To think that the belief that COVID was in the UK much earlier than first thought is a positive thing on many levels?

[AlternativePerspective]

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/01/spate-of-possible-uk-coronavirus-cases-from-2019-come-to-light?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

A friend of mine had severe cold in December and had an antibody test last week and it came back positive.

Others also now saying they had bad cold/flu like illnesses back then which in retrospect could have been COVID.

If COVID was here in December then it’s possible it could have been here even before that.

if not, then it still means that an awful lot more people will have had and recovered from the virus. Also it puts the risk level down because the risk is based on the number of cases since February. Considerably more cases than that reduces the risk level.

And, if people are still testing positive for antibodies then this is a positive step towards the belief that we do develop immunity.

But ITonyah that would mean it took 3 months to make people unwell enough to seek medical care. COVID-19 can be diagnosed from a chest X ray as it has a very different appearance to anything else (hence the “strange pneumonia” reports early on). Even people who don’t die or get admitted to
hospital are having severe breathing difficulties and they would have called 999 and been taken to A&E. We didn’t see this here until the virus was known to be in the U.K.

The 'belief' that it was here or not makes not the slightest difference.

If it was here it makes a difference (I suspect maybe January) but not just believing it was NO.

But I appreciate that is just me being a pedantic pain.

@Inappropriatefemale

Me and my ex partner had a strange illness back in April 2019 and the no taste thing came in the last week, we were ill for nearly 4 weeks and we have never had an illness like it, he was worse as he has asthma. We both now believe it to have been Covid.

20 fucking 19 now? Oh for fuck's sake.

There is a known COVID cluster (from what I've read, I work in infectious diseases) in Yorkshire from mid/late December. It was related to someone who travelled to Wuhan for work and then spread through a local community group of folks who got together for Christmas parties and such. Those cases would not have been confirmed by PCR testing as we didn't have it at the time (or even know to be looking out for them), but I would imagine they've now possibly been offered antibody tests to try to confirm. Though obviously it's not possible to know that that particular incident would have been what caused the immune response.

I was at the hospital this morning for a routine thing and was chatting to the nurse. She said they had a lot of pneumonia cases in Dec/Jan that they were swabbing for flu but were coming back negative. Usually they can identify a flu virus circulating but they couldn't with this one. Now they are wondering if it was covid. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was here in Dec/Jan at a low level but hadn't hit the exponential increase that has caused hospital admissions and deaths. We've had a light flu season that could go some way to hiding another disease circulating.
Anything before December is pushing it though...

mindutopia

Would you mind sharing where you read that please if you can remember? (Not that I’m doubting you, just I’m interested as I believe I had it earlier this year)

@Pothole yes 20 fucking 19, why, is that an issue? It wasn’t the flu so what was it? Just because they are dating it came here this year then it doesn’t mean it did and at the time I worked with people from all over and many Chinese so it’s possible and I’ll be asking the doctor today when I have my appointment. I’ll be sure to let you know what she said.

Saying not dating

[quote Inappropriatefemale]@Pothole yes 20 fucking 19, why, is that an issue? It wasn’t the flu so what was it? Just because they are dating it came here this year then it doesn’t mean it did and at the time I worked with people from all over and many Chinese so it’s possible and I’ll be asking the doctor today when I have my appointment. I’ll be sure to let you know what she said.[/quote]
Your doctor will be polite and professional and non-committal. It will still be bollocks.

Anything before December is pushing it though... except until recently we would have said that anything before Feb is pushing it.

I had a severe cold/flu type thing in October/november. While I don’t believe it was COVID, I do remember that all my heart symptoms were more prevalent, and that when I went for my appointment at the transplant clinic my bloods were all unstable and I was told that I was deteriorating faster than we had expected.

Six weeks later I was back there and was vastly improved.

As I said, I don’t believe it was COVID, but I am tempted to do an antibody test, because if that came back positive then I know it can only have been that, because I haven’t been out since March and even before then I was over cautious so the chances of me having come into contact with COVID are almost non existent.

Back in August 2017, I got a nasty virus that gave me most of the symptoms of C19, including an appalling, dry cough that lasted for weeks. It wasn't flu.

No, it was a nasty virus that gave me similar symptoms to C19, but was also not C19.

