4 ms·

I want to share an anecdote that I've told countless times in person. My 1 year old daughter came down with a bizarre rash on New Years Eve in 2019. We took he

I want to share an anecdote that I've told countless times in person. My 1 year old daughter came down with a bizarre rash on New Years Eve in 2019. We took her to a pediatric urgent care where they diagnosed her with a viral rash (not uncommon, anyone with kids is probably familiar). Some Tylenol did the trick and she was fine. Two days later we followed up with her doctor, who did a full exam and did not identify anything in particular. The next day, she was acting lethargic and had a slight fever. Nothing we hadn't dealt with before. That night though, things took a turn for the worst. She began vomiting heavily and had a febrile seizure which prompted us to call 911 and they transported her to the ER. There, her temperature was 103 and they immediately administered medication. A chest x-ray showed she had developed pneumonia in one of her lungs. The next day when we were finally discharged from the hospital, I realized I too had developed a terrible fever which soon turned into a cough. My daughter had rapidly improved after treatment for the pneumonia, while I was suffering from a terrible cough. Laying in bed, I became delusional with a high fever, sweating through everything I wore, and went to the ER twice over the span of 4 days with shortness of breath. My sense of smell and taste was gone. I had a residual cough for about 2 weeks after. You're probably thinking, wow, you and your daughter had COVID-19 in January of 2020. And you'd most likely be wrong. We both had RSV, confirmed through rapid testing. I was tested later in 2020 for the COVID-19 antibodies, and nothing popped up. Take that into account when people say they had COVID in early 2020.

nostrademons 5y ago
I was thinking "Strep...no, probably RSV, strep doesn't cause pneumonia or infect 1-year-olds" when I read your post. People don't really understand exponential growth or probabilities. If you were sick with a respiratory virus in Jan 2020, it was almost certainly cold, flu, or RSV. If you were sick with a respiratory virus in Jan 2021, it was almost certainly either a cold or COVID. COVID was doubling roughly every 5 days from a zoonosis in late October 2019, so by Jan 2020 we'd expect about 2^12 = 4096 cases worldwide = 1 in a million odds. But it spreads more readily than flu and RSV, so the countermeasures we put in place to stop COVID basically completed halted flu/RSV transmission over 2020.
- jjeaff 5y ago
  I can't find any mention of RSV causing loss of smell or taste. In fact, it seems that a lot of information out there indicates that loss of taste or smell is sort of a hallmark of vivid as it is not something that happens with other viruses. Is loss of taste or smell actually rather common?
  - nradov 5y ago
    Loss of smell (anosmia) is a symptom of many other viruses. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17277621/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17277621/
- bradydjohnson 5y ago
  Erm, your first thought is way off. Streptococcus pneumoniae is actually the #1 cause of pneumonia. Streptococcus agalactiae also commonly causes pneumonia in infants.
- criticaltinker 5y ago
  > COVID was doubling roughly every 5 days Can you provide any citation or reference on this claim? 5 days sounds about right to me, but I'm not yet aware of any literature supporting that number so I would be grateful to learn more.
criticaltinker 5y ago
> you're probably thinking, wow, you and your daughter had COVID-19 in January of 2020. And you'd most likely be wrong. I agree with your general point regarding the statistical improbability. However it's important to be aware that multiple recent studies have documented serological evidence suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating in the United States earlier than previously recognized - as early as 13–16 December 2019 [1][2]. For reference that is over a month before the first officially confirmed case in Washington state (15-19 January 2020) [3]. Furthermore, reports have identified a hospitalized patient with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in Wuhan with symptom onset as early as 1 December 2019 [1]. So when people say they had COVID in early 2020, consider that it may not be as unlikely as we originally thought. Hindsight and future research may reveal a need to further adjust the timeline. > These findings indicate that SARS-CoV-2–reactive antibodies were detected in 106 specimens, a small percentage of blood donations from California, Oregon, and Washington, as early as 13–16 December 2019. The presence of these serum antibodies indicate that isolated SARS-CoV-2 infections may have occurred in the western portion of the United States earlier than previously recognized [1] [1] Serologic Testing of US Blood Donations to Identify Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)–Reactive Antibodies: December 2019–January 2020 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1004/6012472 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1004/6012472 [2] Identification of the first COVID-19 infections in the US using a retrospective analysis https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-707353/v1/baa84b87-430c-43af-ac8d-7bff5152207a.pdf https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-707353/v1/baa84b8... [3] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0121-novel-coronavirus-travel-case.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0121-novel-coronavi...
- kuhewa 5y ago
  Even if so, considering the length of incubation and allowing for a decent Ro, there were very very few cases of COVID-19 in the US in Dec-early Jan. If someone claims they had it at the time based on respiratory virus symptoms, the overwhelming odds are still on they having been one of the hundreds of thousands of symptomatic flu or similar cases, not one of the handful of COVID cases.
m0zg 5y ago
The probability of your child developing pneumonia even if it was COVID is astronomically low. Kids almost never get severe disease from this. We're talking "struck by a lightning" kind of probability. They are, however, capable of spreading the disease to someone whose probability of severe disease is much higher, like with any other disease. Countries which did not close schools for in-person learning (e.g. Russia) have found this out the hard way.

