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Comment by figaroniguzo | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotal but I currently have Omicron. I had COVID in March 2021 and got vaccinated in September. I have no symptom except back pain.

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We experienced a 100% infection rate super-spreader event in our circle of four close friends last weekend. A husband in our group traveled for work last week and by end of the week was sick and clearly showing symptoms. His wife felt fine and the rest of our wives still decided to go out for the long-ago planed dinner/drinks Saturday night. To make matters worse they decided to car pool into one SUV. These are all fully vaccinated and boosted adults. My son also went into car (vaccinated) for short ride to babysitter. By Monday my wife and another one of the wives was feeling symptoms. Tuesday my son stayed home from school with sore throat and by bedtime we were rushing him to the hospital with a 103 fever. He tested positive while at the hospital. Since then every single person in that car has also tested positive through PCR.

I thought I escaped it by isolating from my wife/son in our home but I started to show early symptoms Wednesday morning waking up with splitting headache. I went and got tested that afternoon. By Thursday night I was having itchy throat, chills, fatigue and body aches. Feeling pretty crappy and a crazy symptom I also have been having is uncontrollable hiccups past 24 hours that come and go.

The test I took Wednesday came back negative but the OTC Rapid I did today was positive. I am going for another PCR tomorrow to confirm as the first one was done possibly too early after exposure with no symptoms.

IF this is the Omicron that went through our vaccinated group like butter, we are going to be in a very bad spot by mid-january.

I'm fighting it right now myself. Have my initial vaccines and got my booster about a month and a half ago. First two days were terrible, but now it just feels like a cold. What I can't handle is the brain fog. I've been awake enough to do some last minute code reviews for people before we start the Christmas shutdown and they have taken me double/triple the amount of time they usually take me. Answers to questions don't come as fast, etc. I really hope the fog clears up soon, it's pretty demoralizing for me right now.

Both me and my wife are fighting it right now, confirmed via PCR testing. Started as cold like symptoms, but a cold I've never experienced before. Unless I keep up the paracetamol it's unbearable... Not much of a cough for me, but my head is spinning and it's hard to focus on anything.

Lost all sense of taste and smell too.

It's not fun people. We are both fully vaccinated.

I know I'll catch grief for this but ivermectin will clear it up very quickly and is your best bet against letting it morph into long covid.

While anecdotal data isn’t very useful, it is good to remember that people actually do get this disease. It seems like it’s always at arms length in online discussions; that someone else will get it surely, probably due to some implied moral failing, but not OP. Thanks for sharing and I hope you get better soon.

> good to remember that people actually do get this disease.

Why does it continue to be significantly important to call this out when the trajectory places Omicron and possible future variants within the realms of cold/flu ?

To remember that normal people from our own social circles get infected and usually survive just fine. Rather than pretending that every infection is an overweight, anti-vaxxer, etc. who dies immediately after destroying the local medical facilities. I think both sides of the severity discussion would benefit from keeping the human consequences in mind, whether they are more or less severe than imagined.

Agreed, yet at some point society has to be productive again. Living in constant anxiety will ultimately be more destructive than the disease everyone fears if it has not already.

I actually completely agree. COVID is endemic so now we’re just prolonging the inevitable getting-on-with-it and the only question is how much damage we do pretending otherwise.

> and possible future variants within the realms of cold/flu ?

Delta was already "within the realms of" the flu. Omicron so far appears to have shot past that and is on its way to a cold.

I'm not sure it's really considered a moral failing here in the UK, everyone gets it unless they're barricaded inside.

The official Government stats claim that over 15% have had a confirmed positive test at this point[1], I'd be surprised if the reality weren't over half.

Half of my friendship group currently have it (no idea whether it's Omicron or not, but, well, probably).

[1] https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk 11.2M positive tests/67M population makes 16.7%

Get well soon! <3

Keep us posted, and hope you feel better soon xoxo

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