How are you all dealing with coronavirus and the restrictions... #2

Yup, there's no tests here either, but our solution is to just shorten the quarantine, lol. There was something in the news here suggesting these at home tests don't even detect Omicron.


A good friend's family caught it. Luckily, all of them have mild symptoms, but my friend decided she won't bother with any more vaccines anymore since they don't work. Maybe that's why she had a mild case??? It feels like we are never going to get out of this.

@AzulOscuro I think being an ***** is a prerequisite for being a politician!

😂 The problem is that the worst and easier to handle are the one who jump to the top.

Here, the quarantine is gonna to be shorten too. 7 days if you don’t have symptoms.
Lack of tests here too in the pharmacies.

Wow! I can’t even work out your friend’s logic on this one. Surely she can’t dispute the graphs which clearly show hugely reduced deaths and hospitalisation since the vaccines were introduced??

I personally credit my vaccination with ensuring I had a mild infection only and didn’t seem to infect others too - although that was combined with hygiene and distancing/masking up. It’s not one thing IMO it’s a collection of measures.

I think the people who post on this thread are so sensible and logical, it’s helped me to cope with this situation we’ve all faced to read your posts. You people have grounded me many times! There has been so much nonsense around us, I’ve found it hardest to cope with but coming here has helped.

I want to wish you all a happier 2022!

Sooooo apparantly my 2nd shot after the first one with J&J is now considered an "optimisation of the base immunisation", meaning I would still be able to/need to get a booster after 3 months. It never ends, does it? A few days ago, a friend shared one of those vaccinaton sceptical posts on Facebook how it was like collecting a stamp for every vaccination, get a prize after the xth one! I got annoyed when I saw it at first but I'm starting to feel the same way. I had J&J, then Pfizer, and the booster would most likely be Moderna, I'll almost have bingo! Maybe in six months I can get Novavax.

Sorry, just venting some frustration.

This virus is gonna be with us for long. It will be a matter of protect ourselves and combat it with vaccines and medication for the symptoms. That’s all we can do.

My relatives overcame the illness. My niece who is young and didn’t get any vaccine so far, it’s taking her a longer time to recover taste and smell though. But they are pretty fine. 😀

My friend's family has had an interesting Covid experience. Every person in the household had completely different symptoms. One had severe body pains and nausea, another had congestion and a sore throat. Intense fatigue and no appetite. At least two were triple vaxxed. They got it from a large Christmas gathering. Just about everyone at the party got sick two days later. Overall, she does not recommend and said it was more severe than she was expecting. TBH, it makes me want my husband to stay at home instead of going out to music gigs where it just seems inevitable he'll bring it home.

My family that had Covid all recovered and tested negative after a couple of weeks with symptoms. My friend tested negative, but he chose not to get tested until after 2 weeks of experiencing symptoms, so he could have still had it but tested after the incubation period (sigh, the logic behind these people aren't helping the data; it's creating "noisy data" - lest the analysts actually ask questions to weed out the less-than-honest persons).

Also, two of my family members who were exposed (living with) positive covid family members NEVER got it; one was on military leave and fully vaccinated - not yet boosted, so the vaccines work for some; the other was the child of the two family members, who was never vaccinated - even though he is of age to be vaccinated, but thankfully never got Covid from his parents - my niece and her husband. I think good airflow and separating rooms and isolating the people within the household really did help to slow the spread and prevent two people from getting Covid. That's a plus.

But I'm still doing all I can to shield/isolate in place, because I don't want to play Roulette with my life or others' lives. I'd rather err on the side of caution and do what I can to keep my body as healthy as possible, since I'm already immunocompromised as it is.

Do you know if they got this variant, omicron?

They assume it was omicron but none of them got an official test. One person tested positive with an at home test. According to official statistics, Delta is still predominant here, but if no one is getting tested, then how do they even know? The reason they think it was omicron was because they developed symptoms so soon after the party. They assume they got it at the party because everyone else who attended got sick too.

You read my mind! Today it’s announced here that PCR is to be no longer given to asymptomatic people who test positive on Lateral Flow. I thought exactly the same as you, how will we know the true figures because most people do not log their lateral flow test online like you’re supposed to. Factor in the shortage of lateral flow tests and I think this will mean massive underreported cases. Also like you say there is no way of knowing the variants (or any new ones) through lateral flows. Hmmm.

Exactly - we are just not going to be able to rely on testing data anymore because testing is too limited. Not only that, but I think a lot of people do not want the official tests because they don't want to be forced to fully quarantine. If your partner can't go to work because you have Covid but neither of you get paid sick time, then there's a real incentive to avoid the official test. On top of that, there's such a backlog that by the time you get the results, your quarantine is probably over anyway. And if you don't have Covid at the time of the test, what are the odds you get it in the Covid test waiting room?


Is anyone releasing wastewater testing results regularly? That seems like the best way to measure how affected an area is. They regularly test in my area but don't seem to release the results to the public. Maybe I will ask about that. Some colleges are doing that kind of testing to monitor for outbreaks and it has been very helpful at nipping them in the bud.

My corona app popped up with a warning this morning. "You have an increased risk of infection because you were exposed over a longer period of time and at close proximity to at least one person diagnosed with corona virus".

I'm glad it's now also showing the date of the exposure because that tells me it 100% happened with a wall in between January 2nd I don't think I even left the house at all. It's possible one of my neighbours has tested positive. Although I would think in that case it would've been on more than 1 day. Hmm. Maybe someone visiting a neighbour.

