Week before Christmas break.
Subbed for a Jr hi social studies teacher who was sick 3 days. I did 2 of them (Th&F). The next week was b4 the break but I was too sick to sub that week.
Later, I found out that aside from me, 2 other teachers got sick over Christmas, almost a dozen kids missed school (mind you, there's only about 120 kids, K-8), & the school secretary had to go to ER with what was diagnosed as pneumonia.
I got diagnosed with bronchitis & xray showed no pneumonia.
Since Mineral Man posited this some time ago, I've been thinking about this, more & more!!

that flu. I experienced that reaction where my lungs went into overdrive creating all kinds of nasty excess and it took me a month and a half to get over the cough.

I got horribly ill in January, a couple weeks after returning from London, and a few days after I’d arrived in NYC for work. I went from fine to a 101 fever (I never run fevers) in less than 12 hours. The cough started very dry and then progressed into the nastiest cough I’ve ever had. The cough lasted nearly a month.
I get strep every year and it never, ever produces a fever or impacts anything except my ability to swallow and talk. This “flu” was the sickest I’ve ever been. And I’d gotten a flu shot.

We may be a few more painfully won steps up the brutal path to herd immunity than epidemiologists know.

And are just flying blind about that, too, because we don't have the antibodies test yet. And once it is 'available," is that one gonna be like the active covid virus test "availability," too?

It got so bad I even went to the clinic (!) and had a chest x-ray, which was clear for any lung stuff. So maybe I just had a really bad cold or flu. I had a flu shot, as I do every year when it becomes available.

She found a teenager from some weeks before that she had swabbed for a flu study. He was Corona positive. She was told to stop testing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html

Then the question was if it had slipped containment. It seemed highly likely. But testing protocols and "I wanna believe" said otherwise--really bad if it had escaped. And how dare a research both break her research protocol *and* government protocols.

We know it was around in November. By December there were some severe cases. It's likely that it was just Dr. Li's observational skills, but it requires that there several cases all at the same time in the same place. How long before late November is a question. And if it was round in late November, did it really take two months for the virus to jump the Pacific? A question that's less likely to have the answer "no" the earlier the virus started to circulate.

Unless you're Chinese media, in which case it was introduced in Wuhan from the US by an Army cyclist, and escaped into the wild in the US much earlier with a US government coverup for all the cases that couldn't be blamed on China.

My wife got a really bad cold in mid Dec., (she rarely gets colds...) it lasted two weeks and she was absolutely miserable. This sickness was worse than any other "cold" she had ever had with the exception of the H1N1 we both got in the mid 1970s. She coughed until her abdominal muscles were so sore she was having trouble. When Covid-19 first started becoming a news item, we were suspicious, but the timing was all wrong so we dismissed the thought. What we both found incredible, is that I did not get this illness. When she got sick, I didn't take any special measures, taking care of her, because I was certain that any day I was going to come down with it.

It would be very interesting to see if she carries the Corona antibodies, but it would be an extreme long shot.

We were wondering if that might have been it. Didn't go to the Dr.

for 5 days that wouldn’t break no matter what I tried. Went to Urgent Care and they sent me to the ER. Had a dry cough, but chest x-rays were clear. Had the nasal swab test for flu and that was negative. The ER doctor said I had an “upper respiratory virus”. I was so fatigued that I couldn’t stand up for the chest X-ray.

Went to my PCP three days later and she tested for Lyme. Results came back in a week and negative. The fever and fatigue were my main symptoms (also had hives) Finally broke the fever after 9 days, but the fatigue lasted for weeks.

Did any of these people end up in the hospital with ARDS? In Coronavirus I believe 10% have to be hospitalized and 5% need to be in an ICU. Was there a spike in respiratory related hospitalizations around that time?

If it had been Covid-19, ICUs would have been overrun with patients on ventilators.

I had a similar thing with the same symptoms that they're describing for COVID-19 in late October in Minnesota. My wife got it a few days later, and others have mentioned something similar.

Who knows?

I think if people were having it as early as October, we would have noticed, because a relatively large numbers of the people with covid end up in ICUs needing ventilators.

generally presents with only fever, dry cough and body aches, and is missing the upper respiratory and nasal symptoms. "What a weird cold," was the comment I heard from my wife and others.

I'm not saying that what we had was COVID-19. It could well have been a coronavirus cold, which makes up about half of colds in humans. There are a number of strains of coronavirus that are around all the time.

I just think it's interesting, given what's happening now.

