For those of you who wish to believe that this is "just a cold", I'll tell you my story and let you make your own minds up.
I had my first vaccine in February 2021 and my second in May 2021. In August, I PCR tested positive for COVID and then 10 days later, tested negative. At the time, I had just a sore throat and achy knees, so I thought I got away with it fairly lightly.
In November, I developed a severe case of pneumonia (both lungs, upper and lower), which resulted in me being hospitalised for a week, on oxygen therapy (at one stage, they were discussing intubating me) and intravenous antibiotics. I caught a secondary pseudomona bug whilst in hospital and was treated for that with several courses of another antibiotic. Given my previous medical history and state of health, the risk of any of this happening should have been extremely low.
I have not been back to work since the end of November as I have good days and bad days and so I was referred to see a respiratory consultant privately mid-January, as I wanted to get to the bottom of why I still felt so ill. After various CT scans, lung function tests, blood tests etc, I had my follow-up consultation yesterday. Turns out that my mild case of COVID wasn't so mild and that I actually had developed COVID pneumonia back in August, and because my body was coping well with the inflammation, it didn't impact on my daily life. When I then caught a bacterial infection in November, my body went into over-drive, hence I ended up in hospital, seriously ill, for a week.
My CT scans show that the "mild" COVID infection, which turned out not to be so mild in the end, has left me with bronchiectasis (lung damage) and has triggered asthma. My respiratory consultant advised me yesterday that they are now coming across more and more patients like myself, who are generally healthy and who are now presenting in hospital with serious chest infections, as a result of damage caused by the previous "mild COVID" infection.
Given my recent experience, I would say under-estimate COVID at your peril.