Anyway, I took a self test just in case and it showed negative so all good I would hate to send half the office in quarantine in my first week if I had tested positive!

The warning won't disappear until 14 days have passed though, even after a negative test but at least I'm not required to quarantine.

The numbers in the city are rising like crazy again

I traveled to India from the US to spend the holidays with family and for my cousin's wedding. We had a big party on Christmas day. After that, half of us came down with Covid. Luckily, my sore throat lasted only 4 days. But it has been a week since I first tested positive, and the test I took today was still positive. Because of this, I can't get back to the US. They do say if I get a letter from a doctor saying I'm recovered and no longer contagious, I can get back into the US. I'm going to try this, because I have no idea how long the PCR test will show a positive. I think it could be up to a month.

That sounds like a horrible situation to be in, yes you’re quite correct a PCR can pick up dead virus particles and therefore you aren’t to take one for 3 months after your original covid infection (this is in the UK not sure about India or US guidelines).

My own experience with lateral flow tests I tested positive until day 10 and I’ve been negative since. That said it can happen people can test positive by lateral flow for some time later in some cases, again it’s dead virus particles which haven’t been cleared out of your system I believe.

A letter from a doctor verifying recovery sounds like a good plan if they’ll accept that. Hoping all goes well and glad you haven’t been too poorly!

That’s so strange the app picked up through a wall!! Glad you’re in the clear and don’t have to quarantine.

What are your numbers like? In my town it’s now almost 2,500 per 100,000 which is super high. Every day I’m hearing of someone new testing positive even 3x vaccinated.

I have no idea if herd immunity is even a possibility any more however. I’d like to think so but I’m not convinced.

Down and Lonely - Your experience is why, even though I would love to take an international trip, I am taking a wait and see attitude right now. I am not overly concerned about getting the virus by this point. I've been vaccinated and I am relatively low risk as far as getting a severe case. However, there just seem to be so many things that could go wrong.

I have heard of tourists that test positive here being sent to government hotels until they test negative. If I traveled, to return to the country, I would have to get a negative PCR before leaving. Then, they test people again on arrival. If that is positive, I would have to isolate for 14 days. At least I would be allowed to do it at home, but 2 weeks without ever leaving the house is a lot. Also, my country has already closed the borders twice. Citizens and legal residents were allowed in, but coming back was chaotic for them. Airlines slashed the number of flights, so people had a hard time getting a ticket. I wouldn't want to experience that.

Ugh, things are trending up here. A lot of tourists from the US have brought in Omicron. Supposedly, they are being isolated, but with Omicron now reaching community transmission. I guess some people are leaving isolation, or they gave it to transportation/hotel workers while going to their isolation location and those workers passed it on to other people. The ICU and death numbers are much lower than the last time we had close to 4,000 cases a day, which is positive.

The government just opened the most important land crossing with Argentina. I don't think that is the greatest idea considering they are having over 100,000 cases a day there, with about twice our population.

They are already talking about a fourth dose here starting with the immunocompromised.


My birthday is coming up. I spent it last year locked down. I had hope of being able to go out for a meal this year, but my husband is kind of nervous about the higher case numbers. Maybe we will get take-out Peruvian food.



I hope you are able to get back home soon!

@rechu really sorry to read you’ve got omicron in Chile now, yes it’s less fatal especially with good levels of vaccination but can still cause chaos by sheer numbers of infection. Here we have businesses who’ve had to shut down temporarily because too many staff are absent and unwell.

Also sorry to read you’re not able to celebrate your birthday in the way you would have liked. I hope your Peruvian takeout is good and you’ll have a nice time all the same. I hope next year you’ll be able to celebrate properly in the way you wish. It’s my 50th in April so I’m hoping things will be better as my last 2 birthdays were lockdown ones.

Yes, unfortunately the US government won't accept a lateral flow test to get into the country, only PCR. But they do say you can get a doctor's note as an alternative, so I hope that works.

Actually it makes sense because the app works through bluetooth. It only measures distance and time in close proximation, it can't pinpoint an exact location or if there's any obstacles in between. I guess that's one of the reasons why they can't require quarantine if you get a warning message, they can only recommend. I know for a fact I haven't been in contact with anyone on that day so I'm just ignoring it now. It's only to help with contact tracing, not replace it. You could just switch off bluetooth as soon as you're home, but I use bt headphones so mine is usually on

Our local incidence is 511 per 100.000 so not quite as bad as the UK yet. But it's going up quickly. I wonder if maybe with omnikron, there will be no avoiding it anymore unless you live like a hermit. In South Africa the omnicron wave is apparently over already and I heard the UK has probably reached its peak as well. Maybe it's not so bad to get this wave over with quickly, especially if it's not as deadly as previous variants.

Yes they said we’d reached the peak a while back then it went up again but I keep thinking this has to go down eventually.

Every day I hear of at least a few more friends it acquaintances coming down with it in a way that never happened before. I’m just hoping this is the last hurrah.

@Discombobulated - I hope you are able to celebrate your birthday in style this year. My 50th was last year. I had saved money to to go Europe. Obviously that did not happen. I still have the money sitting in a mutual fund, at least.

I was lucky that my birthday in 2020 was during a lull between the protests and riots here and the arrival of Covid. My husband and I went to a place in town for drinks and sushi.

@downandlonely - you should read this article by the NYTimes regarding the tests in Italy and India - and testing positive: Covid Live Updates: Omicron News, Vaccines and More - The New York Times

I wonder if the tests could be creating false positives?