To think I’ve had COVID 19, and it’s been here a while?

[VivienScott]

After Xmas I came down with what I thought was a terrible cold. Dry persistent cough, terrible fever, worse than I’ve ever had to the point I was delirious, difficulty breathing, though not pneumonia. Saw out of hours and they check oxygen levels, chest etc, said I was ok to be home, but I was not first case they’d seen like this and there was “something really awful going round this year”. Consequently had to see GP who said he’d had to hospitalise a lot more people than normal for breathing difficulties.
It all sounds exactly like coronavirus, it really felt like something dreadful to the extent I deliberately kept myself from others more than I would with a cold. I honestly believe it was, but it’s way before it was supposed to be in Europe let alone here in UK. What do you think, AIBU to think it’s been here longer than we’re aware?

Almost everybody I know who had a cold or other virus has solemnly assured me that they had Coronavirus and the scientists are wrong.

Including DH, who spent a few days in London in mid January and came back with a cold. He is avid to buy one of the tests to prove to the naysayers (me) that he has had Covid 19.

I had no symptoms and I see my parents, who are late 80s, every week. I said to DH, if you had had it, I’d have had it too and even if I were asymptomatic I’d have given it to mum & dad and we’d definitely know about that! But no, he remains convinced. Drama queen.

I'm not saying you didn't, Olivers though I am aware (short of a lung MRI), none of the Covid symptoms individually or collectively present so differently to rhino/human corn/'flu as to enable diagnosis on symptoms in normal circumstances (at the moment all the winter bugs are being handled in primary initially as COVID).

It could be your different cough was COVID. Equally if you'd had a different cough last year, it would just have been a different symptom from whichever rhino/human corona/'flu you did have.

I am surprised at the number of people who've convinced themselves they had it in December or January when this doesn't seem to correlate with the percentage of admissions leading up to ITU nor with the (pathetically limited) testing that did occur in acute earlier in the year.

Again, I could be wrong and everyone who has convinced themselves with no evidence that they've had COVID in December or January are right. I also read (loads of complete bollocks about) people then saying the virus must have mutated into a more lethal strain to explain why their COVID in December didn't lead to admissions into ITU when the genetic research I've read does show a relatively stable COVID RNA with two strains (L and S) which don't appear to present radically differently. So at first glance, it appears to me more likely that most people didn't have COVID in December or January but what do I know.

The amount of tinfoil on this thread. You could open a bloody supermarket.

All actual SCIENTIFIC research seems to suggest it started spreading at the end of January in the uk.

Your anicdotes means nothing. It amazes me that people are convinced that the common cold and flu no longer exist and if they have a slight sniffle it must be Covid 19.

I think I had it end of January- I was hospitalised for a week. I was on a ward full of old people, whilst I’m actually young.

The death rate rises anyway every year in winter due to cold/flu/pneumonia....so if it was just the start and spread out it could have easily not been spotted.....

I've been ill with virus type symptoms since mid Feb. I couldn't get out if bed for three days but had no typical flu symptoms. I've still not regained full health.

I think YABU to think you can self-diagnose having had something that hadn't arrived in the country at the time - but what do I know? That's just time and simple physics - experts? pah!

All actual SCIENTIFIC research seems to suggest it started spreading at the end of January in the uk.

There are various competing SCIENTIFIC theories at the moment but I understand a lot of people (I guess including you) don't like to question the Imperial one. Which is ironically, the opposite of the scientific method.

Hingeandbracket - Let me share some alternative facts with you... And don't get me started on experts. I started an entire thread about Covid and so-called experts earlier this week.

Don’t know how you’re supposed to believe all the experts when different labs and research centers all over the world are saying differing things. It implies there’s a level of guesswork.

I think I will only truly trust a vaccine.

Who will be developing this vaccine? Surely not those experts “all saying differing things”?

@VivienScott I had a similar thing in January, the coughing was actually making me dizzy!

Was yours like that?

All actual SCIENTIFIC research seems to suggest it started spreading at the end of January in the uk

The first case in the UK that has been traced atm was mid January so that person picked it up supposedly in an Austrian Ski resort at the beginning of January and if we say it can have a 14 day incubation period then mid January is when it supposedly began here.

Is it a stretch to think it could have been here a couple of weeks earlier.

Given how the Chinese government cracked down on anyone informing them of bad news who is to say when it started.

I had this too in late November...went round dds school like wild fire. Felt horrendous...dry cough, fever, the works. There were calls to close school and deep clean it.

The first case in the UK that has been traced atm was mid January so that person picked it up supposedly in an Austrian Ski resort at the beginning of January and if we say it can have a 14 day incubation period then mid January is when it supposedly began here.

Darren Bland returned to the UK from Ischgl on 19 January after a three-day ski trip. He infected his family first. It seems rather unlikely that the same virus reached your neck of the woods simultaneously. Not impossible, but unlikely.

Darren Bland returned to the UK from Ischgl on 19 January after a three-day ski trip. He infected his family first. It seems rather unlikely that the same virus reached your neck of the woods simultaneously. Not impossible, but unlikely.

But if he also infected everyone on his journey home....

Agreed, but were the posters claiming to have caught Covid 19 in mid-January on the same flight as him?

Agreed, but were the posters claiming to have caught Covid 19 in mid-January on the same flight as him?

The virus was percolating through the Austrian Alps. Not at all impossible that it made its way to the UK undetected.

There was a bad flu after xmas. Normal flu kills a lot of people but that one was worse. Mine was accompanied by a runny nose so it was not Covid. The cough lasted in excess of four weeks. Normal flu.

I am immuno compromised and flu presents a serious personal risk.

Someone needs to get the word out to the scientific community. Experts all over the world have this very very wrong, thank fully mumsnetters, with their hunches and suspicions, can set the record straight!

Klonda, steady on, i'd agree with you if it was only hunches and suspicions but we're dealing with belief here. Concrete belief. and certainty.

I’m positive I had it at the end of January, I had all the same symptoms including the dry hacking to the point of being sick or weeing . Every over time I’ve had a cough go onto my chest It’s been a wet green flemmy cough.

If it was corona who’s to say people weren’t dying from it, take the poor man who died who’d been in hospital with sepsis, his death would’ve been written down as sepsis not Coronavirus ?

In the UK if someone dies if they have Coronavirus that’s what the death is put down as not what else they could have died from, I think that’s why Germany deaths are lower as they only use it a cause of death in the most definitive cases

The virus was percolating through the Austrian Alps. Not at all impossible that it made its way to the UK undetected.

Not impossible, no, just not very likely.

My husband is keen to establish that he had Covid 19 in mid January In order to facilitate “I was terribly ill, much worse than you thought I was, now are you sorry for being impatient with my dressing gown of doom posturings?”

Other colds and viruses are available and are overwhelmingly likely to have been the cause of illness between November and February but no, Coronavirus it is.

My Dad was hospitalised with pneumonia in late January. He had had a persistent cough for weeks, couldn't eat and felt dreadful. No amount of antibiotics would shift it. It would be great if that had been it, as I wouldn't need to stress about him now getting it!

Iamthewombat, what will he do if he didn't have it in January but does catch it soon and he's one that has more than a mild illness? Will he say he's caught it twice because the clever COVID has mutated, do you think? I thought COVID was bad but now I can see it worked across the Alps like Hannibal and mutates like Proteus. Let's hope it doesn't have anything else in it's repertoire. I was picturing it like Terry Thomas, rubbing it's moustache and laughing.