'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 full of aches and the cough was just relentless like no cough I've ever had before.

Reading that, I've just remembered how much my body hurt from that coughing last Nov. Hacking hard, dry retching on the floor, unable to catch breath, and burst blood vessels around my eyes. It was really quite awful. 1 star, would not do again.

Interesting, however aren’t there different strains of Coronavirus. Don’t really know very much about it but had a quick google and as we know symptoms vary, there are MERS and SARS strains. Apparently 6 different strains of SARS-COV-2.

I remember Disinfectants like Dettol had listed coronavirus on their bottles before the pandemic, there were a couple of conspiracies flying around at the time but I assume the SARS Covid is a more aggressive, mutated strain possibly?

Although we went to Portugal in October and MIL had a horrific cold/cough that she didn’t seem to shift for about 6 weeks around Christmas, suppose we will never really know with the initial cover up and lack of testing.

I've said this before but I'm convinced I had it at the start of February. At the time the focus was on people who had travelled which is why I dismissed it. It came out of nowhere - sore throat, fever, a cough that seemed to last weeks and I ached, particularly around my ribs and in my chest. I just felt awful. It was only a little while after that my mum confessed that she was quite worried about me because I sounded so awful and it seemed to drag on. It was a good month before I felt like myself again - usually I shake that sort of thing off quite quickly which was why my mum was concerned.

If it was so widespread that loads of people had it here in the autumn/winter of 2019 then wouldn't it be easy to look back at the chest X-rays or CT scans of hospitalised patients with pneumonia and find some evidence that way? I recall reading at one point that the distinctive 'ground glass' appearance seen in lungs was deemed as reliable as an antigen test. Surely people have already checked historical X-ray records?

Surely people have already checked historical X-ray records?

They did indeed. Mid November 2019.

www.nbcnews.com/news/world/new-evidence-race-find-france-s-covid-19-patient-zero-n1207871

I think there’s a strong chance I had it in January/ February 2020 (although I tested negative for antibodies in June). I started feeling a bit tired and off at new year, I had a week off sick from work just as the kids went back to work. I went to the doctors who said it was a virus but gave me antibiotics for “moving crackles” in my lungs. There was no suggestion that I needed to be off work more than the 7 days self certified so I went back but literally worked and slept, I went to bed straight after work. My kids missed their hobbies as I was too ill to take them. We ate lots of takeaways. Nobody investigated what caused my illness.
I had another course of antibiotics about 3 weeks later as I had developed a lower lobe consolidation. I had a full blood count which showed a raised CRP. I was better by the end of February, the cough lasted about 6-8 weeks.
So if it was COVID, nobody would know because nobody tried to find out. (If it wasn’t COVID then other nasty viruses also exist). This is normal surely? As in, it would be undetected for a good while as it’s considered that you’re suffering a normal seasonal viral infection.

I had all the symptoms over Christmas 2019. dd got sick first but aside from 1 day of feeling bad with a low fever and cough she recovered in a couple of days and was back at school by the end of the week. She had confirmed flu earlier in the year but this was completely different. Then I got sick with what I said at the time was the worst cold of my life, with an upset stomach which was weird for a cold. It even messed up my periods afterwards and I ended up going on the pill to regulate them. Ive read things since about covid and menstrual cycles, but my googling at the time came up with nothing. I think there's a decent chance it was covid. We live in the US in a city that has tourism as its main industry.

GreenOwlBlue... they did retrospectively look back at chest xrays in France for potential covid cases, and found the earliest case from 16th November, plus 12 in December & 16 in January. Not sure if xray reviews have been carried out in other countries.

www.rfi.fr/en/france/20200520-scans-show-french-patients-were-sick-with-covid-19-in-mid-november-doctors-say-colmar-haut-rhin

I’m generally quite sceptical when people say they are sure they had it pre March.
People were ill with bad viruses pre Covid!
But the more I hear, the more I wonder and wish we knew more.
We definitely had it in March (lab confirmed). I also had a horrible thing I got from work Jan/Feb where the inside of my nose felt really inflamed. But I think that was something else. Unless I got it first and passed to family. Hmm.

A friend of mine is convinced he had it last autumn. He was totally floored by what appeared (at the time) to be a bad case of the flu. He said he's never felt so ill in his life, and he was so rough one night, his wife wanted to call an ambulance.
It came on a week after he returned from a work event in Italy, which was attended by people from all over the world. Since then it has transpired that quite a few other attendees were ill in the weeks following the event.

My DD had an awful, hacking cough last October for 6-7 weeks. She would be ok for a few days then have severe vomiting, bringing up chunks of I don't know what. She had a temperature at times as well. Dr not interested so went private and they prescribed an inhaler. DH and I very ill in January with vomiting, aches, diarrhoea, I got admitted to hospital with dehydration as was pregnant and then DD started coughing again a week later. Again it lasted for another 6-7 weeks, she also had ear ache and conjunctivitis and temperature, fobbed off again by doctor but then one day she went really floppy and distant and we got an appointment and she was given antibiotics and she improved almost immediately

I’m not convinced either. I don’t think lots of children being ill is evidence either as they at egg largely asymptotic.

