My opinion is, if you’re feeling fine, don’t test unless you start feeling sick. IIRC, you’re vaccinated. Everyone at work was already exposed by HR “chatty Kathy”. Wear a mask if you can. No one at work is avoiding it completely, so if you’re feeling OK, you’re not adding significant exposure.
I’d say the story changes if you DO feel sick. But, I know that’s the dilemma.
ETA: When DS14 brought covid home from his school trip, he masked up at home. No one else got symptoms. I tested twice, since I was the closest contact to him. (We spent time in the same open-floorplan living room). I was negative. It helps that the weather isn’t terrible right now, so we could keep windows open.
If you’re working two jobs, there’s no way you can realistically be a week ahead in your work so that you’re “better prepared” in case you get Covid and need to stay home. If it were me, I’d probably ask my boss “so what’s the plan if I get Covid and can’t come in? 'Cause it’s going around the office and I’m not sure who will do X, Y, and Z if I’m not here.” I don’t know if that’s a realistic option for you, though. I know that in some places, that wouldn’t go over well with a given boss and/or workplace culture.
How much were you in contact with the people who are sick? Do you spend a lot of time in communal spaces where they also spent lots of time? If you weren’t a close contact and don’t really share space with them, I don’t think you need to test unless you get symptoms.
If I thought I was exposed (as in, spent a chunk of time with a (+) person or spent a lot of time in an area they also frequented) or if I had symptoms, I’d test and isolate if I was positive. From my POV, it’s on management to make sure there’s enough redundancy on staff that things don’t grind to a halt if one person is out sick. It’s on me to make sure I’m making healthy choices for me and those around me.
YMMV! Good luck, and I hope you stay healthy so it’s a non-issue.
I would think their policy and lack of adequate backup personnel relieves you of any moral responsibility to the workload. I’d prioritize my moral responsibility to my co-workers not to infect them. It will likely be a mess after you leave regardless, so I’m not sure you being there while infectious for 5 days really makes a positive workplace difference in the overall long term scheme of things, but it could have a personal negative impact on others (as well as you could infect multiple people causing them being out, so a net negative to the workload). If they blame you for being out, I don’t think that’s really a moral failure but perhaps an unjust hit to your self esteem?
In any case, there is Plan B of diligent high-quality masking.
Thank you. That really covers all the bases I should be thinking about. Although not a problem yet, I want to be prepared if this does turn into a real problem, and sometimes I’m stuck in the middle of my own bitterness and stress so badly that I lose sight of what to do.
Yeah, I totally get that. That’s why DH and I try to make decisions about “what will we do if…?” before the stressful thing actually happens. Hard to be fully rational in the middle of… (a hurricane evacuation, catching Covid while traveling, etc.).
Have you read anything about 3rd booster eligibility? We got our 2nd in April and would like an Omicron-specific booster at some point to top up our immunity.
Just throwing my survey results in here — if it doesn’t resonate with you, just skip it.
The best advice I ever got re tough decisions is to fall back on your most important values as your guiding star. Sometimes we wish there were a decision that met all of our values but there just isn’t — in that case you have to put your values in a hierarchy and make a decision that meets as many of the top one(s) as possible.
That’s the best advice I’ve gotten of how to live peacefully with any decision I’ve made where none of the choices feels great. Because then even when I experience the downsides of that choice (say either choice will make someone unhappy with you so you make a choice then have to deal with that person’s unhappiness) — I still feel good about myself and how I’m living, and feel like I can explain my decision-making to my kids and am modeling for them what I want to model for them.
(Credit to my therapist for this advice, I use it pretty frequently!)
I just heard an interview, I think it was…forget with whom…maybe Fauci…maybe someone else…it was about a week or so ago. (That’s all helpful, isn’t it?)
Anyhow, it was mentioned how with BA 5, they are finding a lot of the at-home tests are NOT detecting it, and so people continue to test negative, even when they are definitely positive. The point was that trusting an at-home test with this variant isn’t actually a good idea, because a test at any point during being infected might end up still showing up as negative.
Sorry I can’t point to the specifics more…although, wondering if anyone has heard this as well?
A big part of my life really boils down to this. What a great reminder, and I’ll be the first to admit how often I fall short and don’t quite give them the example of the father they deserve and need.
That being said, my daughters are the most stubborn and strong willed people I know, so they will do what they will do no matter what I model, but hopefully something good has rubbed off along the way.
That is a terrible work situation and I hope you’re out of there like, yesterday.
We stopped testing for close contacts ages ago. They’re expensive and it felt as someone in the family was notified a close contact about every other day, and we figured those were just the ones we knew about. We did make sure everyone stayed masked at school or office after a close contact notice though. We never actually stopped masking in stores…
Those of us in the US with health insurance are really lucky that tests (PCRs and at-gone rapid tests) are still required to be covered by insurers, so at least cost isn’t even a factor for us in testing. Wish it were the same for everyone.
I really haven’t heard this in the chatter from my usual sources, but I also haven’t been diving as deep in the last couple of weeks due to vacay. I’ll try to dig a bit deeper and see if I can find what you might have picked up. But a quick Google shows what we’ve been saying above…at-home antigen tests have always been less sensitive, but should coincide roughly to the infectious period, so serial testing is absolutely best practice. Of course, if you suspect you are infected the prudent thing to do is err on the side of caution (use a high quality mask, avoid vulnerable people, etc). But I haven’t seen anyone in my trusted sources suggesting at-home tests aren’t still a valid tool. But they only indicate status at a specific point-in-time and shouldn’t be the only layer of protection used.
I don’t think there is anything specific out. If I were throwing out a guess, based on comments like the one below, I’d say 4 months and they’ll start with 65+ but quickly move to 50+ and other vulnerable categories. How fast they de-escalate the age will likely be based on supply/demand.
That’s really interesting. I did a quick google search and everything I see indicates that the tests are pretty reliable for symptomatic individuals once the viral load has increased enough, though some articles (like this one) did cite a possible reduction in antigen test sensitivity with some of the newer variants. None of the articles I read said that you shouldn’t trust rapid tests at all. Multiple articles emphasised the need for repeated rapid testing after a day or two to verify (or refute) negative results, so there definitely is a call to not trust a single negative test, though.
If anyone sees anything different, though, do share! The search I did was far from comprehensive.
Edited to add - Ok, I really need to check and see if @amvanhoose_701479 has already posted before I hit “reply.” Sorry again for the repeat messaging
To be clear, whatever I heard was talking about CERTAIN at home tests. Not universally. But I wish I remember where I heard it. I now recall the Fauci interview I heard was about Monkeypox, so it wasn’t Fauci.
Thanks for the clarification! And I feel your pain. I was talking to DH last night and mentioned something that I read (someone found a possible biomarker for long covid that wouldn’t show up on standard blood tests, and in fact couldn’t be tested for in many places due to the special high tech equipment required - or something along that line) and when I went to show him the article I couldn’t remember enough about it to find it. I spent a couple of hours trying to find the article and then finally gave up. It’s really frustrating when you remember just enough to know something was important or interesting, but not remember enough to actually find the info!
