[Pants]

So I now have my own SARS2 story I can share.

Earlier this month, both my parents contracted this thing. They are doing fine and their experience, thankfully, has been very much uneventful so far.

Still, there's some anecdotal stuff in there which some may find interesting in this thread.

On Sunday, 8/9, my parents had their best friends over for dinner. They have been hanging out with this couple all throughout the pandemic despite my numerous attempts to convince them otherwise.

During this dinner, nobody was exhibiting any symptoms and everything seemed normal.

The next day (Monday), the lady developed a fever and started coughing. She immediately got tested and got a positive COVID-19 result.

She informed my parents ASAP. They began taking a shit ton of zinc and continued this for a couple more days. My mom said they had to stop because the taste would just persist in their mouth at that point. I'm guessing they probably ended up taking way too much, but I have no actual idea.

On Tuesday, both the lady's husband and her teenage daughter (freshman in college) became symptomatic. Both got tested and got negative results. Clearly that was incorrect (they later got retested and were confirmed positive). It was the same testing center and hopefully others aren't as bad but that's still a bit discouraging. I mean, I can see one being wrong. Both of them being wrong is just... ugh.

Anyway.

The husband had a legit fever and felt very fatigued. The daughter had a low grade fever, a sore throat, and was very sleepy. She remained very sleepy for a number of days. Like she slept and slept and slept.

That same Tuesday, my dad developed a low grade fever (in the 99's). He got tested that day and was confirmed positive the following day. His test was the nasal swab kind. Note: my dad has Type 1 diabetes and is 61. Type 1 is the shitty autoimmune kind that is not reversible and is not caused by obesity or bad diets. Your body basically attacks the cells responsible for creating insulin or something like that. Hammas can explain it, I'm sure.

On Wednesday, my dad began coughing a bit.

On Thursday, my dad's cough worsened but was still pretty mild.

On Friday, my dad's low grade fever was gone. The mild cough persisted.

On Saturday, my mom went to get tested. She was completely asymptomatic. At the urgent care where she went for the test, she was told she was wasting resources by getting tested because if her husband tested positive, it was a given she would be positive too. Note: my mom is 55 and is on a low dose blood pressure med and some thyroid medicine.

On Tuesday of next week, my mom (still asymptomatic on the 8th day after exposure) got her test result back. She was positive. She got tested for the antigen, which means it's 99%+ accurate if it comes back positive.

Today, my dad went back to work. My mom, who never ended up developing any sort of symptoms is going back tomorrow.

Again, pretty uneventful and I am very grateful. I hope they are out of the woods at this point.

Another ****ed up thing was that my mom followed her job's COVID-19 procedures by calling the established hotline the day she found out she was exposed. She was told to don a mask and come to work. She was like "what in the actual ****?" Her actual boss naturally told her to stay the **** at home for at least two weeks. Given, that was before she got an official positive result, but that is still so irresponsible and dangerous. Just completely blows my mind.

In conclusion, they must have contracted the less dangerous strain. They probably got relatively low viral loads that Sunday because the friend was pre-symptomatic so there was no coughing or sneezing. Zinc may have actually helped too? I don't know.

Naturally, the first week was really scary for me. ****, I am just ready for the vaccines to be done so we can all breathe a little easier.