Most people already have. By mid-2022, roughly 96% of the U.S. population had detectable antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 from infection, vaccination, or both. About 70% of people had been infected at least once, and that number has only grown since. So while “everyone” is too absolute, the realistic answer is that the vast majority of people will catch COVID at some point, most of them more than once.
A small number of people appear to have avoided infection entirely, even after years of exposure. Whether that lasts a lifetime is a different question, and the answer depends on how the virus continues to evolve, how immunity holds up over time, and whether some people carry a genuine biological edge.
Where Population Immunity Stands
CDC blood donor surveillance found that by the third quarter of 2022, 96.4% of sampled individuals had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Of those, 22.6% had antibodies from infection alone, 26.1% from vaccination alone, and 47.7% had “hybrid immunity,” meaning they’d been both vaccinated and infected. That was before the waves of XBB, JN.1, and later Omicron descendants that swept through 2023 and 2024, each infecting millions more.
These numbers mean the pool of people who have never encountered the virus, either through infection or vaccination, is vanishingly small. But antibodies from a past infection don’t prevent future ones. SARS-CoV-2 reinfections are common, and immunity from any single exposure fades within months. The question isn’t really whether you’ll encounter the virus. It’s how many times, and how your body handles each round.
Why Some People Haven’t Caught It
There are genuinely people who have lived with infected household members, ridden public transit through every wave, and never tested positive or felt sick. Researchers at Boston University and other institutions have been studying these “never-COVID” individuals to understand why. The explanations fall into a few categories.
Behavior accounts for a significant share. Many people who report never having had COVID are still masking in crowded indoor spaces, avoiding high-risk settings, or simply have lifestyles with less exposure. That’s not immunity; it’s reduced opportunity for infection.
Biology plays a role too. One well-studied genetic factor is a specific immune system gene variant called HLA-B*15:01. People who carry it appear to mount a faster, more targeted immune response to the virus thanks to preexisting immune cells that cross-react with SARS-CoV-2. In studies of people with European ancestry, carriers of this variant were more likely to have asymptomatic infections, meaning they may have been infected without ever knowing it. About 10% of people of European descent carry this variant, though prevalence differs across ethnic groups.
Then there’s the simplest explanation: many “never-COVID” individuals probably did get infected and had no idea. Studies of pediatric populations found that roughly 60% of SARS-CoV-2 infections produced no symptoms at all. In adults, asymptomatic rates are lower but still substantial, especially in younger, healthier people. If you never tested during a brief window of viral shedding and never felt sick, the infection would leave no trace in your memory, only in your blood.
Why Reinfection Keeps Happening
SARS-CoV-2 evolves fast. Each new wave is driven by variants that have accumulated mutations allowing them to partially dodge antibodies generated by earlier infections or vaccines. This process, called immune evasion, is why someone who caught the original strain in 2020, the Delta variant in 2021, and an Omicron subvariant in 2022 can still get infected again in 2024 or 2025.
The virus doesn’t need to completely escape your immune system. It just needs to change enough that your existing antibodies bind less tightly, giving the virus a window to establish infection before your immune system ramps up a new response. This is similar to how influenza works, which is why people get the flu repeatedly over a lifetime. Each infection tends to be milder than it would have been without prior immunity, but it still happens.
Traditional herd immunity, where enough people are immune that the virus can’t find new hosts, doesn’t apply in a meaningful way here. The WHO has noted that the threshold for COVID herd immunity remains unknown, and the concept assumes stable immunity. With antibody levels waning and new variants emerging every few months, population-level protection never reaches a point where transmission stops.
What “Endemic” Actually Means for You
COVID has settled into a pattern that epidemiologists describe as endemic. That doesn’t mean mild or harmless. It means the virus circulates continuously rather than arriving in dramatic, unpredictable surges. Seasonal waves still occur, typically in winter and sometimes in summer, but they’re less disruptive than the early pandemic peaks.
In practical terms, endemic COVID means periodic reinfection is the norm for most people. Mathematical models of transmission dynamics confirm that when the virus’s reproduction number stays above 1 (meaning each infected person spreads it to more than one other person on average), the virus persists indefinitely in the community. SARS-CoV-2 has maintained that threshold consistently since 2020.
For an individual, this translates to catching COVID roughly every one to three years depending on your exposure level, immune history, and vaccination status. Each reinfection is typically shorter and less severe than the first, assuming your immune system is healthy, because your body retains memory cells that can mount a faster defense even when antibodies have waned. But “milder” is relative, and some people experience significant illness with reinfections, particularly older adults and those with chronic conditions.
The Realistic Outlook
If you haven’t had COVID yet, the odds are that you either had an asymptomatic infection you never detected or you’ve been unusually effective at avoiding exposure. A small fraction of people may carry genetic traits that make them resistant to symptomatic infection, but even those individuals aren’t necessarily immune to the virus itself. They may simply clear it before it causes noticeable illness.
Over a lifetime of continued viral circulation, the probability of never encountering SARS-CoV-2 approaches zero for anyone living a normal social life. The more precise version of the question isn’t whether you’ll get it, but how often and how sick you’ll get each time. Staying current on updated vaccines reduces both the severity of illness and, to a lesser degree, the likelihood of infection in the months following a dose. Beyond that, the same factors that matter for any respiratory virus apply: overall health, sleep, air quality, and avoiding prolonged close contact with sick people in poorly ventilated spaces.