I went to a small family festival in the UK in late May/early June 2019 and something very similar to covid did the rounds, it ripped through the whole camp and at least half (or more) of the 400+ people got ill while there or just after returning home - it was a week long event. I have never felt so ill in all my life, crazy high temp, headache and whole body skin pain, chills and it hurt to walk as clothes hurt my skin as I moved. Very sore throat and then cough which was hard to shake afterwards for a good few weeks. The crushing fatigue lasted for around 8 weeks after. I passed it on to an older relative who took months to be back to normal again after it and says their lungs aren't quite right now since getting it.

It would never have occurred to me that was a version of Covid, but reading this thread I suppose it is possible. It was a horrible illness whatever it was.

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

I’m not talking about the number of extra deaths. I’m talking about the clinical presentation of those ill enoigh to be in hospital or die from it.
Milder cases might be mistaken for flu, but it really isn’t a respiratory disease like flu.

I can’t see any reasonable argument that it could have been circulating across the globe since September and only China would have noticed and they covered it up.

He was totally floored by what appeared (at the time) to be a bad case of the flu.

So it was probably the flu, then. Real flu is deadly.

I can’t see any reasonable argument that it could have been circulating across the globe since September and only China would have noticed and they covered it up

They didnt cover it up - they just didn't tell anyone and a few doctors went missing until they were ready to lockdown and contain it in China. At which point they mysteriously changed their tune from "DONT CLOSE THE BORDERS" to "awww, yeah, we've closed our border, good luck guys, byeeeeee".

I remember thinking it was strange when in October/November 2019 I had three friends in hospital with pneumonia. All completely separate, they didn't know each other.

All in their 30's. Two had flown home from Australia via Hong Kong.

My husband was ill in January - had 2 lots of steroids and 2 lots of antibiotics and actually took to his bed for several days which is unheard of. Several of his colleagues were the same. They work at an airport with daily contact with planes and passengers. He has worked all the way through since then and not been ill since. We are hoping he has been exposed to covid and now got some immunity.

One thing to remember when looking at 'early' cases, is that in Jan/Feb in UK, people were tested only idpf they had symptoms (and were probably really quite ill) and had been in contact with a traveller or a known case.

And still over 80% (might have been higher?) were negative.

There was definitely another nasty lurgy going round last winter. Possibly human coronavirus OC-43

The express store i worked at was savaged by a virus the same last Xmas. I always wondered if It was covid I had especially now as I’m still unwell and by looking at the boards on here I’m wondering if I have long covid and it isn’t my iron levels

@DobbyTheHouseElk - He was tested for all known coronavirus but all negative, yet the hospital said he had a coronavirus.

Are you sure? There are hundreds of coronaviruses of four main types. I didn't know there was a way to test for all coronaviruses, and why would the hospital do that? They'd have thought he had a chest infection or pneumonia/pleurisy, etc. Also, how would they have been able to diagnose his illness as a new coronavirus without doing lab tests? And if they found it was anew coronavirus, they'd have had to flag this to the DoH, surely? I'd take his take with a pinch of salt.

My DH attended a conference in San Francisco with a number of Chinese delegates last November. The Chinese guy in the hotel room next to him had an horrendous cough, so bad it kept my DH awake as he could hear him coughing through the wall of the hotel room. He shared a lift a few times with this guy. He came back with an awful cough, fever, chills etc which he then passed on to me and our oldest son.
Since then he has told people that he believes we had Covid. To be honest I have laughed at him and said he was being ridiculous but as time goes by I’m not so sure. Our hospital Dr daughter has recently had Covid and we didn’t catch it from her despite isolating together with no social distancing at all. Of course there are other explanations and I don’t have proof because no one knew Covid existed at the time but studies like this make me wonder if it was circulating earlier and hadn’t got into care homes and hospitals in large enough numbers to make the number of deaths cause alarm.

There was certainly an unusually awful virus circulating from Sept 2019. It could have been Covid-19 (perhaps an earlier pre-mutation version which was less infectious), or it could have been something else entirely, which masked early cases of Covid because people thought it was just a severe/unusual version of this other virus.

I'm so glad more people are starting to question this.

There's been quite a few of us on here convinced we had it Dec last year and we've had such a slating from people calling us ridiculous and stupid.

If and I'm saying IF it turns out that it was here earlier then I'd really hope people will start to question things more.

It's not going to be unusual to find corona virus circulating at any time and, as others have said, there was a nasty virus circulating late summer last year, late summer flu isn't uncommon, it probabaly was a coronavirus, could even have been the precursor to covid-19. But it may be a stretch to say it was its first wave.

The more information we can get on all of them, how they progress the better.

But we don't need to read anything into any of the data just yet... that will take some years.

What would we do differently now if we found an earlier outbreak? We would know more, but that wouldn't change what we are doing now. It would be useful for future research, future response plans, future vaccines etc.