7 ms·

I had pretty bad Corona-like symptoms in late January/Feb in London. There was documented community transmission at that point, but it was very early (single di

I had pretty bad Corona-like symptoms in late January/Feb in London. There was documented community transmission at that point, but it was very early (single digits) so it's technically possible but not mathematically likely that I had it. The more I've mentioned this to people, the more I've heard people bring up their own stories and theories that they all had super bad flus this year unlike any other year and are all convinced they already had COVID. So everyone has convinced themselves that they already got it, no matter what city they were in at the time and whether they got sick in November or February. This is hard to grapple with because I'm sure that any give year, a lot of people randomly get a bad flu like they've never had before with unique symptoms. And if you happen to be that person this year, then of course you would think you had this new disease that matches the symptoms. But given the lack of secondary community effects at the same time (other hospitalizations in your area), it's more likely that most of us are wrong and it's just a co-incidence. But if you are the person suffering the coincidence, it appears the same as if you are the person who actually got infected. So who knows? I guess until antibody tests are widely available, none of us will know for sure.

roenxi 7y ago
The basic theory is most people have a bad flu every year then forget about it. As far as I recall I've had the flu exactly twice in my life. Once this year, once last year.
cataflam 7y ago
I don't have a source handy, I think it was Prof. Drosten, but I've read that in Germany, there were many such anecdotal stories as well. The blood serum of these people got tested, and there was no indication that any of them had already had covid-19. Of course, that's Germany, not London or the US, but at least there, the evidence currently points to a bad flu or something else for all these people from November to February.
pmiller2 7y ago
> ...sick in November.... An acquaintance of mine was actually sick in November with COVID-like symptoms. They had a dry cough that was so nasty, doctors tested them for whooping cough (pertussis) and it was negative. And, it actually was not too long after their office got a visit from some overseas partners from China. IIRC, they even said one of the Chinese visitors had a bit of a cough at the time. I think this is pretty strong circumstantial evidence that they may have had the virus. At the very least, it's enough evidence that this person should definitely get an antibody test as soon as practical. Edit: I initially forgot to include that the pertussis test was negative, although that was certainly implied.
- seamyb88 7y ago
  Holy frickin crap I had what I thought was definitely whooping cough in November. Tested negative and thought well there is definitely going to be a new disease surfacing. Skip ahead and covid 19 happens. I thought, this is definitely what I had. However, the faux whooping cough lasted months and the cough was very characteristic, cough so hard you struggle to breathe back in. It doesn't chime perfectly with covid-19, I've yet to hear of a cough lasting more than 2 weeks. But what was this mysterious "whooping cough"
easytiger 7y ago
Same here. London also. The reason I believe it was it was that everyone in a group event over 3 days had some kind of in parameter illness subsequently. Usually in office style flus only a subset of people get it.
maxerickson 7y ago
I had a couple of pretty gnarly colds this last year, and so did lots of people. They have been going around. I also have noticed my sense of smell come and go with lots of infections.
abnry 7y ago
This sort of thing reminds me of a story about the Seattle windshielding pitting phenomenon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epidemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epi... The point is, often things that are quite common but otherwise unnoticed all of a sudden appear to be an outbreak due to some sort of new found public consciousness. Everybody is analyzing their latest cough and fever so you are going to get a lot more stories of people with coronavirus symptoms even if people getting those sorts of symptoms is quite common (relatively speaking). It's just reporting of those symptoms has increased. With respect to COVID-19, the real sign of its unusualness is the increase in hospital admissions for respiratory issues.
- omgwtfbyobbq 7y ago
  There were an increase in outbreaks, flu related deaths, and I believe hospitalizations around the end of the year in California when comparing 2018 to 2019. 2018 https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/Week2018-1952_FINALReport.pdf https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20... 2019 https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/Week2019-2052_FINALReport.pdf https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20... I could be just the flu, but it could also be the start of something else circulating with the flu. Even in that case odds are that something else was not covid-19, but it could be. The only way to tell would be to test blood collected at the time for serological evidence of covid-19.
  - abnry 7y ago
    Yes, one of the things we need to do to get past all of this is to widely test for antibodies. I am really hoping that comes soon.
- bamboozled 7y ago
  A similar thing I've noticed is people want to believe they've had it. My fiends are often often say things like: "Yeah I had a mild fever last week, I probably had it" Which to me translates to: "I hope I got off so easily and now I'm immune and can get on with my life".
