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?

We had the december 2019 respiratory bug at our school. Its the most absences i have known and staff were very ill - 2 in hospital and a child in hospital. But i dont know. Death rates werent high? If everyone that thinks they had that december bug had covid then some blip would have occurred. Unless there was zero flu going round

The case of the man in France who tested positive in late December states that he had not been abroad so must have picked it up locally, that means it was in France by mid-Dec at the latest, its not out of the realms of possibility that it was there in November.

I certainly don’t think the “first” UK case was in late January which is the official timeline. Not suggesting for a mi Ute that there’s been a cover up, just that it has very likely been in circulation in the UK for at least a month longer than records indicate.

I had the worst illness I've ever had in December 2019 with all the typical covid symptoms, it was horrible. However I then took part in an antibody study and didn't have any covid antibodies detected so looks like it was different virus going round that I caught.

Friend laid low December 2019 quite poorly so saw her Dr who said there is quite a lot of this going around.

MallardtheKing

You could have T cell immunity if you did have it. I’ve read posts on here before saying they had test confirmed covid and then no antibodies when tested.

My DH had a horrible chest infection in Feb 2019. If it had been a year later he would have said it was covid.

I am sure there were a few cases around before it was "official" but not as early as a year before!

We went to Lapland the week before Christmas in 2019 and stayed in a hotel for Chinese and British tourists. Breakfast was an open buffet affair.

Came back to Britain on 22nd December by evening of the 24th we were all very ill with a cough and flu symptoms. I remember breathing in and feeling pain move down my throat and spread across my chest to my lungs. It was the weirdest pain I have ever had and I remember we did very little over that holiday as we were all so ill.

I don’t know if it was Covid but it was the strangest virus I’ve had and knocked me for six.

@MildredPuppy

We had the december 2019 respiratory bug at our school. Its the most absences i have known and staff were very ill - 2 in hospital and a child in hospital. But i dont know. Death rates werent high? If everyone that thinks they had that december bug had covid then some blip would have occurred. Unless there was zero flu going round

Seasonal variations in death rates are normal and don't trigger unusual alarm unless there is a persistent unexplained pattern. Over early winter, a flu type virus and possibly some mortality rate variation (especially in the most vulnerable) wouldn't even have registered as a blip. Largely because nobody was looking anyway. It is believed that first known case ever appears to have been identified on 17th November 2019. It was December 31st 2019 when China confirmed it had dozens of cases in treatment, and January 11th when they recorded the first known Chinese death. Within days of that it had been detected in the USA.

With low cases and nobody looking for anything yet, any unexpected patterns would have gone unrecognised for at least a couple of months. Unusually high periods of mortality from flu are not remotely unusual - the last one of these was 2018!

@Moondust001

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.

I have also read this.

I had flu December 2019 and then COVID symptoms but not test in March 2020. I was on the “Lungs on fire” series of threads and took a long time to recover. Still have some lingering symptoms a year on. I think a lot of people had flu and a few had covid.

I think so my partner is fit and healthy only 38 and he started going funny at work they wouldn't send him home, and within 24 hours he just was so lifeless on the sofa I actually thought he was exaggerating man flu or something!.

After about 3 days of him not being able to get up for more than ten minutes I phoned an ambulance as he was just burning up.

They took him in and was concerned
about a rash he had and all his symptoms but didn't find an answer he was even tested for flu I think.

They said whatever it is it's nasty but viral.
A few days later I came down with it, I was heavily pregnant at the time and the cough was so bad I just wet myself every single time. I had to have 5 days in bed. I would love to have an antibody test.
This was November 2019.

Weirdly enough at the time my husbands work was right next to a Chinese education centre thing and a lot of them had recently come back from Wuhan. within about 6 weeks so many people from there was badly ill but we still hadn't heard of Covid over here.

OP

I'm clinically vulnerable and was warned by my doctor in early Jan 2020 that there was a "strange pneumonia" going round.

I think it's been here since maybe October 2019.

2019 seems so long ago. It's hard for me to get my head round it was this long ago it started.

I feel like reading this thread I've only now realised 2020 was a washout in many respects.

