“Sorry to hear that COVID caught up with you!” a friend texted me. He didn’t know, but this was the second go-round for me. Lori contracted it, probably on our return from our vacation, and passed it along to me. We both have had our vaccines and boosters, and I was confident I would resist whatever variant she had. I dodged it as best I could, distancing from her in our house as much as possible and calling up the reserves from my arsenal of vitamins.
According to a recent article by Yasmin Tayag in The Atlantic, the odds of you getting COVID from a housemate are about 50 percent. She cites a compilation of 135 studies that “the overall spread of disease within a home—an epidemiological phenomenon that is unfortunately named ‘household secondary attack rate’ —was 42.7 percent for the earliest forms of Omicron. The offshoots we’ve seen since then are more transmissible, so the chance of getting the virus from a roommate is now probably closer to 50 percent.” She quotes Dr. Bob Wachter, the head of UC San Francisco’s department of medicine: “It’s about a coin flip…the key thing is that it’s certainly not a sure thing.” So, it’s not inevitable that you will contract it from a housemate. The first time I had COVID, Lori escaped it.
I’ve been texting several friends who were also exposed to the virus. Two have contracted it; three haven’t yet. We’ve encouraged each other. “Stay safe,” I tell them, “praying for you.”
The good news is that according to MIT Medical, COVID is like the common cold, which is also a coronavirus. When you get a cold, your body manufactures antibodies to fight the virus. And with those antibodies on full alert, you’re protected from reinfection for some period of time. Like with a cold, if someone in your household catches your cold and another family member starts sneezing a few days later, they won’t make you sick again. However, just as with the cold, you can eventually get reinfected with COVID, or one of its variants. And who knows what variant your housemate may have?
The trouble is, by the time someone you live with tests positive, you’ve likely already been exposed. Lori wasn’t feeling well but tested negative. Then, the next day, she tested positive. So, she was probably contagious a day or two before testing positive. What to do? Every time a family member feels less than 100%, you ask, “Is it allergies? A cold? Or COVID?”
Separating yourself from someone in the same household is tedious and sometimes impossible. Someone forgets to mask for five minutes, and all it takes is an accidental sneeze in the kitchen to mist the virus in the air and on kitchen utensils. If you live in an apartment or small house with several people, your odds increase of contracting it. The Centers for Disease Control recommends sleeping head to toe if you only have one bed and have to sleep with someone. I’m trying not to visualize this.
Even though the CDC has dropped a recommendation to quarantine after COVID exposure and de-emphasized social distancing, COVID should still be taken seriously. I was reminded of that when I mentioned my rather mild symptoms in an online chat and another participant added that she had been in the hospital with COVID.
My texting friends and I seemed like five people on a lifeboat, floating in a sea of COVID exposure. Connecting was comforting, knowing someone was praying and hoping we stayed safely on board.
Now, having capsized and swam in COVID a second time, I’m grateful that falling overboard wasn’t so bad.