wondering if the start of the UK pandemic was earlier than officially disclosed?

[firthy85]

hello. just seen a zombie thread from 1 january last year with people talking about having this awful hacking cough, lethargy and vomiting. posters saying that they had been suffering with this virus since october/november 2019 but was just put down to a normal seasonal chest infection. when the media started to report that coronavirus had come to the UK and we saw the first cases wondering if any of the posters over on that other thread or in fact you, got a test when you started to hear about it?

It is likely it was here earlier than we originally thought - they’ve already dated the first known case in France to late December after they retested samples, whereas they originally thought it was in late January.

I had an awful cough and lethargy back in mid-February 2020 after a work colleague returned from a ski-trip in the Alps (she’s childless so went before half term). She came back with a cough and feeling awful but put it down to too much booze etc on her holiday. The illness went through our office within 2 weeks with everyone needing a few days off at one point or another. DH caught it from me and was bedridden for 3 days with a really bad fever - he was soaking the sheets with sweat every night.

I’m totally prepared to believe it was just a nasty virus, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Covid.

The French case - www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52526554

We had a family member die n November 19 now of a mystery pneumonia like illness that now is a suspected case.

It has definitely been here longer. How could we go from a couple of cases to people running for cover in just a few weeks? It’s infectious but as we now now it’s not infectious enough to do that in a few weeks.

Reformedcharacters how is it being investigated? My MIL died on Christmas Day 2019 of pneumonia and had got back from a cruise around the world the week before. I am now convinced she had COVID

could have just been that half a dosen people came down with a nasty chest infection but it seems just too much of a coincidense

Iamsodonewith2020

Doctors contacted the family. Not heard anything since. I did read somewhere that the WHO were asking countries to examine cases from October 2019.

Someone I know had very similar symptoms in January 2020 - they had been skiing beforehand....

Absolutely!

I am convinced covid was in my DC school December 2019. Almost half the school were off at the same time. They very nearly had to close completely.

My Dad came down with a very nasty respiratory illness in Jan 2020. He lives in the South West and hadn't been abroad or even out of the South West for a very long time. He had visited a local hospital. He was in hospital twice last year with this, became very poorly was put on oxygen and even now is no where near back to himself. He still has very low energy and struggles to get his breath frequently, prior to this he was very fit and active for his age. The doctors have refused to acknowledge it could be covid due to it not being here in Jan 2020 He was tested for it the second time he went in which was 3 months after he came down with it which came back negative. He has had all of the classic covid symptoms. So yes I do believe that it was around here well before March last year.

My nan died of pneumonia from flu type virus on boxing day 2019. It spread like wildfire in her care home. I'm convinced it was covid.
Dd then 2 was very ill in feb 2020 with covid symptoms. I took her to doctor twice and very nearly called an ambulance and spent 75 quid on a vapour machine to ease her coughing at night. I'm not usually a bother the doctor type of parent. Also convinced that was covid.

My DH is a funeral director and he brought it to the attention of our local authority that he had higher than normal amount of pnuemonia deaths in late 2019/start of 2020 but AFAIK nothing has been done

DH and I both had a flu type thing with excessive coughing, so much so that our sides ached. Awake all night coughing. November 2019. He maintains it can’t have been Covid as too early but I am not sure, it was like nothing I‘d had before.

I work in a primary school and Dec 2019 the staff and kids were wiped out by something. Some staff were off ages and on steroids, antibiotics etc. We had to send a letter out about keeping kids at home with sore throats, vomiting. We haven't had a single staff case (well apart from me who has been on maternity a year!) and only 1 child which makes us wonder. I mean it could have been another virus of course but does seem odd. Other schools in the town had the same problem and some had to close due to so much asbense

@reformedcharacters

We had a family member die n November 19 now of a mystery pneumonia like illness that now is a suspected case.

It has definitely been here longer. How could we go from a couple of cases to people running for cover in just a few weeks? It’s infectious but as we now now it’s not infectious enough to do that in a few weeks.

We do know from the genomic studies that Covid was seeded into the U.K. at least 1300 times in the few weeks at the end of Feb/start of March and there was no advice other than wash your hands at the time so it would have spread quite easily.

There probably are a few isolated cases from Nov/Dec but I’d imagine that most of those were in travellers or people who had been close contacts of travellers. The variant in Asia at the time turned out not to spread very well in Europe so a lot of those infection lines died out. It wasn’t until there was a mutation in January that it started to spread like wildfire in Europe.

Sore throats, vomiting, temps etc*

Yes, I did. I was ill throughout December and the beginning of January 2020, and was eventually hospitalised. A doctor has since told me it was likely covid.

We went to the Tutankhamen exhibition in London dec 19 and our bus home was delayed for hours. I swear we picked up something at Victoria coach station, it floored us until mid February

There was definitely a terrible virus strong before Christmas 19 which hung around into feb. I remember at Christmas 20 out of 30 kids in my daughters class were off! Then in the feb we did a dance show and the older kids were all really rough. The adults seemed to escape lightly the time though. We look back now and wonder if it was an early variant because we were told at the time it wasn't flu 🤷‍♀️

RafaIsTheKingOfClay

Our family member had been in hospital before the pneumonia with an unconnected ailment they hadn’t been anywhere or near anybody that had.

I’m fairly convinced I had it end Jan/early Feb and one of the docs I saw commented that he’d seen a few people like me and there seemed to be a particularly debilitating strain of virus doing the rounds.

I had flu in oct/nov of 2019 that developed into a horrid chest infection. If I'd got it any later I would have been convinced it was covid. I was far poorlier then than when I actually had covid last month.

But

It was just too early. Plus, my daughter was the only one of us that had had the flu vaccine and she was the only one of us that didn't get sick.

Remember, flu is horrid and usually kills many many thousands every year.

My dh had something in Feb that I think could have been COVID - cough and temperature - me and 3dc did not catch it (or did and were asymptomatic).

The school my children attend, and I work at, was affected in December as mentioned above - a third of the children and a quarter of the staff off at the same time with high temperatures, headaches, coughing, vomiting etc. My son had such a high temperature that he was hallucinating and we still refer to it in school as the great plague of Anytown High.

Without giving out tmi, it is possible to detect the virus in sewage samples. Both Spain and Italy have detected the virus in samples from summer 2019. Harvard University researchers have shown unusually high hospital activity around Wuhan in the summer of 2019, and tracked the Chinese equivalent of Google showing large numbers of searches about "flu" and "coughs / fevers". The symptoms are almost exactly the same as flu, and the same groups are vulnerable - it would be unusual for scientists or doctors seeing lots of people presenting with flu symptoms to be thinking "I really must investigate to see if it's an entirely new virus that nobody has ever heard of before" until they are observing large numbers of highly unusual things.

I was extremely ill with flu over late December and January - the worst illness I have ever had. Hacking cough, fever, exhaustion, the lot. In other words, I had "flu". I thought my symptoms extreme but not outside the realm of possibility. This was the only illness I have had since 2009. In June I had an antibody test and had Covid antibodies. Did I have Covid at Christmas? Or was it a later asymptomatic case? Nobody can say, but I know what I think.