radimm 7y ago
As family we had a pretty 'bad' flu in February here in Czechia. Correction, not a bad flu - but the worst ever. It matched most of the symptoms - including coming in 2 waves. Youngest child went almost with no symptoms. The one with strongest immune system suffered a lot. This was 3 weeks before first confirmed cases.
Lewton 7y ago
In the beginning phases of testing in Denmark they found that 9 out of 10 people who showed symptoms had a bad flu or a cold. The past couple of months have been peak flu season
throwanem 7y ago
The flu season just past was unusually bad, even by comparison with e.g. 2017-18, which was itself no walk in the park. It's not a safe bet for anyone to assume on that basis that they've already had the coronavirus and are now immune. Those bad flu-like symptoms were flu symptoms, and confer no immunity against SARS-CoV-2.
- DanBC 7y ago
  Yes. I remember pre-covid a lot of people in the UK were looking at Australia's flu season which was really rough -- hospitalising a lot more people than usual flu seasons -- and we were trying to get as many staff and patients immunised as possible. We were looking at tweets like this in June 2019: https://twitter.com/drdhanlon/status/1137512141970399232?s=20 https://twitter.com/drdhanlon/status/1137512141970399232?s=2... Or this: https://twitter.com/SFHTCOO/status/1151783951016628226?s=20 https://twitter.com/SFHTCOO/status/1151783951016628226?s=20
michaelg7x 7y ago
Is this not what the "Oxford study" posits, namely that many more of us have had it than we think? I believe that the transmission stats from the Diamond Princess are a strong counter argument, but by all means dig into it.
wjnc 7y ago
I'm in quite the same boat. Heavily affected area. My whole family was sick in the period around the first notified case in the country. All the typical symptoms, but no-one severe. My wife still hardly smells. ... and still. I think it's a social psychology phenomenon. If I talk to our baker, her family has the same story. Friends as well. We all might like to believe we've had it and so we lightly skew the facts to fit our perception and hope. What I know as a fact (data released today) is that mortality was not rising in my region until two weeks after 'patient zero'. In our case three weeks after the first ill kid. Occam's razor: It would be very hard to imagine wide-spread asymptomatic cases without symptomatic cases and deaths. No deaths means no spread. So we had something else.
- throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
  I've heard this a lot, but there is another possible explanation - just speculating - that covid did appear and we're in the middle of a 2nd and more dangerous wave. IIRC 1918 flu behaved a bit like this, 2nd wave was more deadly. I'd really like to know if that's plausible, if any disease experts could speculate.
  - rimliu 7y ago
    What would make it more deadly? AFAIK second wave of 1918 was a mutated virus. This one is more stable and has now significant mutations yet.
    - throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
      Good question, I don't know. Maybe the much milder strain went by so quistly there was no testing for a novel disease so we never knew. I don't know if that's plausible though.
    - MarkusQ 7y ago
      I don't know what you mean by "now significant mutations" but there are quite a number (hundreds) of known cov-19 mutant circulating. https://nextstrain.org/ncov?c=country&l=unrooted https://nextstrain.org/ncov?c=country&l=unrooted
russfink 7y ago
I was sick in September/October with a cold, then left with anosmia for a few weeks. Saw a specialist who prescribed nasal steroids. No fever though. Never had amnosmia before in my life, and an pretty healthy. Anosmia is scary.
sjg007 7y ago
The flu was bad this year in early Feb. I had what I call covid symptoms but I tested positive for the flu.
baddox 7y ago
I’ve heard many stories like this, but I’m wondering how it could have had that much transmission that long ago without there being a noticeable number of unusual pneumonia deaths in those regions.
Izkata 7y ago
Yeah, this year has been especially weird for me. I typically don't get sick with the flu or common cold - until Dec 12 last year, which I remember well because it was immediately after a convention, I'm usually not affected by con crud, and it affected me that Thursday and Saturday (but I was fine on Friday and afterwards except for a cough that's repeatedly come and gone since then). It really doesn't fit the timeline since it didn't officially hit the US until a month and a half later, so I don't think this is what I had then, but still, there are reports that this was active in China in November, so sometimes it really makes me wonder.
gentleman11 7y ago
At the moment in Alberta, they are testing about 4K people per day, and only those showing significant or serious symptoms. Even with that filter for serious symptoms, only 2% of tests are positive. Unfortunately, this probably means that most of our flus this season, that we got over, was not us building up immunity to Covid - where I live at least. I worry about people catching Covid and another flu simultaneously
thehappypm 7y ago
My mother-in-law had an absolutely BRUTAL flu in early February. It was so bad my sister-in-law had to live with her for a while and take care of her. She had really, really bad fevers and an absolutely horrible dry cough that seems to have left some lasting damage even now. It took her about 3 weeks to get better. There's no evidence that it was Covid-19. But she is a nanny for a family of doctors in Boston so it's not impossible that it's it.

