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.

I think covid has already mutated to be more infectious but less deadly? Scientists aren't expecting it to mutate further

@exiledfromcornwall

I had a very strange, but not particularly severe 'something' in January, which included loss of sense of taste. No idea whether it was covid. The last time I went to my hairdresser in mid-March (eek!) we were talking about it, and she said she had had what she described as "the 100-day cough". She knows loads of people, and said she knew lots of other people who had had this "100-day cough". Again, no idea whether covid, but it does show there was something going round from at least December.

I have no idea whether that could have been coronavirus or not. But did you know that 100-day-cough is also a nickname for pertussis or whooping cough? Too late to find out now, but I would have been interested to know what the coughs sounded like.

There is no evidence that sars-cov-2 was circulating outside of China, or even Wuhan, as early as November.

Yes there is. French doctors have identified French lung scans consistent with the particular covid markers from mid November hospitalizations (so infected in the weeks prior).

They are now examining October's scans to see if they can find it back then.

You couldn't of had it. This is dementornet so if you had it you would be dead. It has a 100% fatality rate didn't you know?

www.nbcnews.com/news/world/new-evidence-race-find-france-s-covid-19-patient-zero-n1207871

I had something at the end of November/beginning of December I was sure was covid. The whole family had it, we were coughing up horrendous mucus and feverish for weeks, I even thought to myself I maybe had pneumonia. DD1s entire class was off with it. I just had the new government antibody test through work and it was negative- if it’s accurate then there was a horrible virus with exact corona symptoms, even down to getting better for a day or two then relapsing again, that ripped through London last winter, but was not coronavirus.

I wouldn’t be surprised. in my company, our “flu” wave started in supply chain, and worked his way through the building.
We have factories in Wuhan that are frequently visited by our supply chain managers.

Bad cold isn't the right symptoms, and I didn't think there was a reliable antibody test available generally yet.

Thanks for that. I wasn't aware, but I wouldn't jump to conclusions just yet. The doctors haven't.

@Iamuhtredsonofuhtred

I had something at the end of November/beginning of December I was sure was covid. The whole family had it, we were coughing up horrendous mucus and feverish for weeks, I even thought to myself I maybe had pneumonia. DD1s entire class was off with it. I just had the new government antibody test through work and it was negative- if it’s accurate then there was a horrible virus with exact corona symptoms, even down to getting better for a day or two then relapsing again, that ripped through London last winter, but was not coronavirus.

There was a point when testing symptomatic people (and household members) who had come from an affected region still had an 80%+ negative rate. Granted, some tests have a roughly 25% false negative rate, so there will be people who had it and tested negative.

Nevertheless, this suggests to me that there has been another, similar-seeming virus going around.

I certainly had a virus that led to a long-term dry cough in February. I don't think it was Covid-19

I do wonder about the next virus after that in March, which made my lungs feel like they were burning inside. The burning feeling comes back sometimes.

Interestingly there was an article in the Telegraph in January saying that flu hospitalisations were up in the last quarter of 2019. As I understand it, these are counted as flu based on symptoms, unlike deaths which are identified as flu in the laboratory.
If it does turn out there was covid around before Christmas it might be related.

Everyone wants to believe they’ve had it back in November or whenever because they want to believe they’ve got antibodies. They’re clinging on to the hope that they don’t need to worry about it

I have said the complete opposite, in that we've all been so bloody healthy we can't have possibly had it.

If I had now what I had about 3-4 years ago, I'd have sworn it was covid-19.

No one really knows when it first came here-- we only know when the first recognised cases were.

If the first case in China really was in November, it seems unlikely that the UK didn't get it until Feb. Wuhan is a big city and there is lots of international coming and going.

My DS came back from Singapore in Nov and was really ill. She has worked in her current role for 14 years- not one sick day.
She was messaging me saying it’s like someone kneeling on her chest and neck.

I think it’s a positive if a lot more people have had it. But scary how countries can lie and get away with it.

We know that the current covid strain in Europe is not the original strain. There is a possibilty that this is the dreaded more deadly second wave.

Can't really be bothered to explain why, again, but just NO.

So the scientists in America who say the European strain is different from the original are wrong, and the French scientists who are now suggesting there was an earlier wave at the end of last year are also wrong. Good job there's sarky MN posters to patronise and set us straight.

I’ve had been wondering for a while. Bit of a background as relevant.

My DH is in the shielding group, he was diagnosed with bowel cancer Sept 2016. Caught too late, so has been living with lung mets.

He started an immunotherapy trial for them in April 2019 at Marsden. Bloods/treatment every 2 weeks, CT lung scans every 6.

He has a lot of contact with Chinese people through work, frequently flys.

At the end of Nov/Dec he went to Manila, and then on to Hong Kong. A week or so before Christmas he developed a cough, dry tickly, non productive. Had to sleep propped up, and I slept in spare room as I wouldn’t have got any sleep - it was constant. He was also wiped out sleeping a lot, and short of breath.

He had CTs on 23rd Dec, 23rd Jan, 10 Feb, by last scan his cough was improving. Mets weren’t, so relevant in that it isn’t the mets causing them, as has been fine since as they have grown.

I’m 50/50, would love to think he had it and was ok, but surely if he had it would have shown something other than mets in his CT’s?

So basically he had the same thing as lots of people are saying, but had the added ‘benefit’ of constant scans which obviously people with those symptoms don’t.

I definitely believe it was here before they said it was. Hopefully that means it clears up quicker.

We and our GP think DH had it the beginning of February. He came down with the symptoms exactly 2 weeks to the day after coming back from just outside the Lombardy region.
I was so close to ringing 111. The only reason I didn't was that all the posters that were displayed around only mentioned China

This is pretty convincing that it was Covid. February is not that early. I think last April as mentioned by a PP is probably pushing it though!

So the scientists in America who say the European strain is different from the original are wrong, and the French scientists who are now suggesting there was an earlier wave at the end of last year are also wrong. Good job there's sarky MN posters to patronise and set us straight.

I'd love to see those articles.

Also, you're overestimating and misinterpreting what a "different strain" means.

@User6282828

I definitely believe it was here before they said it was. Hopefully that means it clears up quicker.

It's not on a countdown timer, why would that happen?

I became ill a week before Christmas and was unwell untill the end of January with what I think was COVID. It's genuinely took 3 months for me to return to normal.

Dd (3) and DH also caught it but much milder. Dd had it for 3 days but was wiped and DH suffered for less than a week.

This is a really interesting study. Basically, where subjects had a positive swab test result for covid-19 virtually all developed antibodies. Where subjects had suspected covid-19 but weren't swabbed, only about 37% developed antibodies. (Note that this was based on being sick at the height of the epidemic). This suggests that a large proportion of people who think they had covid but didn't get tested actually had something else. Because, as others have said, there are lots of other viruses around and some of them will seem like covid.

I'm sure it was here December last year. I think this is the second wave.