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.

Interesting! So in my family both my DS were poorly. Eldest who is 5 was quite poorly for 24hours. Croup like cough and fever. 24 hours later he was totally fine. The other was less poorly initially, no cough just a low grade fever for about 5 days. My DH was quite unwell for him, a bad cough and a rough two days. I had no fever and didn't feel too bad at all but wasn't 109%. My DM who lives nearby and we see regularly was terribly ill for at least 4 weeks. Fever/cough/aches the works. Flu like for sure but she did have the flu jab and we were suprised it didn't affect us the same as it did her.

I have no idea what to think but it is interesting lots of people from the SW are saying the same thing.

Does anyone who claims to have had in December actually understand the concept of exponential growth?

Yes I do and if I didn't fully understand it then I'd ask dh, he works ina science lab based environment.

Bearing in mind evidence shows it was in China Nov, Dec I would be very surprised if it wasn’t here earlier

Evidence shows it may have been circulating in China in mid Sept.

China says all sorts of things, few of which are true.

We were all sick as dogs over Christmas, dogs excepted, and DH just reminded me I spent the whole day suffering on the sofa while they cooked Christmas dinner. I even missed the pub.

I think we may have had it too in mid January. DH and I had a fever, terrible cough and felt like we couldn't get enough air to breathe. My DH's lungs rattled when he was lying down. We have never had an illness like it before and it was not the same as flu. We are normally both fit and healthy, but I felt as though I had no energy for some time afterwards. My DM (in her late eighties) had it too, but thankfully not as badly as us.

Just seeing further posts, my DH had been using Bristol Airport when flying on business!

Reports (sorry it’s in the Daily Mail) that France’s patient zero actually died on December 27th as they have tested the body.
He’s calling for other deaths around the same time to be investigated/tested.

I think there are suggestions now that it was in Wuhan September time. But was undetected for a while. You would assume that this wasn’t something they were looking for so when it became on their radar it must have been circulating a while.

Then we are to believe that between say October/November and what Feb/March nobody on any of those thousands of flights from China bought it over with them?

That’s harder to believe.

I think once we can get mass antibody testing going it will be interesting to trace it back and maybe even find our true patient zero.

Then we are to believe that between say October/November and what Feb/March nobody on any of those thousands of flights from China bought it over with them?

Quite.

I am of the opinion i had it in December as well as another person at work .I have asthma and it can get really bad if I have a chest infection but it is normally a cold then chest infection. This was something else i woke up really struggling to breathe my reliever inhaler just about worked had to increase my preventer inhaler. Two lots of steroids and antibiotics. I had my boss really worried when i phoned in sick they said i sounded so ill even they are convinced i had it .Felt like glass in my chest and all the symptoms of Corona virus .

March 2019.

Then we are to believe that between say October/November and what Feb/March nobody on any of those thousands of flights from China bought it over with them

UK started reporting cases back in January

I was surprised at this... but it seems the flu vaccine isn’t especially effective

My argument for not having the vaccine myself has always been that it's not very effective, but I thought in the season just gone it was. So it got me thinking in hindsight that maybe some of my mum's friends had had covid. But as I said, none were really ill, not enough to need hospital, and they were all reasonably elderly so it seems more likely that they had something else.

Last year my husband had a horrible chest thing which he would have put down to covid if it had been this year. But it was February 2019 so definitely not. However, it illustrates how you could think something else could be covid.

A friend of mine came back from the Far East at beginning of jan and was really poorly on arrival as were all her family. She spent 2 weeks in bed and was still poorly beginning of Feb. I saw her towards the end of Jan and 2 days laters I came down with a bad flu type thing.

• @Derbygerbil* what i had was most definately not the flu or a normal run of the mill virus and the person i caught it off had just come back from holiday abroad. Make of that what you will. But i reckon if i took an antibody test if one becomes available it will show i have had it .

We are just over the old servern bridge from
Bristol and we had an awful cough bug over Christmas. Couple of people (out of 7) also had it same time.
Me and DH couldn’t move without doubling over with a cough but there was no snot or phlegm etc, high temp, exhausted, irritated eyes, aches etc. Interestingly the kids had a very mild version (high temp for half a day and them a lingering very mild cough for several weeks) whereas me and DH were floored for weeks.

I would be very interested to have the antibodies test to see if we did in fact have it or not.

The thing people are forgetting is that deaths are being reported as Covid deaths but not many are being reported as non Covid at the moment where as back in jan / Feb deaths were just reported as deaths.

Partners work had all five guys that work there sick as anything in December. All high fevers, hacking coughs etc. They work next to (and share retail facilities daily) with the University halls of residence for overseas students, where - you guessed it - the majority of Chinese students live in their hundreds. Coincidence? Maybe. Need the antibody tests for sure.

I’m sure it was going around our area in Dec. My daughter was floored by something similar just before Christmas For around 10 days and the local high school she goes to had to close as so many children and staff off with temperatures, coughs and sore throats.

U.K. reported it’s first case 26th Jan. So still October, November, December. Nobody from China bought the virus over here? And actually our patient zero caught it on a ski trip to the Alps? I think we’ll find out differently soon.
Plus when exponential growth started it was all over the country. We didn’t have a Brighton hotspot did we?

Many of the first deaths here had no travel links. The community spread must have been happening for quite some time...

Im sure my work mate had it in december. She never gets ill and in december she said she felt like she had "flu but a weird type of flu". She had the worst dry cough she struggled to breathe, had a very high temp and was sick a lot. She was also physically exhausted for about 2 or 3 weeks and we had to send her home at one point she could barely stand. I work in an industry with a higher than average number of chinese tourists visiting every day.

Were we only able to report our first case on 26th Jan because we knew what to look for? Could people have died much earlier than that but it been put down as pneumonia?

NYC is a good case study... 0.2% of its population died since late March from Covid. Antibody tests suggest 20-25% have had it. That’s equivalent to a 0.8-1% death rate.

@Derbygerbil I haven't read any studies from New York but that's not surprising- these numbers are in line with every other country.

There are many, many uncertainties. Some mild cases may not trigger a measurable antibody response. Nobody is picking up every case. What frustrates me is that few people in this thread seem to understand that this doesn't mean anything could be true.

The final answer will be somewhere around these figures- we have enough data to be narrowing in on the answer. It won't be the case that it was in the UK for ages and tens of millions have had it and didn't know.

That flu you had in December/January/ September(!) was flu, no matter how much we would wish otherwise.

I'm convinced DH had this over Christmas, it was the most ill I've ever seen him. We're in Bristol.

Going on the second wave is now theory..... Spanish flu first case end of March 1918, all mild cases in general in first wave... 6 months later second wave - far more deadly. If first cases of COVID 19 DID start happening in Oct/Nov 2019... 6 months later would be April 2020.

"The first wave of the 1918 pandemic occurred in the spring and was generally mild. The sick, who experienced such typical flu symptoms as chills, fever and fatigue, usually recovered after several days, and the number of reported deaths was low.

However, a second, highly contagious wave of influenza appeared with a vengeance in the fall of that same year. Victims died within hours or days of developing symptoms, their skin turning blue and their lungs filling with fluid that caused them to suffocate. In just one year, 1918, the average life expectancy in America plummeted by a dozen years."

If the virus was in France just after Christmas why is it so hard to believe it wouldn’t have been here then?