'Coronavirus circulating in Italy since September'

[GreenOwlBlue]

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-italy-anitbodies-covid-study-b1723243.html

So, of 1000 asymptomatic people who took part in a lung cancer screening programme, 111 were found to already have Covid antibodies when the samples were tested. Wow.

What I don't understand is how the virus can circulate unnoticed for so long, when we've seen 2 big peaks involving large numbers hospitalised/dying?

Interesting stuff.

I was really poorly with a terrible cough in January 2019 it lasted about 6 weeks and really knocked me out. I've never been so ill, I thought I was dying and I suspect it was covid. I was given antibiotics and they didn't seem to touch it. I think it's definitely been circulating a lot longer than we realize and it's becoming more contagious.

@AlecTrevelyan006

officially the first death in the UK from coronavirus was a woman in her 70s on 5 March www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51759602

but many people suspect there cases before that e.g. 64-year old Gang of Four guitarist Andy Gill who died from a respiratory illness on 1 February. Gill had not long returned from an Asian tour which included what turned out to be the band's last gig, in Shanghai on 23 November 2019
www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51344348

...

i think it is certainly possible that some people in Europe died with covid in late 2019 early 2020 but it was not recorded as such

ONS recently reported that they now think the first known Covid death in the U.K. was a man in January 2020.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.standard.co.uk/news/health/first-uk-coronavirus-death-end-january-a4547606.html%3famp

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52589449

If the first recorded death was jan, then it was here in Dec. He wouldn’t have been patient zero. So I think sept is very plausible.

That's a great explanation @BahHumbygge!

Let's SAY the findings of the Italian scientists were correct and 111 out of 1000 DID have Covid antibodies back then... would those relatively high numbers fit with slow exponential growth?

I’m convinced I had it in November 2019. Have never had anything like it in 60+ years. I had all the symptoms including the loss of taste and smell, hacking cough requiring an inhaler for the first time in my life and I was wiped out for many weeks. Time will tell as we learn more about the virus but I know I am not alone.

Yep I was very ill Oct/Nov with all the symptoms. Doctors couldn’t find anything wrong but gave me an inhaler. Never had an inhaler before, was used to running half marathons. Was ill for a good 6 weeks. Kept getting better then relapsing.

I know I’ve been in close contact with a few positive cases since March but haven’t been ill since last November.

"Fourteen per cent of those detected were from September last year, and around 30 per cent were from the second week of February,"

So, out of 111 people with antibodies,
14% were found in September samples (and not sure about when rest found)
14% of 111 is basically 15.

So why didn't it spread wildly from September onwards like it does now?
It's just easier to believe they made a mistake in the testing than believe it's the same coronavirus.

Next people will start claiming it was manufactured in a European lab and then transported to China to make sure China got the blame.

It was on the news last year that a school in ROI had the highest rate of absence ever recorded due to illness binnine day last December. Lots of things were cancelled in December as well due to children being ill. In the preschool be here I was working, there were no children available to do their little show as all the children were I'll.
My own son was ill for four weeks and his immune system was shot. Locally people died of pneumonia and pleurisy. I'm not an expert but I personally feel that Wuhan was not the beginning.

Late Dec/early jan in Europe I would buy.

No way we wouldn’t have noticed it if it had been here all autumn & winter with no mitigation in place.
Even if it was much less transmissible at that point it’s difficult to believe that even small numbers of people wouldn’t have ended up in hospital at some point and nobody across Europe would have noticed a disease with a presentation like nothing they’d ever seen before or that it wouldn’t have been flagged up in a post-mortem.

I'm not convinced.

We've all seen how quickly this virus takes off. If it was circulating in Italy in September then the health system would have been overwhelmed last winter. And not only Italy's health system but health systems around Europe and around the world, because everyone was travelling everywhere without a care in the world and we were all rammed up close to each other.

Didn’t they find evidence in France that the first case was November? But it didn’t get here until end of January? Right. I think it’s more of a conspiracy to think it wasn’t here until the end of Jan. The first deaths were in people who had no recent travel history. Therefore they caught it from community spread.

There was a D&V bug which swept the schools last December and loads of kids down with it. Now, it could obviously have been a stomach bug - but those are also common covid symptoms in kids.

I’m almost certain DD had it in February. And that one of my colleagues (who had recently been in China) had it in December 2019. Both had all the symptoms and the colleague ended up in hospital with pneumonia.

@Cheeeeislifenow

It was on the news last year that a school in ROI had the highest rate of absence ever recorded due to illness binnine day last December. Lots of things were cancelled in December as well due to children being ill. In the preschool be here I was working, there were no children available to do their little show as all the children were I'll. My own son was ill for four weeks and his immune system was shot. Locally people died of pneumonia and pleurisy. I'm not an expert but I personally feel that Wuhan was not the beginning.

