It MIGHT have been here before Feb/March

[Whattodowhattodooo]

Just seen this tweet.

**A French Doctor has claimed that the virus was in France in December, a month before the first confirmed case.

Dr Cohen tested old blood samples for patients with respiratory symptoms and found a positive result.

This is worth investigating - it could be significant. - Prof Karol Sikora

Whilst it's France and not UK, I think the possibility should be investigated over here too. I am 99% sure my Dad had it beginning of January.

DS (9) was floored by some kind of virus a couple of weeks before Christmas. He's the kind of child who usually has 99% attendance, and ended up missing a week of school straddling a weekend. Totally exhausted. Loss of appetite. Had a fever which utterly drenched him with sweat to the point that he was in a puddle in bed and I double checked that it was sweat not wee. Did the get better rally, then went down again. His glands came up to the point that I looked up mumps (which due to his age, and MMR is very unlikely). He was not fully himself for about a month after and was struggling with his usual junior parkrun which between cancellations for storms and flooding, he never really got back on form by the time parkruns were cancelled.

DS2 (6) went down exhausted around the same time, but not with the same intensity or after effect. School attendence was particularly low that week. I help with swimming and that week quarter of the class were absent or excused due to ill health.

I tried ringing the doctors, but gave up after 35 engaged tones on the Monday before Christmas, and it was that lunchtime when he began to look a bit more alive so gave up trying to ring.

No idea what it was, but flu and mumps are two things that he has been vaccinated for. That's not fool proof, but does reduce the liklihood.

There are clearly a lot of gaps in knowledge about the spread and strains and it is as much folly to dismiss the idea of an early spread as it is to claim that you definitely did. It's not beyond the possible that some posters may have had it earlier than realised.

I thought herd immunity would take years?

So the virus was circulating in China from autumn. Many thousands of people travel to and from China for work, study, family holidays etc.

Yet not one person spread this virus outside China for months?

Delatron,

Herd immunity takes years with lockdown. It is really very quick without. The only problem is you get the NHS overwhelmed and many deaths en route.

we would have herd immunity by now

The suggestion is that we may have herd immunity in some parts of the country e.g. SW, perhaps explaining the low apparent rate of infection there right now.

Ok fine about here immunity but I still don’t understand how not one person spread the virus outside of China for months.

I wish some doctors or scientists would join these threads. There have been so many but all anecdotal cases (mine included.)

It’s is interesting about the SW. initially they had more cases at first. I remember as DS was going on a school trip to Devon and there were quite a few cases there.

Then they just tailed off.. and Bristol etc have very few cases.

I'm sure I had it at the start January.
Had all the main symptoms and I've never felt so ill in all my life.
Got fobbed off by doctors / A&E with 'it's just flu'. I have the flu jab every year so I doubt standard flu could have hit me that hard.

I couldn't breathe properly for about a month after; I felt like I'd be punched repeatedly and was so exhausted and drained for just under two months.
Was JUST starting to feel more like myself when lockdown happened!

Pics,

But why the SW?

Again, it just makes no sense. Wuhan travellers would overwhelmingly be travelling to a London, not SW England.

Deaths come before herd immunity, lots of them, the kind of spike that could not be missed.

And the Wuhan virus was equally deadly to the current version.

I’ve tried to attach a graph - don’t know if it will work. It shows that until mid March, there were no excess deaths in the U.K. compared to the 5 yearly average and that they were actually slightly below the expected amount. They suddenly rocket in mid March. If people were catching Covid 19 in this country in December, it would show excess deaths already from at least 1 month before that.

I know someone who is now convinced they had it over Christmas.They had an extremely odd and nasty flu like illness and were nearly hospitalised . They discovered in April that they had been in direct contact from someone who had returned from Wuhan just before Christmas and had been very unwell when they got home. It seems as though it could have been here much earlier than previously thought.

