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?

I kind of think the whole thing is the 2020 version of man-flu.

No, it's not JUST a cold - it's FLU! becomes

No, it's not JUST a cold - it's COVID!

I guess whatever makes you feel better :)

It was on the French news about six months ago that authorities had been examining sewage and found Covid in faeces dating back to Oct/Nov 2019. So yes, it was in Europe at the end of 2019.

We think its been in our family. MIL had a really really bad cough from November 2019 to Jan 2020. She had tests done in Jan 2020 and it was then it was discovered she had COPD, but the tests also said she had a really nasty chest infection, but nothing to say what it was. She also complained about not being able to taste anything at the time either.

DD1 had a bad cough from Christmas 2019 until Feb half term 2020 and we kept DD2 off school for a week as she had a high temp - nothing else wrong with her so we just kept her off. I was thinking about taking her to the doctors the next day, but her temp had come down by then (this was the Friday)

I'm not saying these were Covid, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were. MIL caught it off her sister who had been on a cruise then passed it onto my DDs possibly. We know DH's uncle (the husband of MIL sister) had antibodies back in 2020 as he was tested while in hospital for something.

My mum had a stem cell transplant in December 2018 and didn't come home because she had a respitory illness (that got treated with one of the drugs they've trialed for covid). My dad got it, and after seeing them for a weekend I got it in February - I had the fevers, the coughing, and the exhaustion - and I was ill for more than three weeks , plus I couldn't shake the cough I remember texting my dh three weeks later saying my chest couldn't cope with walking up the hill to the local shop. But tons of my 'mum friends' had it too, back in February.

So either covid was around and bad a long time before we thought, or it was something else. It feels like we'll never know.

2019, obviously

Absolutely certain I had it in December 2019. I had been in hospital the week before, and then came down with a terrible cough and fever. I took my partner’s asthma inhaler as I couldn’t breathe and I have never done that (I get a chest infection every few years and this was bad in comparison)

The rest of the family became ill on February with classic symptoms of COVID, and I was the only one who didn’t get whatever it was. In my mind it was COVID and I already had antibodies.

A friend of mine had a basically incurable, properly hacking cough and pneumonia in December. Awful lethargy. Basically all the covid symptoms. Took rounds and rounds of steroids and antibiotics to clear it (and tbh, I don't think they really did, it just got better by itself after about a month). She'd been to a party with someone who had been skiing to Italy a few days before. Everyone at the party came down with the same thing to varying degrees. We're convinced it was covid!

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"

I do actually believe that it was circulating in the UK earlier and more widely than recognised back at the start of 2020.

However, I believe (but may be wrong) that the sewage sample survey is still pre-publication and not peer reviewed and it has been widely suggested they could have confused covid with a different coronavirus. The satellite image and search engine study is also not peer reviewed and has many holes, not least that when the correct Chinese search terms were used, there was actually a decrease in some of the search terms. It would also seem to be disproved by this study. Which, to be fair, may be Chinese state propaganda...

DD then 17 had an awful virus in Nov 2019. Her face swelled up for a day and she looked like she had been stung by a bee. Not a typical Covid symptom but she’s never had that with another virus. She spent a whole day crying in bed because she felt so awful and could barely breathe. When she went back to college she had lots of coughing fits bad enough that she had to leave the class and teachers would come out to check on her because she sounded so awful

I had that in January, but had an antibody test in July (privately)- negative.
I do think it was here earlier than is officially said, though. Must have been circulating for a while I reckon before the first people started getting really unwell.

@halcyondays

Lots of schools closed in late November 2019 due to illness, ours didn’t but had unusually high numbers off ill. One Head said it was a combination of norovirus and a flu like illness and he’d never seen so many off sick before.

I can't remember the year, maybe 2010, that exactly this happened to schools local to me. There were frantic discussions about whether the Christmas play would have to be cancelled. My DC who had never been off school before and never since was sent home ill. It's not that unusual.

As @bookworm1632 says there would be evidence by now if the numbers here were all covid. Does anyone know why it's not being found?

DD then 13 months fell ill in early January 2020. We ended up rushing her to A&E because she passed out due to a sudden fever and rash all over her body. We were admitted straight away and she was given oxygen, but it took three hours for the consultant to get round the ward to see us. She apologised and said that they’d been slammed for the previous few weeks because of a ‘horrendous respiratory virus’ that was doing the rounds.

In early February, a similar thing whipped through my class (primary teacher), starting with a boy whose dad works away in China during the week. At one point I had 17/31 children off with fevers and coughs, and several more ill but in and dosed up on Calpol. The other classes were hit too, but none as badly as ours.

Interestingly, that particular class were the only ones to get away with no positive cases or isolations during the autumn term of 2020. Could be a coincidence, but I’d like to know for sure - I’m pregnant and teach in a small, unventilated room so would be relieved to know I have antibodies already!

