Do you get ‘symptoms’ when you come in contact with covid but don’t test positive?

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Every so often I seem to be getting cold symptoms that are annoying but don’t materialise into a proper cold - like body aches, sniffling, sore throat, itchy eyes etc. I’ve heard that when you come into contact with covid sometimes you get symptoms but it’s your body fighting it off hence you don’t test positive. Is this true or rubbish?! I know there are other bugs around but so many times I’ve felt like it’s covid but it isn’t and I never used to get colds this regularly!

sounds like rubbish to me, i would always get cold symptons and it not materialise into a worse cold before covid was a thing

I almost posted this myself recently! I think it's true! My whole family had Covid in January and I was very unwell. 2 months later my daughter got it again and I had all the symptoms: burning chest, sore throat, body aches but I kept testing negative. This week my son has had Covid. Again I had all the symptoms - including weak legs (which I've only ever had with Covid). Again I've tested negative! I really think it's my body reacting to the Covid exposure but I have enough immunity to fight it off very quickly.

Hasn't this always been a thing?

I often get "cold symptoms" when I'm due my period, tired, run down or stressed - doesn't mean I actually have a cold though.

Absolute rubbish

My main symptom with covid was a headache and I find I now often get headaches after exposure to crowded places, when I've never suffered with them before. I'm an infectious diseases specialist and while there isn't any evidence at the moment to suggest that it's immune response related, there have been a lot of similar anecdotal reports and it's absolutely not just 'rubbish'.

^^to add, it could be anything from a nocebo effect to stress to undiagnosed long covid etc etc but a lot of people are reporting a similar phenomenon.

It’s frustrating, starting to annoy me now!

We’ve had covid where we all tested positive but the kids had no symptoms, then DD caught it for a second time and tested positive but the rest of us were negative despite having the symptoms

Maybe the tests are not that reliable for all cases.
I wouldn't dismiss it as 'rubbish'.
Maybe these are instances where the person is infected but not infectious and perhaps that's why the tests don't give positive readings.
Assuming we are talking about LFTs not PCR tests.

In my case it was both lat flow and PCR that were negative for us and positive for DD