Someone I know with was in ICU with pneumonia in January. Her lungs were in a terrible state, she was ventilated, the works. The doctors couldn’t say what had caused it. Makes me wonder.

DH had a foul bug just after Christmas, too. Terrible cough that just wouldn’t go away.

Pics,

But why the SW?

Hinkley Point and the Universities.

Pics,

More than London with Heathrow Airport, many more unis and a large Chinese community?!

I had over a week off work in January, and my symptoms were right for Covid19. On and off temperature and a cough, exhaustion, shortness of breath, muscle pains. I commute to central London, work in a massive open plan office. DD had it too, and her cough lasted ages. DS had bad chilblains, possibly Covid toes. DH did not seem to get it.

But was the death rate higher than usual in the early months of the year?

If people were catching Covid 19 in this country in December, it would show excess deaths already from at least 1 month before that.

Unless you accept modelling from the Sunetra Gupta's research ("Oxford study").

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042291v1.full.pdf

If the true C19 IFR is lower than we believe (e.g. 0.14% as per one of the scenarios in the study), any potential excess deaths up until early March 2020 would have been masked by the mild flue season. We would have only noticed the increase in fatalities after the virus had spread out to the meaningful percentage of the population.

Many scientists (including Neil Ferguson) criticise Gupta's research but it does provide a potential answer.

Sorry I've just seen @Broadwayb graph

A Chinese community live there. They are British resident.

I'm talking about transient people. Students and international commuters. Bristol has a large student population for its size and a large Chinese partnered project underway (Hinkley).

These things are circumstantial. Why South Wales? Why the Alps? Why North Italy? Why Wuhan? Demographics, circumstance.

Sorry, that was in reply to larrygrylls

The only reason I am doubting it is COVID, is because over January and February and into March, I was commuting to London and working in an open plan office, seeing lots of friends and family and none of them have got it. If it is as contagious as is meant to be then surely someone would have caught it from me?

I'd agree with this. I sat opposite someone who had a terrible cough, muscle pain etc for about two weeks. It was just at the point CV19 was starting to be talked about and we joked about it being a coronacough. There is absolutely no doubt I would have caught it, despite his careful elbow coughing.

I recall quite a few people having quite a bad cough at the time. I'd suspect there was a different bug also going around at the time.

I recall quite a few people having quite a bad cough at the time

So...people were catching it. You didnt, but if the R0 is 4-6 that means on average 4-6 will catch it from each infected person (not everyone they come into sustained contact with) and perhaps you were #7 i.e. you just didnt catch it.

I had such a severe cough late last year, I had to be helped during coughing fits whilst picking up my daughter and shopping. I took cocodomol at night to stop me waking up feeling I was coughing so much I couldn't breathe. I've never experienced anything like it.

My husband had an unexplained illness after Christmas which caused him to have pain in all his limbs, like malaise but as he had never experienced it. He hasn't got a low pain threshold and was worried enough to go to the GP. His blood tests showed inflammatory markers but they said it was likely a virus.

Anecdotal yes, but it's certainly a strange coincidence.

If everyone on here or their friends/parents/ neighbour had had covid when they believe they did and as we are from all over the uk (and I think some other countries) we would have seen visits to gp’s, more call to 111/999, mote hospital admissions and certainly a much much higher number of deaths in the uk as everyone one of you would have passed it on to probably a few people who in turn would have passed it on to a few people (at least)

In seven weeks we have had newly 30,000 deaths. For many days the death rate was over double what the usual death rate is

Those numbers would not have gone unnoticed. It would not have done unnoticed how many patients were developing similar symptoms a virus that attacked the respiratory system it would not have gone unnoticed how many patients needed to be out on a ventilator

What do people think there is a huge conspiracy that thousands more have died and their families, friends, doctors, nurses, coroners, hospital have been silenced

There is always a number of different virus’s around in the winter his one we have no immunity to that’s why a high percentage of people who catch it become very very ill and a high percentage die