Do you know people who you think might have had Covid before Covid was a "thing?"

[DawnM]

A co-worker was hospitalized for almost 2 months, on a respirator, almost intubated, and couldn't breathe, etc.....we think she had Covid in Jan of 2020.

My mother died in Dec of 2019 and it may not have been Covid, but it certainly included Covid like symptoms and she had an auto-immune that was pretty severe.

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by DawnM

[Penelope]

No. I guess it’s possible but very unlikely.

January 2019, I think that goes against everything that is currently said about what they know about where it was and when.

There are plenty of other things that could cause someone to have respiratory failure, so while it’s tempting to wonder, I wouldn’t think it’s likely before winter 2019-20.

[Excelsior! Academy]

Yes.  My mother.

[MEmama]

Yes. Late January, 2019 2020. Covid was already on my radar and I told my friend about it at that time. When her DH tested positive in late 2020 he said it felt exactly the same. He is a long hauler, still dealing with symptoms.

He works with people from around the world and had recently traveled before they got sick the first time. It didn’t seem unlikely to me then, despite what we were being told.

edited because time has no meaning any longer

Edited April 16, 2021 by MEmama

[regentrude]

6 minutes ago, MEmama said:

Yes. Late January, 2019. Covid was already on my radar and I told my friend about it at that time.

How can Covid have been on your radar in January 2019 when the first news reports didn't come out until December of 2019?
 

Edited April 16, 2021 by regentrude

[Spryte]

DH was in Germany in Dec 2019, and brought a very nasty bug home.  6 weeks of horrible illness for all 4 of us.  Multiple flu and strep tests were negative.  Breathing treatments needed, and all the Covid symptoms one would expect.  I lost sense of taste and found eating very unappealing. We logged 6 trips to adult docs and I lost count of pediatric trips - more than 6 if we count emergency visits. It was utterly miserable.  I exclaimed to one doc, upon again hearing that strep and flu were negative, “But a virus?! We can’t be this sick from a virus?!” Ha.  Little did I know.

But ... I actually feel very skeptical that it was Covid. Immune compromised people among us would have been even worse off, I think.  What it did do was give me tremendous motivation to stay healthy, and to do what we could to not catch Covid.  I can’t even imagine how ill we’d be in that case.  I was probably over cautious just because I was afraid of the same thing happening again, or worse.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Spryte

[MEmama]

8 minutes ago, regentrude said:

How can Covid have been on your radar in January 2019 when the first news reports didn't come out until December of 2019?
 

Because I made the same mistake previous posters did. 😬

[DawnM]

10 minutes ago, regentrude said:

How can Covid have been on your radar in January 2019 when the first news reports didn't come out until December of 2019?
 

I am guessing she meant Jan of 2020?   Because that is what I meant!   Oops.   I changed it now.

Edited April 16, 2021 by DawnM

[bluemongoose]

Maybe in Dec 2019. We had family fly in and they became sick and then we got it too. It was pretty rough. Some people ended up with pneumonia. Several lost their voices. Pretty bad sore throats, headaches, tummy aches, fevers, coughs etc.

[regentrude]

2 minutes ago, DawnM said:

I am guessing she meant Jan of 2020?   Because that is what I meant!   Oops.   I changed it now.

OK, now the whole discussion makes finally sense.
I completely believe that folks may have Covid in January 2020  -but not a year before the Wuhan outbreak.

[historically accurate]

My brother did a tour of Israel in February 2020. He came home, and he virtually sat in his chair for a few weeks. Breathing difficulties, no taste, no smell, horribly sick. He wouldn't let me come near him to help; he told me to leave groceries outside his door because he was so sick and he didn't want to share whatever he had. We don't know if what he had was Covid - Covid wasn't noticed in Israel until Feb 21 according to Wikipedia (which is approximately when his tour ended - 17th maybe?), but his group did include people from all over Europe and the US. 

Edited April 16, 2021 by historically accurate

[regentrude]

Friend's brother in CA, horribly ill in late December 2019. Difficulty breathing, lethargic, ER visit, doctors had no idea except "some virus".

[Katy]

Yes. The relative that’s a pharmacist had it (could tell because of strong antibody response to the first vaccine dose), and their spouse had diagnosed treatment resistant pneumonia and a blood clot in late January-early February 2020. Then the blood donor antibody studies came out that it was widespread in their area at that time.  

[Syllieann]

We think dh may have had it in February 2020, before it was supposedly here.  The father of a co-worker had been on a cruise in late 2019 and had a heart attack.  They airlifted him to a hospital in China.  He came home with covid-like symptoms and infected his wife and son.  The son went to work and hacked all over his coworkers.  A handful got very sick.  Dh said it was worse than any flu he's had.  One of the co-workers who got sick was hospitalized.  DH had an antibody test done in early summer 2020, but it was negative.  Dh and all the co-workers who had gotten sick had been vaccinated for flu and none have gotten covid since.  In addition, his first moderna shot gave him flu-like symptoms for 10 days.  I've read that people who previously had it react to the first shot the way other people react to the second shot.