As for the ICU and ventilator thing, people show up needing those all the time. If you're not looking for a particular virus and there's no test for that virus, you call it viral pneumonia of unknown cause.

I have no access to statistics from hospitals regarding such diagnoses. Do you?

It's an interesting thing. That's all. We will probably never get a solid answer on this.

tell me they think they had it. But only one of them had the truly cardinal symptoms including the fever. he was sick in November. In December he got sick again and this time went to the doctor and it was flu type A. What was it in November? Could he have relapsed from the Type A in December?
I just told him when they finally get the antibody test widely available, get it. Otherwise we'll never know.

I know quite a few people who had it. My guess is those people who think they might have had covid actually had the regular flu.

or is it possible that he relapsed?

Or maybe he got it twice. Who knows. My friend got vaccinated, still got flu type A (got tested and test came positive for influenza type A). It can lead to pneumonia and prolonged symptoms of not feeling well.

it's so hard to know. i heard some scientist say that to get an idea of how prevalent coronavirus is, multiply the number of recorded cases times 10. the actual first case on the ground in the US is also pretty opaque. sigh.

It might have been an allergic reaction to the hotel air,
but I never had a reaction quite like that.

I coughed and blew my nose for almost an entire night,
felt like I was getting sick the next day; then after a
round of Motrin and Claritin-D, it just went away.

It was very strange. I doubt that it was coronavirus,
but it was ... strange.

She gave it to me but I didn’t get it as bad as her, but was still sick for weeks. She had a dry cough, complained of tightness deep in her lungs, extreme fatigue, and couldn’t sleep due to shortness of breath. She actually tested with the Seattle Flu study and came back negative for flu, which was shocking considering it took her several weeks to shake this. This was just before they started feasting for Coronavirus as well.

I had a cough, but nothing would loosen until I pulled out some Dayquil and NyQuil. It took me about a month to feel normal again.

But as Peirce pointed out, the number of research topics is huge and the resources aren't.

A Chinese researcher went back and looked at flu tests that had been retained, for whatever reason, before the virus was acknowledged as widespread. Looking at just those that were negative, he found a number of them tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. So if doctors have freezers with negative flu tests, the research is possible.

Antibody tests aren't going to be useful here. There's no time-stamp on when the body started to produce them.

Since 30-50% of COVID cases have no symptoms, you could have had the disease three weeks ago and not noticed it--the only clue would be if those around you mysteriously came down with it. Of those that have symptoms, a majority are very mild, like a cold or mild flu. Only a fairly small percentage (20% or so) land you in the hospital, and most of those don't require ventilator.

I have only had the aches and pain one other time, decades ago. In December I got walloped and even delayed coming home till after Christmas, but got my wife and adult son sick anyway.

we won't know wihout widespread antigen testing.

Keeping isolation as though it wasn’t Covid-19.

I got sick the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Seems like that's way too early for corona virus but the symptoms are so similar.
I had a sore throat, cough, fever, extreme fatigue. I was in bed for two whole days, but it was a week before I felt nearly normal.
I didn't really have any difficulty breathing. No nausea, either.

She lives in Albuquerque, NM, and at that time there was no chance she could get checked for Covid19. It seemed impossible to get that virus in NM back then.
She was pretty sick, but thought it was just the flu...never went to a hospital.
She's recovered now, but still has a cough.

Anyway, we now think we know how she might have gotten it. The apartment building she lives in has several apartments that were rented by film crews from California and New York who do shoots in New Mexico. We believe the elevator might have gotten contaminated.

When the test for antibodies is available, she's going to get it. If she had the flu, she could help out as a volunteer if the city medical people give her the go-ahead.

This whole Covid thing is really weird, and the deeper we look, the more we find out. It's definitely been traveling around the country far longer, and with far greater coverage than we ever knew.

But I don't think it was Coronavirus.

Also, in December-January I had a nagging tightness in my throat. Since resolved, thankfully. Again, I don't think it was Coronavirus.

That started end of Nov until early Jan. Different from anything I had before started with flu or cold symptoms but I had a fever which I normally don’t get and had a cough and at times hard to breathe.

Very extremely tired I was in bed twice for 5 days during it.

So yes I wonder also. At the time I thought it was a bad cold bordering on bronchitis.

is the people were not going to the hospital with the lung issue, being incubated and dying.

is to test for antibodies to Covid-19. (Not the Covid diagnostic test which is a RT-PCR but another test)