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These ‘invincibles’ have never had COVID — and they want to know why
As COVID cases explode across the US with even fully vaccinated people reporting breakthrough cases, it seems as if almost no one has been left untouched by the Sars-Cov-2 virus. But there are some who have failed to contract COVID during the entire pandemic, even as Omicron spreads like wildfire.
Health
“Every time I do something I’m like, ‘This is it, I am going to get COVID,’” said Rachel McMullin, a 36-year-old swing dance instructor and performer who lives in Crown Heights.
She’s had a lot of close calls. Two weeks before Christmas, when the highly contagious Omicron variant took out entire holiday parties in New York City, she went to a jazz jam in the East Village, performed at a gathering with a few hundred circulating guests, and attended a drag show in an unventilated basement, all unmasked.
Recently she shared a joint with a friend who tested positive for the virus days later. She practiced dancing with another who got positive results hours after their rehearsal.
“I freaked out after the first couple of exposures, but now I’m just like, ‘Maybe I am one of those people who can’t get it?’” said McMullin, who said she is fully vaccinated as are all her friends. “If none of this made COVID happen, I don’t know what will.”
As COVID cases explode across the US with 62.8 million total reported since 2020, and almost eight million since Jan. 1, 2022 — and even fully vaccinated people reporting breakthrough cases — it seems as if almost no one has been left untouched by the Sars-Cov-2 virus. But like McMullin, there are some who have failed to contract COVID during the entire pandemic, even as Omicron spreads like wildfire.
Call them the “COVID Invincibles” — and they want to know why they’re immune. Could it be dumb luck? Genetics? Perhaps they’re superheroes designed to further the human race? Memes circulating on social media equate dodging COVID to beating advanced rounds of Super Mario Bros or being a hero in “The Matrix.” One shows Carrie Bradshaw from “Sex and the City” asking, “Am I avoiding COVID or is COVID avoiding me?” Gary Janetti, the television writer and producer, received almost 60,000 likes for his Jan. 5 post on Instagram that said, “Now I feel like there’s something wrong that I HAVEN’T gotten Covid.”
Magdalena Tyrpien, 33, a biotech executive in Manhattan who has been vaccinated twice, said: “I shared a Pedialyte with someone who was coughing up a lung and didn’t get it. I feel like the karate queen.”
Scientists don’t have the answers yet, but they are hoping to study both vaccinated and unvaccinated people who have yet to get COVID. “A global group of researchers are looking for people who have been exposed to the virus but do not get infected,” said Pia MacDonald, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the nonprofit research institute RTI International. “The study is going to compare the DNA of the people who get infected with the DNA of people who get exposed but not infected to see if there are genetic variants that mean you can’t get infected.”