Has anybody with ME not contracted Covid-19 even when a household member has had it (or is suspected to have had it)

Andy

Andy

Retired committee member
As the thread title asks. Have you avoided catching Covid-19 even though a member of your household has had it (or is suspected to have had it)? Also if you see a story of the same situation please link it here.

We might then get a very vague (and unscientific) idea if there is anything to the idea that pwME are less susceptible to viruses.
 
Yes my mum has had suspected covid. She is in week 7 now since symptoms started and experiencing the up and down slow recovery many are reporting, although overall does seem to be improving thankfully.

I don't appear to have caught it. She spent a week isolated in her bedroom once symptoms started.

However my brother and his gf were living with us at the time and also didn't get ill. Neither of them have ME. So I'm not sure my story can lend much credence to the idea of pwme being less susceptible to viruses.
 
I expect you would benefit from knowing how old people are, bearing in mind that it appears less likely that young people catch it (and few show symptoms)?

I live alone, but think I may have caught it, with different symptoms from usual, coming and going, but I am 66 years old, have had ME for 25 years, live alone but am occasionally exposed via deliverers and a couple of shopping trips.

I lost my ability to speak or write for 1 and a half or two days, which has never happened before.
 
MeSci said:
I lost my ability to speak or write for 1 and a half or two days, which has never happened before.
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Incidentally, I have occasionally lost my ability to speak and write properly before, but it has only lasted up to 15 minutes, and was accompanied by weird visual effects (as I think it was temporarily this time). I presumed it to be scintillating scotoma. I don't think that a longer spell has occurred in me before.
 
the only reason I can think of for not catching any viruses or bacterial infection is the fact that many of us are mainly housebound with a lack of any outside contact . I live with my elderly mother who has not been outside since lockdown was introduced . thanks to the overwhelming news reports she is very anxious about covid in part because of my self and partly because of her own health problems which caused a major panic attack about three weeks ago I had to get her to sit down and calm herself this was after a routine phone call to the doctors whom assumed her heavy breathing was due to covid rather than moving quickly to answer the phone .a testament to how medical flavour of the month trends are harmful .buzzwords seem to stop people from thinking and following proper procedures.
 
I'm not exposed to many people and I get viral infections all the time. I don't catch colds, and not sure if I get the flu because symptoms are all over the place any time of the year.

It's even possible that I caught CoVid because a friend I go shopping with has many friends that travelled to China earlier this year. He felt very ill for 3 days in February during the Lunar New Year.
 
MeSci said:
Incidentally, I have occasionally lost my ability to speak and write properly before, but it has only lasted up to 15 minutes, and was accompanied by weird visual effects (as I think it was temporarily this time). I presumed it to be scintillating scotoma. I don't think that a longer spell has occurred in me before.
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This sounds like the symptoms my husband gets when he has (what he calls) a migraine. He doesn't have ME, and his migraines are both rare and are almost or completely pain-free. They last a few hours. Any pain he does get tends to happen when his vision, speech and writing have returned to normal.
 
Arnie Pye said:
This sounds like the symptoms my husband gets when he has (what he calls) a migraine. He doesn't have ME, and his migraines are both rare and are almost or completely pain-free. They last a few hours. Any pain he does get tends to happen when his vision, speech and writing have returned to normal.
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Yes, I have had migraine or mild headache with it sometimes, including recently.

The other symptoms I have had were:

Apparently high pulse (usually quite-well controlled with beta-blocker)
No appetite
Stronger-than-usual sense of smell (possibly coincidental due to change of pollen status)
More tired than usual - having to lie down during day
 
Andy said:
We might then get a very vague (and unscientific) idea if there is anything to the idea that pwME are less susceptible to viruses.
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Don’t think there is anything to this claim—seems to be mostly speculation from some researchers. My CFS physician has seen at least 14 testing-confirmed Covid cases among their patients. And most/all cases were contracted via a household member
 
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Andy said:
We might then get a very vague (and unscientific) idea if there is anything to the idea that pwME are less susceptible to viruses.
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From my understanding with ME is that for several years the immune system is hyper-activated and you don’t get colds and flus. Until it crashes and then you are susceptible to said cold and flus.

i got a really bad flu last year,crhe second time i got such flu in my life. Fevers and rigors for 5 days non-stop. Pain to my lungs, it was so bad i thought i would have to go to the hospital because i had trouble breathing. But i pulled through. Incidentally i remember how i got it, it was a toddler let loose at the grocery store. She look so sick.

I also believe we have less exposure as PWME.
 
Milo said:
From my understanding with ME is that for several years the immune system is hyper-activated and you don’t get colds and flus. Until it crashes and then you are susceptible to said cold and flus.
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I think this idea is based largely on a single study (Hornig I think), where the average level of cytokines weren't different from normal. But if they separated out the people less than 3 years from onset from the rest, they got some statistically significant differences from controls. They thought the <3 year cytokine profile was more inflammatory than average and the rest were less inflammatory.

I don't remember the differences being massive. And the finding has not been replicated. So I think this idea of an over-activated immune system that burns itself out over a number of years is possibly possible, but far from certain.
 
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And other researchers/doctors (? sorry, memory lapse) say our immune system is dysregulated, with parts of it overactive and other parts underactive.

I also wonder if the type of virus makes a difference? That as a group - or as individuals - we are more resistant to some viruses and less to others?

For myself I can't comment on the current corona virus because, as far as I know, the nearest case to me was an hour's drive away and I don't think anybody can cough or sneeze quite that far.

However, as far as ordinary colds go, I don't get them very often. Even during the periods I was almost fully fit I never caught them from casual contacts when out and about. I probably picked up 1 out of 3 that my husband dragged home so it took some heavy and persistent exposure for me to get infected. Haven't had any colds at all since my ME turned severe but that could just be because my husband has become a lot more careful about not infecting me with anything.

There've only been 2 occasions in my life I had a bad virus (presumed virus, not actually tested). After the first I came down with ME. After the second, decades later, my ME, very mild at the time, took a big turn for the worse.

So while I don't catch viruses very often, when I do catch one it's bad news.

And then there are the much much much too frequent herpes virus reactivations (cold sores). Clearly my immune system can't deal with those at all.

Overall it looks to me as though our immune system is messed up but whether that translates into better or worse resistance to this virus or that in an individual probably depends on a whole lot of other individual factors. Complicamated :confused:
 
MeSci said:
Yes, I have had migraine or mild headache with it sometimes, including recently.

The other symptoms I have had were:

Apparently high pulse (usually quite-well controlled with beta-blocker)
No appetite
Stronger-than-usual sense of smell (possibly coincidental due to change of pollen status)
More tired than usual - having to lie down during day
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Just want to add a link about symptoms, including sense of smell: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-52638382

(only 65% of people reported loss of smell)​
 
Just a reminder of what I created this thread to capture.
Andy said:
Have you avoided catching Covid-19 even though a member of your household has had it (or is suspected to have had it)? Also if you see a story of the same situation please link it here.
Click to expand...
 
Andy said:
Have you avoided catching Covid-19 even though a member of your household has had it (or is suspected to have had it)? Also if you see a story of the same situation please link it here.
Click to expand...

In order to know this for sure, the ME/CFS patient would have to have been tested for the virus (which seems like something that would likely have been done if someone else in the house had Covid-19). I'm just saying that since you can apparently be infected and asymptomatic (especially if you are young), you can't assume that you weren't infected just because you don't have symptoms.
 
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