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?

Yes. I think it was here much earlier. I was seriously seriously ill end of Jan/start of Feb 2020 with such an awful virus. Was hospitalised twice as I couldn't breathe and the amount of steroids I had was scary.

Doctors told me at the time that it was a seriously nasty 'flu-like virus' but didn't actually specify that I had flu itself. It was awful.
I can't remember a good few days of it where I was so ill that I just slept but I do remember having a very horrible thought which was that I thought I was dying. I honestly was scared of falling asleep on two of the days.

I couldn't eat, sleep, breathe properly. Had the most horrendously Hugh temperatures and was soaked through with sweat. I lost control if bodily functions and at one point I was shaking so hard from the fever that I broke a tooth.

Sounds pretty Covid-like.

A FB friend of mine in Wales was adamant he had Covid back in September 2019.

It’s strange isn’t it and we might never know. The symptoms are so like the flu, so it maybe that people had seasonal flu. For me the flu was horrific as I never get ill and the cough was something I’d never experienced before, I even sprained a rib muscle. I wasn’t ill with covid, just a headache, thankfully.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay
I find your post very interesting.
I caught Covid in mid Dec 2019 in Asia ..
Doctors were absolutely bewildered initially kept saying it was something like they had never seen .
Subsequently my antibodies test was apparently “slightly different “ to what they were seeing locally . I guess that’s the variant difference you are talking about .

I’ve never been so ill ..
medical staff were absolutely first class .

How many of us visited a gp, went to A and E with covid before we knew what it was? None of our gps have caught it despite being exposed long before we knew it was covid.

My gp did go off with the thing I had, whether it was covid or not, as well as 5 of my team.

I think so, yes. I don't think it was necessarily hidden from us though - just that nobody really connected the dots about a new virus early enough. There must have been a good bit of it in our ecosystem for the February half term to have really exploded it.

My husband certainly had it in February. He was at a conference in Germany and was distraught about a unrelenting cough, temp and breathlessness and had to leave early. He's never sick. The kids probably had it too that same week, I also got sick but bounced back very quickly (and took a lot of my Beclometasone inhaler at the first hint).

Survey of 700 businesses, 70% say passports not necessary:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-56647673

Oops wrong thread

Dd's class had 2/3 of the pupils off one week with a cough and a temperature... in 2007.

If you think it was rife before March, can you explain the lack of excess deaths?

I think it was around earlier, however not in the numbers that people tend to imply. The death figures speak for themselves here.

There was an article about a choir on the BBC. One of the members had come back from China in January, and one by one they had gone down with a nasty cough and a temperature, and loss of taste and smell. When I first read the article it sounded very likely.
However in July they did an antibody test and found all were negative, and although you can lose antibodies quickly, and you do get false negatives, it is exceedingly unlikely they all were negative if they had had it.
BBC article

I attended a family funeral in late Dec 19. There were attendees there who had flown in from all over the world, including Wuhan (FIL worked there for a while). Within a week or so, loads of us were ill, two ended up in hospital here and one lady was admitted after returning to the US. I have never felt so ill - all the classic covid symptoms. Me and my kids all developed nasty secondary infections. We were on seven different antibiotics between us at once point as they weren't improving things much and I was on steroids and an inhaler. We just kept getting told it was a nasty respiratory bug and there was loads of it around.

After recovering from that, covid appeared all over the news. I became a hermit long before lockdown as I thought covid would finish me off after the 'bug' I'd just had! My GP was adamant that it couldn't possibly have been covid as we hadn't travelled to China (despite me saying I'd been in contact with people from there!) and if Covid had been prevalent here back then there would have been a lot more deaths. So who knows? I'm glad I got my vaccine last week though!

I also think I may have had it in Jan 2020. Had the worst cough of my life - could barely get a breath for over a week. Alongside that was a fever, no appetite and just general lethargy. I remember waking up in the mornings drenched in sweat, and then shivering an hour afterwards. Never felt so ill.

My children potentially had covid early January 2020. Fevers and a nasty hacking cough. Ended up taking them to the doctor and she said there was a nasty virus with a really bad cough doing the rounds that she had never seen before in her career (I'm 31 and she was my childhood doctor).

I've seen this doctor this year and she
says they probably had covid.

Myself and several acquaintances had terrible colds/flu-like viruses in December 2019 and early January 2020 - mine lasted about a week but I'd say it was more of a typical cold than typical covid.

