Am i being thick?If the first reported uk case was on jan 31st then it was here from dec/early jan then?

[Wankerchief]

Ive just read that the first confirmed case was on the 31st of jan (wiki and news sites)
Going on the two/three week incubation does that mean there was many people in Late Dec/early Jan that had it but had. No symptoms or just thought they had flu?

Dp says no but i cannot see how it cant of been here then but I've got nothing to me up

I think if it had been here since Dec in its current form the hospitals would have noticed increased admissions and deaths for “flu” , the didnt.

I think either there was another nasty virus or it was a milder form of covid19 which has now mutated to something more deadly. The latter would tie in with the fact it seems to be dying out now. Even in London with packed tubes it isn’t spreading. So possibly most people got the milder form in dec/jan. then it mutated and this second peak got everyone who hadn’t already caught it mildly but MOst people have antibodies?

I had a nasty bug early Feb, caught from a friend who came back from Singapore in late dec and she and the rest of the family were so poorly they were in bed for two weeks. Maybe she had it?

I think it's been in the country from before the news spread about it in Wuhan. By the time wuhan admitted there was a problem I bet a hell of a lot of people had travelled in and out of Wuhan. The only way we will know for sure is when we get the anti body tests to check. I'm hoping that once they start testing anti body's they will be able to say that a lot more people have had it than has been reported.

I am in Italy and had flu at the end of January which morphed into bronchitis and my chest now, is just about OK.

I could get all excited and go "I'm 99% sure I've had Covid"

I didn't. I had flu and bronchitis. Temperature, rotten cough. No typical "cold" symptoms. Tight chest. Etc.

I've read lots of "articles"
I've been told lots of things.
We all have.
Now 99% of that really is bollocks.

If my flu had come a month later, sure, my doctor would have had me tested probably. I would probably have thought myself I'd had it.

The truth, as ever, is generally far less exciting.

I can’t comprehend how there are people here who seriously think we didn’t get it in the country until end of January.

It was only reported about at the end of December in China and we know it takes a while from initial exposure to lead to death, so for a pattern to be noticed in their local deaths it must have been circulating in their population for a while. At the same time international travel was business as usual.

It could well have been around much longer if it's not spreading "in the community" as much as first feared.

The only people we know who've had it actually caught it whilst they were in hospital for other things. Certainly in our area, it's widely known that it rampaged through our local hospitals at first, then rampaged through local care homes.

That would explain how the numbers rose so quickly, almost exponentially, in just 2-3 weeks back in March which left us behind the curve with SD advice, lockdown, etc. Especially, as the science now leads us to believe length (time) of exposure is more relevant that physical proximity, i.e. the viral load.

It does look like the "new normal" will be avoiding extended periods of time with the same people, rather than just avoiding other people completely.

I don't subscribe to the "China has had it for ages and was covering it up" agenda. I do think though that people in China were falling ill through the autumn and their illness wasn't diagnosed as being something different or new. It wasn't until numbers started booming in late December that they realised that they were dealing with something they hadn't seen before.

Following on from the above, it also explains the knee-jerk reaction of the NHS to basically shut down all but Covid treatment, empty the hospitals, etc. They were being swamped long before the community because it was spreading like wildfire through their wards. Just like norovirus causes closure/quarantine of wards in normal times.

I haven’t been ill since December.
I’ve been exposed to confirmed cases at work, both my manager AND the person who I am training had it.
I’ll await the results of my antibody test.

If you think you might have had Coronavirus consider having testing. £22 you can have an antibody test www.tdlpathology.com/

“ I do think though that people in China were falling ill through the autumn and their illness wasn't diagnosed as being something different or new. It wasn't until numbers started booming in late December that they realised that they were dealing with something they hadn't seen before.”

Me too sock yarn. That is what I think as well because Covid has same symptoms as any other viral cough through pneumonia.

Me friend thinks she had it in December she was really ill for weeks. X

That’s a good point kazzy about the hospitals. Covid is very contagious like norovirus and hospital patients are already vulnerable from being sick from other conditions so they’d be more likely to get a worse case than a healthy person in the community.

She was the only one to not get ill so it depends either she was really really lucky or she did have Covid in December and was/is immune.

Or perhaps she was asymptomatic?

I'm pretty sure I had it in December.

It was the worst cough I've ever experienced, a dry hacking cough that made me crack a rib because I couldn't stop coughing and I new a vessel in my eye making my whites turn bright red.
There was one particular day I almost phoned dh to come home because I thought I was going to die, I was faint and could barely breathe (not a panic attack).