roenxi 7y ago

The basic theory is most people have a bad flu every year then forget about it. As far as I recall I've had the flu exactly twice in my life. Once this year, once last year.

cataflam 7y ago

I don't have a source handy, I think it was Prof. Drosten, but I've read that in Germany, there were many such anecdotal stories as well. The blood serum of these people got tested, and there was no indication that any of them had already had covid-19. Of course, that's Germany, not London or the US, but at least there, the evidence currently points to a bad flu or something else for all these people from November to February.

pmiller2 7y ago

> ...sick in November.... An acquaintance of mine was actually sick in November with COVID-like symptoms. They had a dry cough that was so nasty, doctors tested them for whooping cough (pertussis) and it was negative. And, it actually was not too long after their office got a visit from some overseas partners from China. IIRC, they even said one of the Chinese visitors had a bit of a cough at the time. I think this is pretty strong circumstantial evidence that they may have had the virus. At the very least, it's enough evidence that this person should definitely get an antibody test as soon as practical. Edit: I initially forgot to include that the pertussis test was negative, although that was certainly implied.

seamyb88 7y ago
Holy frickin crap I had what I thought was definitely whooping cough in November. Tested negative and thought well there is definitely going to be a new disease surfacing. Skip ahead and covid 19 happens. I thought, this is definitely what I had. However, the faux whooping cough lasted months and the cough was very characteristic, cough so hard you struggle to breathe back in. It doesn't chime perfectly with covid-19, I've yet to hear of a cough lasting more than 2 weeks. But what was this mysterious "whooping cough"

easytiger 7y ago

Same here. London also. The reason I believe it was it was that everyone in a group event over 3 days had some kind of in parameter illness subsequently. Usually in office style flus only a subset of people get it.

maxerickson 7y ago

I had a couple of pretty gnarly colds this last year, and so did lots of people. They have been going around. I also have noticed my sense of smell come and go with lots of infections.

abnry 7y ago

This sort of thing reminds me of a story about the Seattle windshielding pitting phenomenon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epidemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epi... The point is, often things that are quite common but otherwise unnoticed all of a sudden appear to be an outbreak due to some sort of new found public consciousness. Everybody is analyzing their latest cough and fever so you are going to get a lot more stories of people with coronavirus symptoms even if people getting those sorts of symptoms is quite common (relatively speaking). It's just reporting of those symptoms has increased. With respect to COVID-19, the real sign of its unusualness is the increase in hospital admissions for respiratory issues.

omgwtfbyobbq 7y ago
There were an increase in outbreaks, flu related deaths, and I believe hospitalizations around the end of the year in California when comparing 2018 to 2019. 2018 https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/Week2018-1952_FINALReport.pdf https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20... 2019 https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/Week2019-2052_FINALReport.pdf https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20... I could be just the flu, but it could also be the start of something else circulating with the flu. Even in that case odds are that something else was not covid-19, but it could be. The only way to tell would be to test blood collected at the time for serological evidence of covid-19.
- abnry 7y ago
  Yes, one of the things we need to do to get past all of this is to widely test for antibodies. I am really hoping that comes soon.
bamboozled 7y ago
A similar thing I've noticed is people want to believe they've had it. My fiends are often often say things like: "Yeah I had a mild fever last week, I probably had it" Which to me translates to: "I hope I got off so easily and now I'm immune and can get on with my life".

radimm 7y ago

As family we had a pretty 'bad' flu in February here in Czechia. Correction, not a bad flu - but the worst ever. It matched most of the symptoms - including coming in 2 waves. Youngest child went almost with no symptoms. The one with strongest immune system suffered a lot. This was 3 weeks before first confirmed cases.