I was ill again in the second week of March 2020 - a mild cough and sore throat, a mild fever, and feeling really achey/lethargic for about 3 days. One of my colleagues was similar and we both self-isolated. I started to get a snotty nose on the 4th day but it wasn't 'runny' like a usual cold, and in my experience a cold usually gives me a runny nose on the first day!

My entire staff were off work late 2019/early 2020 with what now seem to be obvious covid symptoms. I ran the office single handed and then became ill in February 2020 (covid toe type bruises, then a temperature, horrendous headache and utter exhaustion).

One of my staff was hospitalised for a month. They just couldn't work out what was wrong, decided it was a viral pneumonia. She nearly died and was off got three months in total. Her gp is convinced it was covid - December 2019.

My friend is a GP. He saw a patient who had just returned from China in December 2019 who had covid type symptoms. His whole family them became ill over Christmas 2019, loss of sense of taste etc. He is also convinced that it was covid.

Pre 2019 I was mildly asthmatic but hadn't used an inhaler in years bar one chest infection in 2015.

Between October 2019 and march 2020 I was in a and e 3 times with atypical pneumonia (nothing obvious on chest but high infection markers in bloods and great difficulty breathing) and needed 4 rounds of oral steroids, 5 rounds of antibiotics, plus nebuliser in a and e. My chest was awful for weeks after and I am still on a high steroid inhaler daily (upped over the winter following another chest infection - swabbed negative).

I had an antibody test over the summer but the sample was lost and I've since had two vaccinations so I'll never know, but i do wonder. There was certainly a huge amount of respiratory bugs around pre pandemic , even for winter.

well you could, some antibody tests can distinguish antibodies from the disease that aren't apparent in those who only had the vaccine, but after this length of time, you might not have them anyway.

But there were so many other viruses going around - most of the symptomatic, hospitalised, very ill people still tested negative - so there is also a high probability that people had one of those other very nasty bugs. A small proportion might well have had Covid, like the very small proportion that tested positive on the tests at that time, but many others probably had something else equally bad (or worse, from the sounds of these stories, especially with children who don't tend to get Covid too badly), but different.

I was on the covid lungs threads back in March last year. I think it was around earlier as well. I work in a primary school early Jan loads of children off in various classes with the cough and temperature . especially my class Husband best friend who is very fit ill in January had paramedics called twice with being unable to breathe Never been ill in 15years and had classic signs. Mum ill with the same symtoms early January, and took her ages to recover, Husband ill with same symtoms late Jan and early Feb did not fully recover and in bed for two weeks when really ill. I went down with it just after Feb half term and my focus group in the classroom all went down within a week and spread to their families. Mine started as a cough then a sore throat in which I lost my voice and then after seven days ending up in bed for two weeks with all the classic symtoms and then long covid. Husband taken to hospital 2 weeks after I was intiialy ill and released after checkups They now think this was long covid relapse as he has underlying health problems and was on the sheiding list. Generally ripped around my class and the people I sat near in the staff room,. Doctor has confirmed I probably had it and husband cnsultants have also said that he has probalvy had it,
Our school has only had to close one bubble and since we have been back and that was a positive case of one child who's parent is a medic but the rest of the bubble not a sign. However one member of staff and a parent in my class tested positive in Nov and Dec One recovered after a week the other has got long covid. Children in my class except when having to isolate as a precaution ( such as a holiday when permitted or a new baby arriving or testing because having a symtom or close contact) have not been ill at all this year and I have the same class as I went up with them. We have been running on really good attendance figures Strange as last year our year group had the worst figures by far in the school.

If only the world had been alerted earlier by China 🙈🙈

I’ve often wondered if DD (then aged 4) and I both had it in December 2019. I was at DS’s nativity play, felt a bit of a cold starting. Got home and within an hour I was passed out on the sofa with a constant cough and fever and was barely able to move for three days. DD came down with it a couple of days later and she was so ill - she had a fever that wouldn’t break for 5 days, with her almost getting admitted to hospital for it. My post viral lasted well into February. DH and DS were both completely unaffected.

None of us have had even the slightest whiff of having COVID from March 2020 onwards, and our DC’s school and my school haven’t had a single confirmed case since the whole thing started. Plenty of illness that December though.

I know it was probably a flu, but DS and DD both had the same flu spray, and this was nothing like when I’ve had the flu in the past. I guess I’ll never know.

DH, DD and I all had a terrible flu like illness in late February 2020. It was unlike any flu we'd ever had as we had bizzare eye pain (hurt to move our eyes). Eye pain has recently been identified as a Covid symptom.