[annandatje]

I know several people who *think* they had covid before covid was a thing.  As for whether they truly had covid, I have no idea.

[DawnM]

6 minutes ago, annandatje said:

I know several people who *think* they had covid before covid was a thing.  As for whether they truly had covid, I have no idea.

Yeah, I do too.   The one that really made me think it was is the one who was hospitalized, on a vent, and they didn't know what was going on.   However, I visited her in the hospital several times and never got it, nor did others who visited, so it may not have been.  

[Junie]

I have a relative who probably had it in February 2020.  She often travels internationally and she had some kind of viral pneumonia.  Her doctor told her to go home and stay there.  She lives alone and was able to get groceries delivered.

Recently, when she received her vaccine, she reacted strongly to the first dose, just as many people who have had Covid.

[Carol in Cal.]

Yes, I have a friend who visited her sister in Germany in November or December of 2019 and became horribly sick right when she got back.  Her husband caught it from her and was also horribly sick but did recover pretty well—I think he was hospitalized for about a week and then went home and got better.  She was hospitalized for over 3 weeks in January 2020 but they were not tuned into Covid then.  They tested her for flu and that was negative.  They said it was ‘just a virus’ but she almost died.  When she went home, she was on oxygen from then on, and did not set foot outside for over 6 months.  When she finally felt better enough to go for a walk, her husband drove her to the top of a block with a slight downward slope to make the exertion less, and followed her in the car with an oxygen tank spare just in case.  She is still not back to normal.

[SKL]

I know people who think/thought they had it.  But there was supposedly another bad virus going around at the same time ... even worse in many age groups.  So given that Covid is actually pretty mild for most people, and given how long it was before they found confirmed cases of it in most of the USA, I doubt people I know had Covid before it became a "thing."

Not that it really matters now, does it?

(One of the families that thought they all had Covid early on, recently caught Covid, confirmed by a positive test.  While I know it's unclear how long antibodies last, I still think it's unlikely they actually had Covid twice.)

Edited April 16, 2021 by SKL

[Not_a_Number]

I kind of worry about taking this kind of testimony, because it equates "bad bug" with COVID, and then we get a unrepresentative sample of COVID... 

Also, I my ex-friend went around saying she probably had it already, and that's why she didn't need to socially distance or wear a mask 🙄

[bluemongoose]

29 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I kind of worry about taking this kind of testimony, because it equates "bad bug" with COVID, and then we get a unrepresentative sample of COVID... 

Also, I my ex-friend went around saying she probably had it already, and that's why she didn't need to socially distance or wear a mask 🙄

I hear what you are saying. Out of all the people I know who "think" they had it, or actually did have it, almost all have continued to exercise caution. They mask, distance, and take less risk etc. Partly because if/when we had it, it was so long ago that the antibodies are unlikely to show anymore anyway, so we cannot be certain. Plus second time around COVID is supposed to be worse. I think the people who are using it as an excuse to not socially distance or wear a mask would have used any excuse really. We all know of people who chose to not follow the recommendations for social distancing and masking. 

[Not_a_Number]

8 minutes ago, bluemongoose said:

I think the people who are using it as an excuse to not socially distance or wear a mask would have used any excuse really.

Oh, absolutely. She DID use other excuses, too 😛 . You're right about that. 

[Farrar]

Yes. Someone I used to work with was deathly sick out of nowhere in Jan/Feb of last year. Lots of unusual blood clotting symptoms, some cognitive issues, but she hadn't had a stroke... she spent weeks in the hospital and took ages to fully recover. They now think it may have been Covid and it seems like a reasonable guess given what we all know now.

[busymama7]

We were sick end of Feb 2020.  Friend and kids were also sick.  (Dont remember who gave it to who). She was convinced that it had been covid. I was skeptical.  However my parents were visiting and my dad went home sick and was very sick all spring. X-ray showed his lungs in very had shape but they live rural and I doubt their dr knew what covid lungs looked like in March/april 2020.  I didn't find out until the fall that my dad has not been able to taste or smell since then. He still can't so over a year. So then I thought maybe it was covid that we had but then myself and my daughter had a confirmed case in November 2020. So who knows.  

I know two teenage girls, unrelated to each other and they don't even know each other, who had pneumonia in January and February of 2020 which at the time even I thought was very strange.

[Farrar]

47 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I kind of worry about taking this kind of testimony, because it equates "bad bug" with COVID, and then we get a unrepresentative sample of COVID... 

Also, I my ex-friend went around saying she probably had it already, and that's why she didn't need to socially distance or wear a mask 🙄

I get that. But also, the more we find out, the more we're realizing that it was likely circulating earlier than we knew. So when people had severe illness with Covid-related symptoms in December/January 2020 then I don't think it's crazy at all.

On the other hand, when my brother told me he was probably immune to Covid because he'd had the "wook flu" at a Widespread show a few years ago and everyone knew the government had engineered that and it was really similar to Covid... well, that's some grade A b********.

