I'm one of the vaccinated who ended up getting COVID. You'll find my vaccination postings earlier in this thread -- 1st Moderna shot was late December and 2nd was late January. I live in a state with a low vaccination rate, and my county has one of the lowest vaccination rates (34%). It's a county with an all volunteer fire service, and the last numbers I saw were less than 10% of the firefighters were vaccinated (at least as of last month....it's probably gone up by now). I run medical calls (although a paid service does the real work), and I'm never without my PPE (which includes my mask). But I will admit that around June I stopped wearing my mask inside the fire station and during our meetings and trainings -- in retrospect it was foolish to do, but I got tired of being the only one with a mask....totally my fault and a dumb reason to put yourself at risk, I know. I never stopped wearing it on calls or when shopping, but my wife and I did start going out to eat (maybe once a week), and we started getting lax about wearing it in a restaurant while not eating. In my neck of the woods, you rarely see a mask, even now. It is very much considered a "political statement" around here, those who wear the mask believe the left-wing propaganda and liberal media.
In early July I caught some kind of vicious summer cold -- runny nose, sinus headache, lots of drainage, then after thinking it was gone (about a week after the symptoms), I caught it again (or it never left), by July 20th I felt like I had gotten over it and was "catching it" again. I woke up in the middle of the night sweating, nauseous, and the room spinning. After vomiting, I felt better, but I noticed that I couldn't smell anything....nothing. All the other aforementioned symptoms resolved in about 4 hours, but the anosmia remained. I tried smelling bleach, vinegar, fresh cut herbs....it was like a weird parlor game with my wife thrusting something overly fragrant items in my face and saying, "can you smell this?". Had I not experienced that symptom, I really wouldn't have gotten tested....if I did have a fever it broke fast, I wasn't having respiratory symptoms, but COVID seemed to be the logical culprit of my anosmia. I got tested and was positive. Aside from one REALLY unpleasant night, and loss of smell, I'm feeling fortunate that this is a mild case. I'm starting to get some sense of smell back -- it left quickly, but it returns slowly....or so I'm told. I may have gotten a mild case prior to the vaccination, but I'm giving most of the credit to the vaccine.
I'm back in the field, and given the low vaccination rates, we've seen a dramatic increase in our hospitalizations. It's anecdotal, but I know 2 people on respirators -- one was vaccinated (same time as me, one of the few firefighters, albeit retired) and 1 who did not take the vaccine. If there is a booster, I will take it.
