I wonder if the cloth mask was an issue. They keep saying that cloth masks do not help much at all, and that N95 surgical masks are what we need to wear. The blue rectangular masks are also pretty good, and much better than 2 or 3 layer cloth masks, apparently. I went through a 4 day convention of 1000 Malayalees in Phoenix about 10 days ago (which included singing and acting on stage, small room practices, and packed banquet hall and all that) and survived... Right now I am at an academic conference of 6000 people at the Washington DC convention center. I am again using the N95 surgical mask very carefully. I will update next week if I survive this also. Have had a lot of talking in the hallways and all that, so I am not sure if I will. Going home today, and intending to isolate for the net 4-5 days. Will test and let you all know.Dinesh wrote: ↑Thu Jan 13, 2022 7:25 am despite having worn 2 masks all the time (clothed ones), and not eating out in restaurants or anywhere else, I caught it. Could it be that what I had was a common seasonal sickness and wasn’t covid at all? I’m curious to get an antibody test as soon as I’m back in the US.
But, as said above, no need to wonder if you had Covid. The RATs are as good as RT-PCR on a positive result. So it is some 95% sure that you had Covid. Need to wonder about it only on getting a negative RAT result. Could be up to 30 or 40% chance that you might have Covid even on a negative test... But I am hearing informally that the Abbott labs' home nasal swab RAT tests are actually better than that, and that the negative tests are also probably 80% or so correct. If you keep taking a test each day for 2 or 3 days, it apparently turns positive at some point anyway, even if "low-level infection" may go undetected at first with a false negative. That is the layman's understanding of it.