nostrademons 5y ago

I was thinking "Strep...no, probably RSV, strep doesn't cause pneumonia or infect 1-year-olds" when I read your post. People don't really understand exponential growth or probabilities. If you were sick with a respiratory virus in Jan 2020, it was almost certainly cold, flu, or RSV. If you were sick with a respiratory virus in Jan 2021, it was almost certainly either a cold or COVID. COVID was doubling roughly every 5 days from a zoonosis in late October 2019, so by Jan 2020 we'd expect about 2^12 = 4096 cases worldwide = 1 in a million odds. But it spreads more readily than flu and RSV, so the countermeasures we put in place to stop COVID basically completed halted flu/RSV transmission over 2020.

jjeaff 5y ago
I can't find any mention of RSV causing loss of smell or taste. In fact, it seems that a lot of information out there indicates that loss of taste or smell is sort of a hallmark of vivid as it is not something that happens with other viruses. Is loss of taste or smell actually rather common?
- nradov 5y ago
  Loss of smell (anosmia) is a symptom of many other viruses. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17277621/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17277621/
bradydjohnson 5y ago
Erm, your first thought is way off. Streptococcus pneumoniae is actually the #1 cause of pneumonia. Streptococcus agalactiae also commonly causes pneumonia in infants.
criticaltinker 5y ago
> COVID was doubling roughly every 5 days Can you provide any citation or reference on this claim? 5 days sounds about right to me, but I'm not yet aware of any literature supporting that number so I would be grateful to learn more.

criticaltinker 5y ago

> you're probably thinking, wow, you and your daughter had COVID-19 in January of 2020. And you'd most likely be wrong. I agree with your general point regarding the statistical improbability. However it's important to be aware that multiple recent studies have documented serological evidence suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating in the United States earlier than previously recognized - as early as 13–16 December 2019 [1][2]. For reference that is over a month before the first officially confirmed case in Washington state (15-19 January 2020) [3]. Furthermore, reports have identified a hospitalized patient with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in Wuhan with symptom onset as early as 1 December 2019 [1]. So when people say they had COVID in early 2020, consider that it may not be as unlikely as we originally thought. Hindsight and future research may reveal a need to further adjust the timeline. > These findings indicate that SARS-CoV-2–reactive antibodies were detected in 106 specimens, a small percentage of blood donations from California, Oregon, and Washington, as early as 13–16 December 2019. The presence of these serum antibodies indicate that isolated SARS-CoV-2 infections may have occurred in the western portion of the United States earlier than previously recognized [1] [1] Serologic Testing of US Blood Donations to Identify Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)–Reactive Antibodies: December 2019–January 2020 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1004/6012472 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1004/6012472 [2] Identification of the first COVID-19 infections in the US using a retrospective analysis https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-707353/v1/baa84b87-430c-43af-ac8d-7bff5152207a.pdf https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-707353/v1/baa84b8... [3] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0121-novel-coronavirus-travel-case.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0121-novel-coronavi...

kuhewa 5y ago
Even if so, considering the length of incubation and allowing for a decent Ro, there were very very few cases of COVID-19 in the US in Dec-early Jan. If someone claims they had it at the time based on respiratory virus symptoms, the overwhelming odds are still on they having been one of the hundreds of thousands of symptomatic flu or similar cases, not one of the handful of COVID cases.

m0zg 5y ago

The probability of your child developing pneumonia even if it was COVID is astronomically low. Kids almost never get severe disease from this. We're talking "struck by a lightning" kind of probability. They are, however, capable of spreading the disease to someone whose probability of severe disease is much higher, like with any other disease. Countries which did not close schools for in-person learning (e.g. Russia) have found this out the hard way.