Does anyone test for Covid anymore?

So what do you do if you do test positive Farzanah? Isolate like the bad old days?
That’s no longer government advice so I’d just maintain a safe distance from people but not shut myself away.

I went for a blood test this week and the phlebotomist said that she had a woman coughing all over her, and asked her to go and put a mask on. As there are likely to be many vulnerable people, including those having cancer therapy, attending for blood tests I am surprised that the hospital doesn’t stipulate masks.

The phlebotomist’s response was “some people are thick”!

Farzanah, I realised a long time ago, that it is my sole responsibility to keep myself safe.

You cannot rely on the humanity of others. Not being vaccinated is a personal choice, but please don't try to persuade me with your nonsensical conspiracy theories, anti vaxxers.

Ivermectin eh? Anti parasitic medication as RosieMaw says. Doesn’t mention covid.

Side effects as long as your arm according to the BNF.
Notably tachycardia, vertigo, psychiatric disorder, encephalopathy eye inflammation, urinary incontinence………lots more.
One definitely to be taken under medical supervision only if necessary.

The Covid vaccine seems the better option to me!

It seems it is “every man for him/herself” in our ego centric society. Even if we don’t worry about getting covid ourselves surely we can take care for others, such as Marydoll who are immuno suppressed.

I appreciate that some may not be able to afford £2 each for a test but I believe these should be subsidised. We are in no way prepared for the next pandemic, and do not seem to have learned from this one.

LaCrepescule

I wouldn’t test, I think it’s pointless. If you think you might have it, just stay at home and avoid close contact, just as you would if you had flu.

It is not pointless if you are immuno suppressed.
You need proof, in order to obtain anti viral medication.

I wouldn’t test, I think it’s pointless. If you think you might have it, just stay at home and avoid close contact, just as you would if you had flu.

Allsorts

How do you explain that everyone in my circle having been vaccinated tested for Covid within the month. The tests cost £10 each, so a lot won’t be testing. It is mutating so fast you couldn't keep up with it.
I won’t be vaccinated as I'm bad each time, so am just trying building up my immunity with correct foods, masks and lots of fresh air and walking. I’ve had Covid four times, been vaccinated at least six.

The purpose of the COVID vaccination is not protect you from catching COVID. Its purpose is protect you from getting COVID severely, needing hospital treatment and from death and disability.

In that it is no different from any other vaccination. My children had all their childhood vaccines, but one still had measles and both had whooping cough, but in each case very mildly. They were ill for a couple of days, one whooped once and the othe coughed until they were sick - once.

When I compare their illnesses with whooping cough and measles when I was a child, the vaccinations worked.

The same with COVID.

MissInterpreted

*IMO if there is one thing worse than an anti- vaxxer, it is a self- medicating anti-vaxxer with no medical knowledge.*

Yes, completely agree with this. I know someone like this - she is always posting stuff on social media which is utter nonsense and in some cases, downright dangerous.

Never a truer word said!

I bought 6 tests for about £6 recently.
I’m another who has somehow avoided Covid, despite being immune suppressed.
One of my daughters has also swerved it, despite her partner and other family members testing positive. A friend has had covid 4 times but isn’t vaccinated,
There’s a lot we don’t yet understand but I’ll continue to take updated vaccinations

IMO if there is one thing worse than an anti- vaxxer, it is a self- medicating anti-vaxxer with no medical knowledge.

Yes, completely agree with this. I know someone like this - she is always posting stuff on social media which is utter nonsense and in some cases, downright dangerous.

Tests certainly need not cost £10 each - I bought a box of 5 recently for less than that.
However I do wonder if the recent variant(s) register as I always test negative despite pretty suspicious symptoms!
(I must be one of the few people I know who has swerved Covid since it first appeared.)
But I also question communities divvying up into those who jab and those who don't!
I would not even think of discussing it - there must not be much else to talk about in CariadAgain's small town!