Lewton 7y ago

In the beginning phases of testing in Denmark they found that 9 out of 10 people who showed symptoms had a bad flu or a cold. The past couple of months have been peak flu season

throwanem 7y ago

The flu season just past was unusually bad, even by comparison with e.g. 2017-18, which was itself no walk in the park. It's not a safe bet for anyone to assume on that basis that they've already had the coronavirus and are now immune. Those bad flu-like symptoms were flu symptoms, and confer no immunity against SARS-CoV-2.

DanBC 7y ago
Yes. I remember pre-covid a lot of people in the UK were looking at Australia's flu season which was really rough -- hospitalising a lot more people than usual flu seasons -- and we were trying to get as many staff and patients immunised as possible. We were looking at tweets like this in June 2019: https://twitter.com/drdhanlon/status/1137512141970399232?s=20 https://twitter.com/drdhanlon/status/1137512141970399232?s=2... Or this: https://twitter.com/SFHTCOO/status/1151783951016628226?s=20 https://twitter.com/SFHTCOO/status/1151783951016628226?s=20

michaelg7x 7y ago

Is this not what the "Oxford study" posits, namely that many more of us have had it than we think? I believe that the transmission stats from the Diamond Princess are a strong counter argument, but by all means dig into it.

wjnc 7y ago

I'm in quite the same boat. Heavily affected area. My whole family was sick in the period around the first notified case in the country. All the typical symptoms, but no-one severe. My wife still hardly smells. ... and still. I think it's a social psychology phenomenon. If I talk to our baker, her family has the same story. Friends as well. We all might like to believe we've had it and so we lightly skew the facts to fit our perception and hope. What I know as a fact (data released today) is that mortality was not rising in my region until two weeks after 'patient zero'. In our case three weeks after the first ill kid. Occam's razor: It would be very hard to imagine wide-spread asymptomatic cases without symptomatic cases and deaths. No deaths means no spread. So we had something else.

throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
I've heard this a lot, but there is another possible explanation - just speculating - that covid did appear and we're in the middle of a 2nd and more dangerous wave. IIRC 1918 flu behaved a bit like this, 2nd wave was more deadly. I'd really like to know if that's plausible, if any disease experts could speculate.
- rimliu 7y ago
  What would make it more deadly? AFAIK second wave of 1918 was a mutated virus. This one is more stable and has now significant mutations yet.
  - throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
    Good question, I don't know. Maybe the much milder strain went by so quistly there was no testing for a novel disease so we never knew. I don't know if that's plausible though.
  - MarkusQ 7y ago
    I don't know what you mean by "now significant mutations" but there are quite a number (hundreds) of known cov-19 mutant circulating. https://nextstrain.org/ncov?c=country&l=unrooted https://nextstrain.org/ncov?c=country&l=unrooted

russfink 7y ago

I was sick in September/October with a cold, then left with anosmia for a few weeks. Saw a specialist who prescribed nasal steroids. No fever though. Never had amnosmia before in my life, and an pretty healthy. Anosmia is scary.

sjg007 7y ago

The flu was bad this year in early Feb. I had what I call covid symptoms but I tested positive for the flu.

baddox 7y ago

I’ve heard many stories like this, but I’m wondering how it could have had that much transmission that long ago without there being a noticeable number of unusual pneumonia deaths in those regions.

Izkata 7y ago

Yeah, this year has been especially weird for me. I typically don't get sick with the flu or common cold - until Dec 12 last year, which I remember well because it was immediately after a convention, I'm usually not affected by con crud, and it affected me that Thursday and Saturday (but I was fine on Friday and afterwards except for a cough that's repeatedly come and gone since then). It really doesn't fit the timeline since it didn't officially hit the US until a month and a half later, so I don't think this is what I had then, but still, there are reports that this was active in China in November, so sometimes it really makes me wonder.

gentleman11 7y ago

At the moment in Alberta, they are testing about 4K people per day, and only those showing significant or serious symptoms. Even with that filter for serious symptoms, only 2% of tests are positive. Unfortunately, this probably means that most of our flus this season, that we got over, was not us building up immunity to Covid - where I live at least. I worry about people catching Covid and another flu simultaneously

thehappypm 7y ago

My mother-in-law had an absolutely BRUTAL flu in early February. It was so bad my sister-in-law had to live with her for a while and take care of her. She had really, really bad fevers and an absolutely horrible dry cough that seems to have left some lasting damage even now. It took her about 3 weeks to get better. There's no evidence that it was Covid-19. But she is a nanny for a family of doctors in Boston so it's not impossible that it's it.