), so we can't really leave homes without very specific exceptions.

Ugh, sorry to hear that, hope you're on the mend. It sucks that no matter how seriously someone might take it there's always going to be someone who won't take it seriously and screw it all up for everyone else.

If it makes you feel any better, my brother-in-law is a banker, and he's considered an essential worker, and he was as careful as he could be and he still got it.

Having it twice is pretty rare, I think many people in that situation end up getting a lot of attention from medical research.

I suppose there's a chance he had a different strain the second time around. Did the doctors check that? If that is even possible...

There's just not enough reliable information as of today, I am just speculating.

I think it's almost inevitable that Europe's third wave will also reach the UK. It will be a test of the vaccines to see how bad things get, but hopefully at least the most vulnerable will now have some protection.

One of the scientists yesterday was saying that we may have to use masks and continue with some social distancing for years to come, so this certainly ain't over yet.

I had my first vaccine dose last wednesday. and, despite the after-effects (thursday) i would still choose this in a heartbeat. as people have already said, we've got this thing for a few years to come now. we need to do everything we can to mitigate every risk we possibly can.

the new measures (gel, masks, distancing etc) will be not be temporary for everyone. this has changed the world - and the way we live (forever). this is the world's new 9/11.in much the same way that 9/11 changed travel, human interaction, security and our day-to-day behaviours, Covid has done the same.

my colleagues used to laugh at me - having handgel/wipes on my desk these last 30 years (but working in prisons ramped up my hygiene "fixations"). my "obsession" is the new normal. who'd have thunk it?

Hoping you are negative

In July last year I had appendicitis. I started experiencing sharp abdominal pain on a Friday night and I waited until Sunday to get to the hospital. I was terrified of entering a hospital during the pandemic and perhaps getting infected with Covid just because of what could've been just something less serious. My fiancée suspected the pain I described was way too much like what she felt when she had appendicitis, and after talking on the phone to a friend of ours who's a doctor I got convinced to go. 

The infection got pretty bad because I took too long to go and I had to spend 5 nights recovering from the surgery at the hospital. In contrast, my fiancée had the exact same surgery using the same technique, but way before the pandemic and so she went to the hospital immediatly. She was home the following day. 

Now, in March 2021, I just have to hope really hard not to have any other kind of health scare, because the health system in my country is fully collapsed and I'll most likely just die on the hospital floor. I guess I should be glad at least I don't have an appendix to randomly get inflamed right now.

Still no covid in my household, though. Or, at least, no symptoms...

Back on topic, a friend of mine and his father both got infected. My friend completely lost his sense of taste and smell, which led to very poor eating for days, and it made him weaker. He did seem to have recovered in a couple of weeks, but his sense of smell was still very weak. He said any scent just "peaks" for a short time and then vanishes. His father wasn't so lucky, and felt weak and tired for months.

Apparently, anosmia is being associated with less serious Covid-19 infections if that is any consolation. Intense fever means your immune system is strong but that can be a bad thing: what's killing a lot of people is the extreme immune response that hurts one's body.

I’ve heard some people haven’t regained their sense of smell and taste months after having Covid . Apparently you need to try and retrain your brain by smelling strong smells daily .

This is what gets me , the non believers don’t seem to realise the affects from having Covid even if you had it quite mild .

Far from Europe actually, I'm from the Philippines actually.

So the test came and went, and thankfully it's a negative for now.

Love that t shirt!

Brilliant!