My mil had lung cancer but was doing well. Getting back out in society in feb 2020. She suddenly got a fever worsened cough. Low 02 sats Nausea etc. 2 days later she died.

She was never tested and it was put down to sepsis but I'm very suspicious as we all had a similar virus around the same Time

I reckon we had it mid December 2019. Someone we are in close contact with travels abroad and came home, a week later was really ill, coughing, temperature etc. Couple of weeks later, I nearly phoned an ambulance for ds as I couldn’t get his temp down, he couldn’t catch his breath for coughing and his chest hurt so much. Couple of our friends who had been in contact with ds and I were poorly with pneumonia type symptoms, but antibiotics didn’t help. I was coughing from mid December until well after Easter. Throughout the build up to lockdown I remember saying to everyone around me ‘it’s not a new cough’ as everyone was terrified I had COVID and was going to pass it on. I’d probably done that in December though.

It all fits in. I appreciate the death rates didn’t start building until March, but we have no idea about variants and if it mutated again to give us a higher chance of death. And we will never know either, Which annoys me slightly as I’d have liked to know if ds And I had it, for interest.

DIL came down with it Xmas Eve she had cleaned an Airbnb after overseas visitors, was hospitalised New year's Eve, staff were baffled. DS and flatmates in fact most of the students in his halls in Leeds went down with it February 2020 . It swept through like a forest fire he said.

The problem is, surely all the Christmas mixing etc would have made it spread like wildfire in December 2019? I'm wondering if there was just a bad virus going around in Dec/Jan that year?

I was poorly in Feb/March 20 with high temp and flu like symptoms. Hacking cough and full body shakes.

@ImAlrightThanx

The problem is, surely all the Christmas mixing etc would have made it spread like wildfire in December 2019? I'm wondering if there was just a bad virus going around in Dec/Jan that year?

Covid 19 strains have become more contagious with each mutation. So I'm led to believe.

In Dec 2019 I had what started as a bad cold, then turned into an awful cough and a slight fever. I had a few days off work and the fever eased but I had a feeling of a sore chest / pressure on my chest on exertion for weeks afterwards, which I had never experienced in my life before. Hadn’t travelled to Asia but had commuted daily on packed trains in London, so I assume I picked it up there.

However... it didn’t seem to be contagious... nobody else in my household or workplace got it.

I had a full house of symptoms at the end of Nov 2019 going into December.

GP ran blood tests as she said it wasn't a chest infection. Took a few weeks to get better. I had to sleep sitting up as breathing was a little hard for a while. Never did find out what it was for sure .

A colleague had a hacking cough when she came back after Christmas on 2/3 Jan 2020. She felt fine in herself but I had to send her home as the rest of the team complained they couldn't hear themselves think! But none of the rest of us caught it.

I do think it was here earlier. But I also believe there was a hideous virus, with extremely similar symptoms, doing the rounds last winter which was not COVID but has lots of people thinking it was.

I had all the classic symptoms in February 2019 - ended up back on asthma meds for the first time in years, exhausted, worst cough - never felt so awful and the sickest I’ve ever been. Was absolutely convinced it was COVID (except the timing was too soon). Had some good friends with same symptoms, also thought it was COVID.

Anyway - got antibody tested, and it wasn’t COVID. I was quite disappointed. My friends also tested negative.

So whilst I do think it was here sooner I think it was in much smaller numbers and most people who think they had it - just didn’t. Otherwise the peak of the pandemic would have come sooner surely?

Thing is though there are lots of nasty viruses. December 2019 for example my little one was one of many children with RSV in hospital. I’d never heard of it until I had children. There will be many more viruses that cause nasty respiratory symptoms. Sometimes these threads read as if covid is the only virus causing these symptoms.

Nov 2019 my friend sent me a text ‘daughter is in kings, in a coma on a ventilator. She’s got some kind of flu, they don’t know what it is. She can’t breathe on her own’
Friends daughter was 20 at the time, worked in a busy tourist pub in Borough market (tourist hotspot in London) she had a flu type virus, within a few days of feeling ill they called an ambulance because she couldn’t breathe properly.
At the hospital she was kept in a separate room because nobody could work out what was wrong with her ( family visitors had to wear PPE in the room with her)
She was in hospital for 2 weeks.
Friend’s Dad felt ill about 3 weeks later, they found him dead in bed (pm gave cause of death as pneumonia - he had visited the 20yr old in hospital )
This Summer 20yr old (now 21) had a minor heart attack caused by blood clot.
Nobody has ever confirmed she had covid (nobody had heard of it at the time) looking back in everything that happened it seems very likely that’s what she had & it’s what grandad died of