Two weeks of hell for me is having to sit on the couch by myself on the other side of the house with my nose running, a headache, constant sweating and feeling lethargic without being able to interact with my family.
If you're a health-conscious person who has a sensible diet and you exercise several times per week, your struggle with Covid will definitely be less than someone who does not. I've seen that scenario play out countless times among my friends. I know a lot of people who've had Covid, and I can tell you that the people in the worst shape physically were the ones that had the worst symptoms and were possibly even hospitalized. The ones in the best shape either had fewer or less severe symptoms, or they were able to power through the disease progression faster.
I mean it all makes sense if you think about it. Covid and other viruses put a lot of strain on the body. It's literally a physical battle that's going on within you that you can feel. If prior to getting Covid, you were subjecting yourself to regular physical stress in the form of exercise or hard manual work, then obviously your body is more prepared to deal with that physical strain better than somebody who has been sedentary most of his life.
Contrary to popular belief, I don't believe that there is a single right answer for everybody, so it's not a simplistic vaxxed or non-vaxxed argument in my mind.
If you've been a sedentary person for the past decade and you're over the age of 35, then you should get the vaccine as a way to prepare your system against the disease. For that type of person, it's the better strategy to keep yourself protected chemically because you've never cared much about health anyway if you've been sitting on your ass for so long. I rented a house at the beach for the month of May and I took daily beach walks. It was a very busy month at the beach so it was packed with people pretty much every day. Based upon all the bodies that I saw on that beach, the vast majority of the population fits into the category I just described.
On the flip side, if you're an active person who doesn't smoke, has a healthy diet and a rigorous exercise program, your best course of action is probably not to get the vaccine. I think that powering through the disease and coming out of it on the other side is the most comprehensive natural immunity you can obtain for yourself.
And speaking of self, I am of the opinion that you and only you are in control of your own body. You need to make the best choice for yourself that you possibly can without any condescending judgment from others. As a matter of fact, it's probably best not to even tell your friends and acquaintances if you're vaccinated or not because it's none of their business and will just spark a stupid debate.
Just a few years ago, health information was considered to be the most private of all information that's collected about you. Nowadays, people want to know the status of your vaccinations like it's somehow their privileged right to know. And I have no doubt that things will escalate to the point where the dates of your booster shots will need to be shown on your vaccination card as well to prove you're up to date with your shots, and not just a "one-timer" from 2020 or 2021, but I digress.
Now is when we get into the debate about non-vaxxers getting sick, spreading the disease, and generally being "assholes" as they've been accused. One thing I've learned over the years is that people are never going to do what you want them to do all of the time. And I mean never. So if you're upset or angry about certain people not getting vaccinated and you're interpreting that as a threat to your own health because you don't want them to give Covid to you, then you better make sure you've got plenty of anti-depressants on hand because that situation is NEVER going to go away. That's like expecting for all of the uninsured drivers to get insurance one day or expecting for your health insurance premiums to drop because everyone is taking care of themselves healthwise. It's just never going to happen.
The only person you have the ability to truly manage is yourself. So instead of looking outward to what everybody else is doing or not doing and letting that affect your emotional state, turn inward and ask yourself if there are things that you can do to increase your overall health and well-being. And if there are, whether it be getting a vaccine, or cleaning up your diet, or stop smoking, or exercising, or losing some significant weight, then do it. Or do all of the above if that applies to you.
In terms of spreading the disease, I can honestly say that we really don't know shit about that topic as a society. The disease spreads and morphs in ways that we simply don't understand because it's all happening in an invisible dimension that we simply cannot see.
Ok, so what about precautions like masks?
Masks are a good idea but the term "mask" is so loosely used and implemented that it's almost become a joke. When covid first came out, I bought a few snug-fitting cloth masks and I was pretty miserable wearing them month after month. I remember walking around in a store and wondering why everyone seemed like their mask was no big deal while I was suffering minute-by-minute. So eventually the day came that I went to the grocery store and forgot my mask at home, so I asked the customer service desk if they had any extras. They had a whole stack of those baby blue disposable masks and gave one to me. As soon as I put it on, everything made sense to me in that moment. Those masks were a complete joke compared to what I had been wearing! They were flimsy and had half-inch gaps on each side, and I could actually breathe comfortably in them. It almost felt like I didn't even have a mask on at all. No wonder everybody else didn't seem like they were suffering while wearing them. They weren't!
That's when I realized that the mask thing is a complete joke because there's no standard whatsoever for how a mask should fit, what it should be made of, and if there is, it's definitely not being implemented in practical terms by the public so the standard is meaningless. In fact, if you just sit in a public place on a bench and observe people walking by, you'll see that most people have those bullshit loose-fitting paper masks on, and most of them don't even wear them properly. You'll see people with a mask on but the top of it is sitting below their nose so they can breathe normally, which is just the stupidest thing I've ever seen. So that takes us back to the original premise of my argument, which is... don't expect the people around you to do what you want them to do because it's never going to happen. It's up to you to decide how much you're going to let the actions or inactions of others bother you.
So in summary, my advice is to go into all this fully understanding that the threat of the enemy is always around, and that Covid may enter your system one day if it has not already. If it does happen to you, the blame game of who gave it to you or how you got exposed to it will fly right out of the window. So take a legit assessment of where you're at healthwise today, and implement whatever you need to in order to protect yourself knowing that you, and only you, will have to fight that battle with full force when the time comes, and the only thing that matters is how prepared you are to fight.
