What we really need is proof it was in Miami by Feb 1, and no one at the super bowl the next day died from it. Football can resume in the fall.

We had some family bring a visitor from Germany to our family Christmas. She was severely sick with fever, coughs, etc. the day after Christmas in which she didn't come out of her guest room for almost a week. My wife and I showed symptoms the following week, and my kids the week after. I remember having a terrible cough and my wife had a day or so where she couldn't taste anything. We obviously thought it was the flu at the time, kinda hoping we had the virus already at that point and didn't know it. Hindsight is 20/20 however, and we may be trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Another anecdote:
Wife's parents came from out of state to stay with us for a week in early Janurary for a late Christmas.
-FIL, who is in his early 60s but very very healthy, shows up with an awful hacking dry cough. Says hes had it for almost a week and has mild fever a few days prior. Cough last for the duration of their stay with us.
-Towards the end of the week, MIL starts developing same cough and mild fever. One night after supper she starts experiencing acute shortness of breath and severe coughing fits, she is obviously shaken. It lasts most of the night, my RN wife is about to take her to local ER when she finally starts breathing well enough to get some rest. They leave a couple of days later but not 100% fully recovered.
-A day or two after inlaws leave both my kids (2 and 4 yo) develop mild cough and fever. This lasts approx. 3 days each. My kids are pretty resilient but my son is hit hard and can barely get off the couch during the day.
-My wife in her early 30s gets the same thing on the tail end of my kids illness. Headache, fatigue, cough and mild fever. This lasts about 4-5 days and shes back to 100%.
-I have managed to avoid any illness, despite having my kids constantly trying to drink after me and coughing into my face but it finally catches me. I use three sick days for work during the worst of it. It lasts about 5-6 days at the peak. I was the only one who went to see a doc, negative for both flu and strep. Says its probably viral, and gives me z-pack (ok?)
-During this same time the public school in our town shuts down for almost a week, due to almost half the students being home sick with flu like illness.

Cant draw any solid conclusion from these early to mid January events but it sure does seem odd to me given the appearance of the first documented covid case shortly after.

My office had 60-70% of the Floor our sick at the end of January early February. We thought it was the flu but no one was testing positive for it. Same as others have described but almost everyone also had a terrible cough. Had a few come down with pneumonia or bronchitis and spend nights in the hospital. We all thought it was a bad flu but hindsight being 2020 it could have been Covid based on symptoms and no one testing positive for the flu. We had several folks travel from west coast and even one from the Philippines.

It will be interesting to see when antibody test results start coming in from some of these ILI cases that we are hearing stories about. I hope people come back and post to let us know what they find out. I'm sure many won't go get the tests but I for one would like to hear any results.

Many of you need to get it out of your head that the flu or cold is the only viral infection you can get. There are a number of common viral infections you can make you feel like ass and not trigger a positive flu test. Even the flu may not trigger a positive flu test.

That may be true, and there may be some recency/confirmation bias going on as well, but this certainly seems different than any other generic season viral infection.

I don't ever recall the whole dang school closing for a week in years past. Nor this many people reporting the characteristic shortness of breath/dry cough combo.

Correct...Those rapid test kits you get at the doc are not super accurate.

Quote:

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Sensitivities of RIDTs are generally approximately 50-70%, but a range of 10-80% has been reported compared to viral culture or RT-PCR. Specificities of RIDTs are approximately 90-95% (range 85-100%). Thus false negative results occur more commonly than false positive results.

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Meaning if 10% of the population has it (which is for total infections - not at any given time, but whatever) a 70% sensitivity gives a 20% false negative rate. With a 50% sensitivity its 50/50.

To your point - here's something from Trevor Bedford, going back and testing flu survey samples back to October.

How have none of the usual suspects come on here to say this is impossible, as first case in US based on their mutation tracking charts was in Washington in January?

Because that never was the argument. The argument was over everyone's brother's uncle's cousin's story about how they got what was "probably covid" last October.

k2aggie07 said:

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Because that never was the argument. The argument was over everyone's brother's uncle's cousin's story about how they got what was "probably covid" last October.

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It was a beta version. COVID-18.5!

I was diagnosed with pneumonia during 2/10 Doctor appointment. I had mostly recovered already but still had minor cough and diminished lung capacity. What do you internet doctors think?