Wow - it sounds like you’ve had a lifetime of COVID. I’m sorry you got it and were so sick. I had a sister who had it and was hospitalized twice for it. She is immunocompromised, so it hit her really hard and we thought we were going to lose her a couple of times. She still has pretty severe after-effects and is considered a “long hauler”.
I can’t answer your question about the Omicron variant in my state. They stopped keeping (or at least publishing) daily results, percent positive, etc. Our governor had laws passed (Republican legislature) to prevent mask or vaccine mandates,, etc. They refused to allow schools to close and those that did are now looking at losing Federal funding because they “broke the law”.
Everything, here, in Florida is different from other parts of the country. I read an article yesterday that said Florida is “fertile ground” for the extremes.
If you haven’t read anything about Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, you should read everything you can about him - not just right wing stuff, some of which praises him, but not all. He’s taken Trumpism to an entirely new level. He’s running for another term for governor, but I’m hoping enough people will be reading about the extreme steps he’s taking to control the state. Of course, he calls it “freedom” but some of his programs remove many freedoms. I thought Trump was a “wanna be authoritarian”, but I think DeSantis has him beat. Of course, he’s got aspirations of running for President in 2024. Although he’s more “Trumpier” than Trump, there seems to be some animosity developing between the 2 of them.
I have had covid officially at least once. The worst part was the anxiety. I had it before vaccines and was sick for almost two weeks with fever and all the rest (not a bad cough though). Completely lost my sense of taste and smell. But what got me the most was worrying about the issues that at that time they talked about. That your lungs could expel fluid out of nowhere and suddenly and cause you to sort of 'drown' in your own liquid quickly depleting oxygen from your blood. Good lord, I had (still have) one of those oxygen devices for the finger that I used over and over. Those things seem to be semi rare. I felt terrible but it wasn't serious. I learned from my doctor at that time that covid works like this . . . you have symptoms for about 5 to 10 days. AT that point, the virus is either going to die down or THAT is when the serious signs begin to show. So, you watch very closely and track things between day 5 and 10. I had to keep a notebook. I survived. May have had it again like so many in early January. Had one son that had cold symptoms and I was off for a few days. That son was contact traced after that (right after he went back to school after winter break). That's what is hard about this. I'd love for people to get antibody tests to see if they really had it because as more mild variants surface, it is so easy to confuse with many different things. The home tests appear not all that helpful. My experience was pretty straight forward a year ago but it seems so blurry now.
On the plus side, Omricon raged in and right back out. We had two and a half of crazy weeks with something like 200 kids out of the high school building. Then it fell sharply with 1 student testing positive last week only. Is that the case for your area too, Barb?