C19 is a coronavirus. There are quite a lot of them. Interestingly, I read an article yesterday about the Paris hospital (where Princess Diana was taken when she died) which is following and researching a hypothesis that many people may be immune to C19 because of previous exposure to a coronavirus.

OK, so how come nobody needed to be hospitalised with it before March?

Why would you think they didn't? My mother was hospitalised with secondary pneumonia just after Christmas and not expected to survive (though she did). She'd caught the original illness from my brother, who had caught it just before Christmas from someone who works in the travel industry. They all had classic Covid presentation. My mum and brother both have flu jabs so it was unlikely to be seasonal flu. I think it was certainly here much earlier than originally believed, but in sufficiently low numbers that no one hospital had enough cases to raise the alarm.

Pothole, I agree that April is a massive and impossible stretch but it is called Covid-19 literally due to it being Coronavirus Disease 2019.

All these people telling others that they absolutely did not have COVID19, you don’t actually know that do you?

These are presumably some of the same people who state that someone definitely didn’t have the flu unless they were at death’s door, even though it is a known fact that the flu virus can be moderate as well as severe.

@BananaSpanner

Pothole, I agree that April is a massive and impossible stretch but it is called Covid-19 literally due to it being Coronavirus Disease 2019.

I am aware. But the 2019 part of "April 2019" is the bit that occasioned the expletives.

@mindutopia, yes please send the info on the documented December cases.

Re hospital admissions, it’s worth bearing in mind that the first deaths in hospitals were in people who were in hospital for different reasons and then happened to be tested for COVId.

So it’s entirely possible, likely even that people will have died with COVID before that but because they weren’t being tested COVID wasn’t considered a factor.

Also many people who have died have died of complications related to their existing health conditions, and have happened to have COVID as well. So again, if COVID wasn’t a consideration then it wouldn’t come up in the deaths statistics.

@AlternativePerspective

All these people telling others that they absolutely did not have COVID19, you don’t actually know that do you?

These are presumably some of the same people who state that someone definitely didn’t have the flu unless they were at death’s door, even though it is a known fact that the flu virus can be moderate as well as severe.

If it had even started circulating in this country in April 2019, then it would have taken off in Europe earlier. Did you see what happened in Italy?

I know someone in the Netherlands. She was very unwell in December, her toddler had pneumonia and her nephew was on a ventilator. I can’t think that’s normal.
I have a GP friend who saw someone from Iran in January he’s now convinced had it.

DP and I were in China mid-late November. We weren’t in Wuhan at all, but travelled around, including four internal flights.

Towards the end of the holiday, he became unwell with, primarily, breathing difficulties. We put it down to the air quality, which had been really poor almost everywhere we went, and to him being asthmatic.

He went to see the asthma nurse when we got back; by this time, he had a high temperature, which she couldn’t get down, and his breathing was became so compromised, he was blue-lit to hospital. He was in hospital he for a week, and diagnosed with pneumonia. Overall, he was unwell for 5-6 weeks. During that time, I had a headache and sore throat for about a week, but felt fine overall.

Looking back, I suspect it was COVID-19, but the one thing that makes me doubt it is that it didn’t (so far as I know) run rampant through the hospital/community. I suppose we’ll never know, one way or the other.

I agree with you, OP. Nearly everyone I have spoken to has either been really poorly over Christmas or known someone to have been.

Back in early January where I work we had 1/3 of the work force ( around 100 people), off over a 3 week period, all with symptoms consistent with C-19. Of those 100, 3 ended up in hospital with 1 in ICU for 2 weeks. They were all told that it was an "unknown viral infection". Because there was no routine testing for C-19 at the time then it's impossible to determine if that's what they did have but the local GP feels strongly that it was.

I had exact Covid symptoms in January. At the time I said it was the worst flu I’d ever had but it wasn’t like normal flu. It was like fly but with a horrific cough, felt like I couldn’t breathe and no sense of taste on top. Haven’t been ill since then so I’d love to have an antibody test to see if it was. I’m convinced it’s been around a lot longer than China said and they only told the world when it become unmanageable

not sure if thats the case, as so many viruses are very similar.
My partner had symptoms, loss of smell, high temperature, dry cough.
All those symptoms are Covids, but he couldnt have it as it was Jan 2019. ( so a year before all of this).