My family in ROI were all very ill with chest infections that didn’t respond to several doses of antibiotics in December. BIL had five lots in the end, two doses of steroids and was still ill with an uncontrollable cough and tiredness in March. His oxygen sats were very low a couple of weeks after he first got ill and he was touch and go for intensive care. He’d just turned 50 and was clinically overweight but due to regular work medicals and private insurance/we’ll man checks knew he was physically fine otherwise. Cyclist and hiker. He hasn’t fully recovered. He has since been diagnosed with heart disease ( in the late Spring), yet he didn’t have it in September 2019. It’s text book Covid as far as we can all see.

Even if it was much less transmissible at that point it’s difficult to believe that even small numbers of people wouldn’t have ended up in hospital at some point and nobody across Europe would have noticed a disease with a presentation like nothing they’d ever seen before or that it wouldn’t have been flagged up in a post-mortem

But CV mainly affects the elderly and a small number of extra deaths, especially given a benign flu season, may go unnoticed.

Do the very elderly get a PM ?

What i find very odd is that the UK was apparently the last (in Europe) to get CV, yet we are a global hub for air travel and for education, esp from China.

@thecatsatonthewall

Even if it was much less transmissible at that point it’s difficult to believe that even small numbers of people wouldn’t have ended up in hospital at some point and nobody across Europe would have noticed a disease with a presentation like nothing they’d ever seen before or that it wouldn’t have been flagged up in a post-mortem

But CV mainly affects the elderly and a small number of extra deaths, especially given a benign flu season, may go unnoticed.

Do the very elderly get a PM ?

What i find very odd is that the UK was apparently the last (in Europe) to get CV, yet we are a global hub for air travel and for education, esp from China.

Yes. You would have thought we would have had it sooner considering global hub

China Southern does a direct flight from Wuhan to Heathrow. Think on that for a second.

The idea it wasn't here almost as soon as it exploded in Wuhan is laughable. Remember, China stopped internal travel from Wuhan, but they allowed international departures from Wuhan to continue. They also strongly discouraged the closing of overseas borders - even putting immense pressure on NZ not to do so, which was obviously resisted.

Reportedly, during the international military games in October 2019, Wuhan was a ghost town. Many of the athletes became very unwell ... and then returned to the rest of the world.

We certainly had it over Christmas last year, Son in Law went on a Stag Skiing trip to Romania in early December, came back and went down with all the symptoms we now know about. Went through the rest of the family over the next few weeks.

This is really interesting.. we were in Sweden late summer 2019 and a mystery “summer flu” was going around. We all cought it kids only fever and fatigue for a day oh and I got flu like symptoms. I finally got tonsillitis and oh was sick for at least 6 weeks with a cough and loss of taste and smell. It was such a weird symptom we thought back then but it was months before COVID 19. I have always thought it was way to early but now it’s making me think maybe not...

My sons nursery teacher had a weird virus in December; high fever, some cough etc. He’s very young and fit and his doctor couldn’t get a handle on what it was because it was lingering - in the end he was diagnosed with pneumonia via x-ray- but hadn’t reported any breathing difficulties beyond the cough- much as covid patients do.

Around the same time DS and I were ill- he was okay-ish- I was so ill that I couldn’t start back at work in the NY. I had a crashing headache for a week, brain fog, exhaustion and lost some hearing in one ear. I haven’t been 100% “well” since January - heart palpitations, low energy, abdominal pain with no obvious cause and my periods have been WILD, having never previously had a problem.

We’ll never know I guess, whether it was Covid then, or if we’ve had it since, but I’ve heard enough stories from friends in medicine and pharmacology about weird viruses and inexplicable illnesses around Christmas, and teachers with whole classes out with “viruses” before the Christmas hols, that I’d be hugely surprised if it hadn’t been around last winter.

I had the most horrendous cough of my life last November. I was full of aches and the cough was just relentless like no cough I've ever had before. I work alongside many international students including Chinese and Italians in particular. Probably another virus but it was that cough like one I've never had before in my life that makes me wonder. My mum also got very ill with it and was in bed for over a week.

I thought I probably had it in Feb/March last year, but a recent antibody test was negative - I suppose any antibodies might not last that long though.

My daughter was very ill last November. She lost her sense of taste and smell, felt like she had broken a rib from coughing and was eventually put onto antibiotics which didn't really help. Took her a good few weeks to get better again and she is a for a healthy 23 year old. She had met up with a friend a few times who had just come back from a dancing trip to Wuhan where most of the group had had 'flu'.