My fiancée and I have been extremely cautious, we don’t go anywhere, we order amazon fresh, we work from home, etc.
She had to go into work a few times last week to build her machine (she’s a Mechanical Engineer), she wore a mask at all times, avoided interaction with other people.
Out of an abundance of caution she got a PCR test afterward - it came back positive.
Now we’re wearing masks in the house and she’s staying in her room. She’s asymptomatic thankfully, an initial test for me came back negative but it’s too early to be definitive (and we were with each other prior to her positive test result).
It sucks - the anxiety was already fairly extreme prior to this, but now waiting around to see if I develop symptoms and seeing story after story of random healthy person dying is really upsetting.
False positive probability with PCR is quite low, 0.5% to 2%.
Whatever the stress of social isolation, being isolated apart from your SO while waiting to see if you develop symptoms is 10x times worse. People don’t take it seriously because they just don’t think it’ll happen to them.
Just something interesting you might want to read into. False positives can be much higher than 0.5-4% figures, depending on how you look at it.
Out of the positive results, about 13% [1] and 25% [2] were false. In [2] 400 out of 1570 positives would be false. I have seen as high as 40% being false in other publications.
[1] https://www.aacc.org/science-and-research/scientific-shorts/...
[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
I hope you both weather it fine. Some people seem to experience almost no symptoms; I hope that is the case here. Maybe she only got hit with a small viral load given how safe she has been... in which case hopefully her body is able to defend and create antibodies. Would be curious to hear how things evolve for you, if you’re willing and able to share.
Good luck.
People that recklessly and selfishly endanger themselves and others would not remain my close friends.
My friends know our household is pretty strict about gatherings. We've maybe had a handful of people over, mostly one at at time, and only when it was totally necessary. My parents knew better than to even mention whatever their crazy Thanksgiving and Christmas plans were--they knew they could count us out because I was very clear with them throughout the year.
Honestly I'm not that torn and none of this weighs heavily on me because I'm not on Facebook or any other social media. I don't get bombarded with pictures of loved ones acting irresponsibly and taking risks with their lives every day, so out of sight, out of mind. My wife on the other hand is on facebook and insta all day and took 2020 much worse. Another example of social media's wonderful redeeming qualities.
I think it's because there are a lot of them proportionally, as responses to the pandemic have been rather divided even within close social groups.
Try shaming party-goers in your friendship circle on, say, social media, and you might find the blowback hard going as "they" in sufficient numbers shame you back for being too cautious or controlling, and you become the pariah. Even if you're confident you're right, you can feel the loss of social capital. And who wants to be known as the sourpuss who tries to ruin other people's happy times?
Maybe feeling like losing social capital is even an illusion, amplified by the way social media distorts social group feelings. It only takes a few people to point the shame back at you to induce a feeling that the larger group sees you that way, whether they do or not, because your other social connections tend not to speak up in your defence.
If one of my gambling buddies tried to convince me to head to a casino with him right now, I'd have no problem saying, "Dude, we've been pals for a while but WTF are you talking about? Use your head, buddy." and I don't think either of us would take it the wrong way.
Drunk driving is universally agreed to be a terrible thing to do... Most people even if they have done it, would acknowledge that it was a bad, wreck-less, often youth driven decision.
With COVID the spectrum of agreement on how dangerous it is, is so much more vague. Clearly some people do not believe they're doing anything wrong by attending a maskless party. They may recognize that others think its wrong, but themselves truly believe that we are wrong and this is all dumb.
That's what's so fucked up about this situation. I really don't feel like I could guilt my friends even if I wanted to. Despite really believing they are making the "wrong" decision, I also recognize that they don't share that opinion, and that they are part of a fairly large group that shares their viewpoint. It's not as cut and dry as I wish it was and that's what's so stressful about it.
Yes, I think this is exactly why we struggle with tamping down on COVID spread. While many commenting in this thread understand how the drunk driving analogy holds (probabilistic, dangerous to others besides yourself) COVID is new enough and communication hasn’t been strong enough for the message to percolate through society.
This part really resonated. What a weird year it's been. Finding the right balance between having a social life and being safe + conscientious has proven to be exhausting and depressing.
My wife and I have chosen to be super safe and turn down almost all social engagements, even ones with close family who promised to wear masks and social distance. If it wasn't a life or death thing, we felt the "right" thing to do was to host the even on Zoom, or not at all.
That decision never came lightly though and missing events with friends and family always weighed on us heavily. We'd never know if we were doing the right thing or if we were being too cautious. Especially when, on Facebook or Instagram, we would see close friends without masks hanging out and partying, while we sequestered ourselves from the rest of the world.
It's hard not to have emotions in a situation like that. At times I have felt frustrated, angry, tired, etc. Everyone has a different perspective on this whole thing, a different feeling of risk, and a difference decision about how to behave during it all. I long for the day when we can be human again without having to pass every social decision through some matrix of risk calculation.