For months after, my lungs were still affected, and I would cough like there was something needing to come up - which couldn't - but it was only when I did those physio exercises that went viral on YouTube to combat coronavirus, that I finally managed to shift it.

I was not at all surprised to hear France had a confirmed case and I won't be at all surprised to learn of any confirmed cases here. I won't be surprised if I get tested and find I have antibodies.

It was only reported about at the end of December in China and we know it takes a while from initial exposure to lead to death

From my understanding It was known about much earlier but they only admitted to having it when it was too late.
They gagged everyone who was trying to tell them that there was a problem

@FindMy

This is the evidence:

fullfact.org/media/uploads/UK_spike_chart.png

Covid may well have been here since December, just in very low numbers.

Given that antibody tests are now widely available, if it was widespread here in December/January then we’ll know soon enough. In fact, I’m sure we’d have somewhere reporting on this already.

In early March the majority of those tested with Covid symptoms didn’t test positive! The only rational explanation is they had the flu like 1000s upon 1000s of people do each year.

We think we all had it in December/January and looking back we know where we caught it if it was Covid.

Dd was in contact with hundreds of Chinese nationals who were over here for a one day event.
Most had flown in the night before and were flying out that evening so they really didn’t go anywhere but the event and a large coach to take them to and from the airport. About 10 days /2 weeks later she came down with a bug that spread within our household.
In March she worked another day where later it was found that virtually everyone at the meeting and all the staff had come down with Covid except Dd who remained free of any illness.

Either we did all have it in December and Dd was/is immune or she was very lucky that in an infected room of 80 people that she was the only one not infected

Oliver’smummy,

Yes that is what the US intelligence community has asserted and passed on to rest of five eyes. However, I’ve not seen any real evidence to back up this assertion. And given the US started and is in the midst of a trade war with China they have every motivation to bend facts to fit political ends. This is the Trump administration who every time they are caught in a lie, says it’s not a lie but “alternative facts”.

I also still remember it was the US intelligence community that passed on assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. A pack of lies that led both the U.K. and my country, France, to send young men and women into a disastrous war. All because the US needed to secure oil supplies and was willing to bend facts to fit political aims.

So, personally, I’m suspending judgement until I see something from a more credible and less biased source.

Re the testing for Covid outside of being in hospital seemed to involve you driving to a place to get tested.

If it is what we had, I don’t think any of us were well enough to make it out to a car when it first hit let alone drive anywhere.

I managed to get myself to an emergency doctors after about a week/2weeks (the whole of Christmas and New Year was a blur) when my breathing was suffering and my cough was horrendous.

I remember sitting in the car park out side of the doctors gathering my strength to open the door to get out of the car and wondering if I could actually make it inside

Don’t know anything about US intelligence. I was referring to the doctor who was on a forum trying to find if any other doctors had come across this new disease when he saw people coming into the emergency department with this new type of illness and was gagged and forced to retract the statements and eventually died from the disease.

If it was here, community infection, in January then were are the deaths?

The ONS data has no death spikes then.

Or did it grow in virulence as it spread?

There was another flu / viral strain going round, as is usual that time of year.

The French case I haven't read any details about. Would be interesting to see what eeliable data source it came from

There were daily flights in from Wuhan. Of course it was here.

It was here as soon as there was community transmission in Wuhan, which previous modelling put as early as September.

@PicsInRed

There’s a big difference between it being here and it being widespread at the end of last year. It seems the former might be true, but not the latter.

The ONS data has no death spikes then.

One element of analysis is to look beyond the bottom line for large inputs/outputs which offset. To see whether there were covid deaths, we would need to know whether the flu season was average or light. As flu or "viral illness" is rarely lab tested, but rather diagnosed clinically, coronavirus deaths could easily intially be hidden inside a milder "flu" season, which then - in data - resembled an average season.

This is what happened with the French December death. He died of pneumonia caused by an unidentified viral illness. If his sample wasnt one of 20 subsequently tested for coronavirus by a curious doctor, his death would have remained as by unidentified viral illness.

There is also the fact that initial cases were travellers and their contacts, generally healthy working people. The huge spike in deaths occurred when coronavirus become endemic in hospitals and care homes - later infection of clinically vulnerable populations.

We'll know more when and if pre January samples are tested.

Derbygerbil

Not necessarily widespread, but circulating and becoming endemic in urban populations from which it would later spread outwards to rural areas throughout Europe (and back and forth from chalets).