How do you explain that everyone in my circle having been vaccinated tested for Covid within the month. The tests cost £10 each, so a lot won’t be testing. It is mutating so fast you couldn't keep up with it.
I won’t be vaccinated as I'm bad each time, so am just trying building up my immunity with correct foods, masks and lots of fresh air and walking. I’ve had Covid four times, been vaccinated at least six.

Why @ CariadAgain would you (presumably self medicating) take Ivermectin ?
Ivermectin is an anti-parasite medication used to treat parasitic diseases. Initially designed for veterinary use, I understand it was later FDA approved for use in humans to treat a variety of parasitic infections including parasitic worms, hookworm and whipworm
Not the coronavirus.

IMO if there is one thing worse than an anti- vaxxer, it is a self- medicating anti-vaxxer with no medical knowledge. .

Surprised you risked Ivermectin

Do you live in a fluoridated water area CariadAgain?
If so, how do you feel about that mass medication?

This is a genuine question.

I took my chances a. whether Covid existed b. whether, if it did, I'd catch it. Most people - on either side of the divide - probably just made "their decision for themselves". We do know that many of the ones that had it were blackmailed into it - Employer saying "Do you want to keep your job or be unfairly dismissed for not having it? Take your pick". I've certainly spoken to a couple of carehome workers that were blackmailed into it - as they knew they would be sacked if they didn't.

I'm only too thankful that no-one could blackmail me about it - as I'm retired and so my income is pension that just keeps coming automatically into my bank account regardless. In all honesty I couldn't say what I would have done if I'd been employment age and working in a job where the employer was trying to blackmail me into it. I'm pretty sure I would have taken the risk they wouldnt interfere with my life like that by sacking me and, if they did, there is always one other option (ie for someone with no responsibilities like myself) - ie leave the planet the day before (with a letter to the newspapers explaining why I'd had no option). I was a political activist for years anyway some time back - so it would be my last "political" protest.

None of us can be sure unless people have forced our backs up against the wall - but I'm 95% certain that is what I would have done (ie refused the jab for sure and, if sacked = oh well....that's the end of that then.....as I couldnt imagine even trying to live on dole money as low as it is these days). But I would have calculated how much savings I had to substitute for income and how long I figured it would be before the Tribunal case I'd have brought for unfair dismissal.

As for catching it myself - I did actually catch it at one point about a year in (in my late 60's at the time and from a family that has lung weakness stuff going on on my mothers side - so I might have that bad gene). I thought it was a long bad cold (ie I was coughing for 4 weeks) - but yep...thought it was a cold. When I realised that maybe it had been Covid in the event - I took Ivermectin, but guess I'd left it a bit late by then. So I'm working on getting rid of the deafness in one ear that may or may not be the "nerve damage from age" that an audiologist told me it is on the one hand and my 95% missing sense of smell on the other hand. But these things will have to take their turn to work on - as I'm early 70's - so there's a bit of a list of "my own" ailments I'm working my way through and getting rid of one by one and those ailments will have to wait until I've dealt with more urgent ones first.

Yes, you are indeed correct NotSpaghetti and I should not have used the term “herd immunity” to try and prove my point that there is less likelihood of the unvaccinated catching covid because many others are vaccinated. MOnica expressed this much more clearly and correctly, thank you MOnica.

The Covid virus is of course good at mutating and continues to do so. The government has decided that they will only offer vaccines to those most at risk, ie over 65s and the clinically vulnerable, and many I know who are eligible are not taking this up. Covid definitely hasn’t gone away, so watch this space! I hope the NHS is not too heavily impacted this winter.

But no vaccine system or medecine or surgical procedure is goig to be 100% perfect. What we have to do is balance the different risks.

The risks of getting and dying from COVID, especially of you are over 60 are so high, most of us consider it worth risking being the 1 in 100,000, or 1 in a million that dies of a side effect.

When DH had a heart attack and emergency bypass surgery, the surgeon was quite straight forward about the risks that he would die during surgery, or shortly after. He also told him that his life expe1ctancy was under a year if he did not have it.

