Is covid still a thing?

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For various reasons, I haven't left my house for several years but have recently started leaving it again. Life seems completely normal and nobody seems to care about covid anymore.

How worried do I need to be about covid nowadays? How easy is it to catch? Similar to catching a cold/flu, or easier? I never used special precautions in the past and rarely got cold/flu. Nowadays I'm scared to go into a shop or restaurant but I dunno if I'm being overly scared?

It never stopped being a thing where I am. I still see masks and they're still necessary in certain places. Earlier today I was given a few more boxes of free tests at the chemist.


The most important thing is to wash your hands and wash / wipe anything that changes hands. Stand behind people whenever possible instead of in front of them.

My understanding is that Covid remains highly transmissible, more so than flu, and is still very much doing the rounds.

My experience of Covid last year was that it was much milder than the flu. Flu was truly horrible, Covid was inconvenient.

Which isn't to say that it doesn't remain a serious risk to those with existing respiratory issues or compromised immune systems. If you're not old and you're relatively healthy generally, the risks are low.

Like Issy says, wash hands well and often and your chances of getting lots of nasty winter bugs will be effectively reduced.

The days of not doing stuff because of Covid are behind us, unless some new variant changes things and if that happens there's a good chance you'll hear about it before you catch it.

I think part of it is that COVID isn't being treated as a big deal by the authorities anymore.

It's still around and always will be. Just the more time goes on, the less of a threat it will be, it will become like the common cold.

It most definitely is still a thing, but I think the worst of it is over (at least for now). Now that people know more about it, they're finding ways to manage it. I still sometimes see people wearing masks, but most stores in my area let you in without a mask.

Covid is still making its rounds here. Just last week I was at the physiotherapist and heard that three people cancelled their appointments that day because they'd caught Covid. I've been very lucky not to have had it. Practically everyone I know - family, people I know at work - have had it. Some people have even had it twice.

I wash and sanitise my hands a lot and keep my distance from people when out and about.

When I went to the Christmas tree farm yesterday they mentioned six people had left work during the day with Covid symptoms.

Yes, we've just stopped caring.

I think most people have better sense than to worry about Covid, which is essentially something one cannot control.

Obviously there are precautions one can take as others have mentioned, but if you get it, you will get it sometimes.

It could be something as innocuous as someone coughing in a shared space, or spending time with someone who is carrying it/not displaying any symptoms.

Covid is still a thing, unfortunately. In my part of the US, we are having a surge in hospitalizations and some of our local health systems are finally going back to mandating masks at their facilities again. Anecdotally, several of my friends and coworkers have tested positively recently, too.

It's tough to answer some of your questions, OP, because it really varies a lot based upon someone's personal risk factors and risk tolerance. Personally, I go out regularly, but still wear a well-fitted KN95 in public indoor spaces because I have a heart condition and other chronic health problems that make me considered "high-risk." The last time I had Covid, it caused a lot of problems and not all of them have fully gone away, so I am not eager to go through that again. It resulted in a ton of medical bills (again, I am in the US).

But, typically I am the only one masking in public and do sometimes get weird looks. I don't know of anyone else who masks except for a few friends I have who are immunocompromised. We are a tiny minority. Many people who are generally in good health have mild cases of Covid with good outcomes. If I was like them, I doubt I'd still be taking precautions, so I think it's totally understandable for the majority of people to want to return to pre-2020 living.

It can be really challenging to strike a balance between risk/safety for a lot of people, especially those not in denial about the long term effects of multiple infections and those who are actively following the science in this area. I just hope you'll figure out what works best for you personally, rather than worrying too much about what others think.

Edit: I wanted to add that the best advice one of my immunocompromised friends gave me recently when I was complaining about getting hostility for taking precautions was, "If someone won't be there to take care of you while you're sick, then you should not be worrying about their opinion." I think there's truth to that and you should just do what works best for you, OP.

Last edited by blueroses on 16 Dec 2023, 10:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I'm very sorry to hear that, blueroses. It sounds like you had a rough go. My daughter and daughter-in-law are both very immunocompromised too. It was a nightmare during peak Covid trying to take as many precautions as humanly possible to keep them both alive. In addition my mother had cancer so we couldn't visit her house at all, with the risk of any transmission.

I don't think many people understand unless they've experienced the fear of losing someone they love, or losing their own life, because of extenuating medical complications.

I'm sorry to hear that and, yes, I think there's truth what you're saying. I was lucky personally in that I wasn't diagnosed with my health issues until late 2021 when vaccines were available, even if they haven't turned out to be the panacea I think some people were hoping for. Throughout the worst parts of the pandemic I dated a frontline health care worker who was also helping to care for his father with late-stage cancer, though.

He was working 12 hour shifts in an Emergency Room taking x-rays of patients with Covid pneumonia one after the other, then would come home, go through a whole elaborate ritual of showering and disinfecting himself and then immediately head over to his parents' house to drive his dad to chemo. At that time, there was a shortage of PPE here in the US, too, so he had to be really meticulous about taking care of the equipment he was issued because if a strap on a mask broke or something, he would be out of luck until more was available. Looking back, I don't know how he dealt with that stress and the fear of infecting his dad, with whom he was very close, for over a year. He seemed to compartmentalize a lot of it and developed a fair amount of denial as a coping mechanism, I guess just to be able to keep going.

I try to think of that when I go to hospitals or doctors' offices now and find it hard to understand why none of the healthcare workers or caregivers accompanying patients are masking. Really, it's just hard to live that way for a long time and I think there's a lot of collective trauma driving decision-making at this stage of the pandemic. Not just decision-making by individuals, but by institutions also.

Still around and probably will be for many years to come

I find it mad that it's not talked about more tbh. It was a world changing thing and we were shut in our home, and people just carry on now like nothing happened.

My dad died during covid, but not from covid. Made hospital visits etc very difficult.

Past few months, plenty of people on the bus and at work coughing

I suppose now that most people have been vaccinated, Covid is no more of a danger than any other nasty virus that you could pick up. I've just recovered from a bad dose of flu. I suppose at my age I'm lucky that my immune system fought it off without medical help. I've never had a flu jab.

covid is still going around.

Most of us are just accepting that we will probably get infected at some stage - but those with compromised immune systems or other illnesses still need to be careful, unfortunately.

It's not in the news anymore because it's no longer infecting vast numbers of the population in massive peaks which overwhelm the hospital systems - so it's no longer a public health emergency.

That's because so many people have already been infected, there's a certain level of immunity in the population so it can't infect everyone in one huge wave anymore, it will infect a proportion of people as their immunity drops off.

I do feel bad for those with compromised immune systems or other illnesses who are still having to protect themselves constantly even when the rest of the population can no longer be bothered. And those with "long covid" who can't get back to their normal lives. That's rough.