My teenager fell ill with a mystery virus in December 2019 which he was ill with on and off for months . He started with a sore throat and flu like aches , extreme fatigue then developed a Scarlett fever like rash everywhere , right down to his palms , his temperature stayed at 38 for two weeks, gp plus a and e all drew an absolute blanks and had no idea what it was , DS never really recovered and is now told it was most likely covid , his older brother had a flu like illness at the same time that floored him . Ten year old Dd fell ill with a severe cold in late Jan that ended up with her being off school for two weeks and she then developed in the feb , blistered red fingers and had a cough which wouldn’t clear , it was only when I fell ill with covid symptoms in early March that the gp suggested that dd most likely had covid

I am convinced I had it end of jan 20. I also think patients had it. We had about 3 really poorly women who tested negative for flu but ended up in HDU. Quite a few staff had the cough for weeks. I was given antibiotics as my chest was so bad but nothing helped.

It could well have been here in some cases for a few months earlier than reported.

However, at the time, they were only testing symptomatic and likely cases in people who were admitted to hospital - and even amongst those cases, the majority did not test positive, so there were clearly also a lot of other nasty infections going around at the same time.

So some of the early cases might well have gone undetected, but some of the people who assume the probably had it might well have had one of those other nasty bugs.

I had what was described as a "mystery respiratory virus" over Christmas 2019. Never been so ill in my life, was far, far worse than when I had flu. At one point as I was laying in a pool of sweat, hallucinating, coughing so much my throat bled, my partner was on the verge of calling an ambulance. Took me until the start of lockdown to recover, my heart rate would jump to over 130 when barely doing anything and my trainer had me set an alarm on my Garmin to warn us of it was going too high.

I had a horrid chest infection in feb 20, felt so tired afterwards for 2 weeks, passed it onto 2 people but I have had an anti body test which was negative...am not sure whether it was covid or not. I took mine on a ski trip and brought it home 🤷🏼‍♀️

Has to have been. My nanna was in hospital early jan with severe covid like symptoms, full resp ward all the same. Visiting with no distancing, masks etc.

Mum and stepdad started a week later with same symptoms, and my grandma a week after that. She coughed so much she's damaged her vocal chords.

Also remember a few of the mums talking in the school yard around late jan mentioning that a lot of kids had caught this 'awful cough' going round.

I was on those threads last year.

We had a mystery respiratory virus in December 19 and one of my doctors saw me about ten days after it started in me. They questioned me quite closely about symptoms and how high the fevers were. I knew later that they'd seen quite a few patients presenting with the same.

Then hey presto, Covid comes along. I'm seeing that doctor again next month and I'm going to ask them their thoughts on whether it was covid, on my medical notes it just says unknown respiratory illness.

Definitely remember a horrendous bug going around my DC’s schools and DS2 having a temperature for 10 days. GP was flummoxed.

I believe I had Covid from late Feb and was ill for 4 months with secondary infections. GP’s receptionist said it couldn’t be Covid as I hadn’t been to China, and I was given amoxicillin. Only in June did they say it could’ve been that. Had a lot of the classic symptoms, inc awful chest & breathlessness, sense of smell switched off, tinnitus etc.

Late Feb 2020, that should be. But it was obviously here by then so not surprising. The bug at the schools was winter 2019-20.

I've just remembered something else from when DS and lots of his classmates had this mystery virus in December 2019 - he wouldn't eat properly for a good few weeks afterward because he said everything tasted either horrible or of nothing at all.

Coincidentally I've just come across this article on Twitter which may interest those on this thread: www.wired.co.uk/article/first-covid-deaths-europe?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter

My DH, who rarely gets I'll, had a bad 'cold' in Feb 20, temperature, achy, exhausted which he passed onto me.

I had a temperature, a cough that kept me awake for 3 nights, it was so constant I could hardly breathe. I was ill enough to not be able to collect the DC from school & had to call DH home from work. I've only had to do that twice in 12 years. I also had diarrhoea & kept complaining everything was tasteless, I switched to a stronger brand of tea etc. When I got over it I remember saying that it was not a normal cold, but didn't last long enough to be flu.

My DF was hospitalised 13 days into the first lockdown but had been sick since the week before lockdown, so realistically he caught it in the first or second week of March. At that time there were less than 50 confirmed cases in my whole county, and it's a big county with low population density. My DF never left the county, was retired and went to a handful of places. Nobody will ever convince me that it wasn't absolutely rife in the UK in January and February.