Is a new variant evading LFTs, or is there another nasty bug doing the rounds?

[dumbledory]

Hi all.

Just what the title says really.

Work in a school - triple jabbed and never had covid (recent antibody test).

Currently the children across the year I work in have all been coughing relentlessly for the last week or so. Some children have been so unwell, we've had to send them home only for them to be back the next day.

Assume parents are generally not testing at this point.

Started feeling unwell myself on Monday and have progressively been feeling worse. Colleagues are dropping like flies.

I fell asleep early last night, only to wake at couple of hours ago and have been coughing non-stop since...it's gotten to the point where my voice is hoarse and chest is very sore.

If it wasn't for all of the negative lateral flows I've taken (including one an hour ago) I would say this was my first go with Covid. But as it is, I'm testing negative and am at a loss with what to do with myself.

Is there a variant that's evading the lateral flows altogether or should I just accept that there are many other bugs that could be causing this and suck it up?

Feeling the pressure to go in, as it's SATs week and the school is already a few staff members down.

I’ve had a sore throat for a couple of days. Tested on lft, negative. Felt progressively really ill. I had covid late Jan, felt similar to this.
Hot sweats and feverish, cough, dull taste, headache. Done more lft and negative but one looked flooded and positive. Perhaps an old school heavy cold. God knows. I just know I feel like crap.

The covid cough is very different from a chesty cough. It seems so many kids have a hacking chesty cough at the moment.

If you can type on your phone, you haven't got flu! There are lots of colds going round. Why are we still distinguishing covid from other colds? I genuinely don't believe that covid poses a greater threat to vulnerable people now than any other illness of a similar nature. But happy to be proven incorrect.

I’ve had flu before, it didn’t affect my hands and ability to type the odd message.
I have an infection on my lung, still feeling ropy but the antibiotics are definitely working. It certainly felt like covid.

So Covid, which is a single disease albeit with some mutations, ranges in severity from lethal to "a bit of a sniffle" but nobody who has caught any of the hundred variants of the four different species of influenza has ever been able to use a mobile phone?

DS's school has: chicken pox, scarlet fever (Ffs), HFM and a vomiting bug. No nits for once though

@PortiaFimbriata yes you could certainly be ill enough with covid to not be functioning enough to type a coherent message.
My comment on flu was meant separately. So many people say they have flu when actually they have a bad cold. With flu, temperature is usually high enough that you would be feeling sufficiently awful to not be browsing on mumsnet.

One in three influenza infections is thought to be completely asymptomatic. It’s perfectly possible to have mild flu.

As a previous poster has said, influenza A is making a come back and knocking people for six. Two non vaccinated, young adult, family members recently had it and were very poorly, one hospitalised. Both had hacking coughs followed by bad chest infections. Myself and dc all vaccinated so we didn't catch it despite close contact with said family members.

Same. I've got a throat like razor blades. Cough. Headache. Temperature. And a rash. Done two tests both negative.

But I feel like shit

Why do people always gatekeep the flu?

On here, think it might be something to do with the neatness of that fifty pound note analogy that many MNers are fond of. You know, the one about it only being flu if you're too rough to get out of bed even if there were a £50 on the floor. And it's a memorable one, just a shame it's completely untrue.

Still lots of Flu A in my area, could be that.

It's just so weird the flu gatekeepers.

Flu can be really really serious.
Your illness is not really really serious.
Therefore your illness is not flu.

You'd have thought that even if you didn't spot the obvious logical fallacy before Covid then the last two years would have taught them the lesson that where different strains of the same disease affect different people with different immune systems then not everyone will have the same symptoms.