Life is a constant balancing of risks. The risk of driving a car to the shops and being killed or injured in a road accident, against the risk of being killed if you walk to the shops.

No one is ever going to produce a COVID vaccination that is risk free, but you have only to see how COVID deaths plummeted after the vaccination was introduced, to see how effective it was and how many lives it saved.

Whether intentional or not the unvaccined can take their stand, because so few of them will get COVID because so many of the rest of us are vaccinated

Thanks NotSpaghetti for pointing that out.

Thinks....I guess some people haven't been reading even mainstream newspapers recently - to see where AstraZeneca has been withdrawn (yep...that's the one that's particularly bad news for potential heart attack people and yep....that's the one they would have given Heart Attack Family me if I'd let them).

Also mainstream newspapers saying how the Government admits some people have been injured and killed by these jabs and are in process of setting up a new compensation scheme for them. Admits I am a sports hater - but even as someone who won't watch sports ever - I'm still very aware of all these fit young sportpeople keeling over ill/maybe dead on the pitch and that never used to happen. Would be interested on why some other posters think this is happening to them....

Farzanah - Covid mutates a lot.
I don't believe you can achieve "herd immunity" with this.

It's not at all like smallpox!

(On top of this the vaccinations don't
last very long in the system so that doesn't help either).

www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/herd-immunity-and-coronavirus/art-20486808#:~:text=And%20the%20idea%20of%20herd,but%20don't%20have%20symptoms.

If many thought like you Cariad and have always refused covid vaccines there would now be a huge death toll, and we would all be at risk because lack of herd immunity from those refusing vaccines.

Vaccine refusniks have the luxury of benefitting from present herd immunity because of previous mass vaccination and uptake, but let’s not be complacent. It’s definitely not over yet.

If I was you Cariad I would move to live smoewhere else. You seem so at odds with all that is going on in the twon you now live in, perhaps moving to a more culturally comfortable town would be a good idea.

We are downsizing and moving from the area where we have lived in various places for 55 years. We know where we ae going to, but this choice was only made after doing our homework on the area, its activities and th ekinds of people living there.

We are following in the steps of my parents who, back in the late 1970s, put an enormouse amount of leg work in researching communities they would like to live in before msking their final house purchase decision.

I have question for you, Cariad.
If you contract Covid and become seriously ill because you have refused vaccinatin, , which is your choice, will you refuse treatment?

Jaxjacky

rosie1959

CariadAgain I suppose like everything else it will take time. Apart from here on GN I have never experienced any conversations where the un jabbed are avoided quite honestly to me it makes little difference. If you have Covid you are contagious regardless of vaccines. Do people avoid other's that have not had any other vaccines flu for instance?
And I don't know anyone's personal medical circumstances apart from my immediate family.
The majority of the population under 65 do not now receive vaccines for Covid do we avoid them as well.

Absolutely rosie I have no idea if the people I socialise with or meet day to day have been vaccinated or not, they don’t wear a badge! I’m only certain of MrJ and my children/grandchildren.
I’ve certainly seen no avoidance by anyone and really don’t know what Cariad is on about.

We're well aware where I live that there are certainly people here that are avoiding us at a personal level and/or banning us from going back to social groups we were in because they've been "done" and we haven't. I've certainly been chucked out of a book group I was in - not because I said anything to the person running it, but because he told me he knew I wouldnt have been "done" and was therefore not welcome and I've talked to others in this area who've also told me about being chucked out of other groups.

Add that - on this very thread - there are people who've said they don't want to be near us.

I can't speak for other areas of the country - but certainly in this one it never took long before someone (at least in this agegroup) would make a comment about going for their jab and then analyse us to see whether we were instantly saying something along the lines of "Yeah...me too....went for mine last week". It's a small town and I've noticed a lot of "checking" going on as to whether other people were going to say "Me too - had it - tick" or not say anything (in which case it would be presumed one hadn't had it).

This town very much divides between the more conventional people - who by and large have had it - and the more unconventional - who by and large havent had it.