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, Farrar said:

I get that. But also, the more we find out, the more we're realizing that it was likely circulating earlier than we knew. So when people had severe illness with Covid-related symptoms in December/January 2020 then I don't think it's crazy at all.

But the problem is that we then select for people with severe illness and get an unrepresentative sample, you know? 

I think my ex-friend had something back in November or early December, so I doubt it 😛 . But I'm not surprised when people traveling internationally report having COVID symptoms early in 2020 at all. It's just that it's really hard to tell. 

Like, I had a relatively bad case of the flu in November. I coughed for something like a month after recovering -- I took to carrying around giant bags of Halls so I could talk. But it started in mid-November (on my birthday, lol!), so I'm pretty sure it wasn't COVID 😉 . 

 

Just now, Farrar said:

On the other hand, when my brother told me he was probably immune to Covid because he'd had the "wook flu" at a Widespread show a few years ago and everyone knew the government had engineered that and it was really similar to Covid... well, that's some grade A b********.

Ah yes. That sounds like pernicious nonsense right there. 

[Ausmumof3]

I initially thought the number of people claiming that was unrealistic but comparing the death and case curves from the first wave to those from November last year it’s clear it must have been far more widespread earlier than testing shows so there’s a decent chance they did.  I still don’t know how the heck we were lucky enough to escape that in Australia given how late it was when we shut borders.  There must be some level of summer/winter factor and we and NZ were lucky enough to see what it looked like in winter for other countries before our own winters hit.  
 
Having said that we just had a bug go through that I could have though was COVID if we didn’t have negative tests.

[Moonhawk]

I had the terrible thing that was going around January-February 2020. Fever, chills, full body ache, etc. I can't remember loss of taste or smell but I know I basically stopped eating. I got such bad ear infections I actually went to the doctor for it, which meant going from 5500' to 4600' and I felt every single foot of difference; I thought for sure I did permanent damage to my ears with that drive and did not handle it well (ugly cry the whole way). I was out for a total of a month just laying on the couch. 

However, I haven't heard a whisper about ear infections in relation to Covid and did not get a bad reaction to the first vaccine shot, so I've come down on the side of not-Covid for myself, despite the timing and other people attributing their bad early-2020 sickness on it. Perhaps Covid was going around at the time, but something else was as well. 

[itsheresomewhere]

We had Covid before they knew it was in our area in January 2020.  We had a lot of atypical pneumonia in the area at the time. 

  A close friend’s dad passed a feed days before Christmas in December 2019 from what his doctors now think was Covid.  He went down very fast with it.  He was diagnosed with a very interesting pneumonia and went from sick to needing a vent in 48 hours.  He was gone within 96 hours from when he was admitted.  He was a very active older gentleman who enjoyed life.  

[athena1277]

A good friend of mine is pretty sure her family had it in Dec 2019.  I suspect there are some others.  In the moon or so before it was a big thing, everyone was talking about the “really bad flu” that was going around.  In hindsight, their symptoms and experiences sound a lot like covid.  

[Eos]

We have wondered if Dd in Geneva did in January of 2020.  Her roommate (in their very small room) was in med school at U of Geneva, and in a lab with three docs who had just returned from a lab in a hospital in Wuhan. All of the lab later quarantined. It was right after they returned after Christmas, and I had not yet begun to read the big covid thread.  Her roommate had something first that was like a pretty bad respiratory flu, then dd caught it.  They each had it about 5 days but without loss of taste or smell.  We only thought about it much later, mostly due to roommate's proximity to lab docs and the timing.  They're both early 20s.

Edited April 16, 2021 by Harpymom

[Spryte]

8 minutes ago, happysmileylady said:

 

 

 

I think given these and other posts across this board it's important to note...

loss of taste or smell is not some bizarre symptom unique to covid, nor do all (or even most) people who have covid develop this symptom.  Loss of taste and smell can and does happen with moderate to severe cases of "just a virus" situations.  In addition, a large percentage of people who get covid have little to no symptoms and in my own very anecdotal situation....DH never lost either sense.  Nor did the kids or I.  Such a symptom is not "tell tale" or unique and is not a reason to think a person did or did not have covid.  It might be possible that such a symptom is more prevalent in covid vs other respiratory viruses, but I am not sure the data actually points to such a thing one way or another....I am not even sure it's been studied much. 

Yes, this is a very good point.

I regularly lose sense of taste/smell with viruses - it was familiar enough that I did not find it remarkable when we were ill last Dec, when DH came home from Germany.  And my mother permanently lost her sense of smell when I was a teen - after some sort of respiratory illness.  So that symptom doesn’t usually strike me as odd.

[EKS]

I think my son may have had it in February 2020.  He is actually participating in a clinical study to determine the immune response to the covid vaccines in people receiving checkpoint inhibitors for cancer.  He tells me that the first blood test will tell them if he as had covid.  So, we'll see.

[KeriJ]

We had more than usual amount of people in our area hospitalized for pneumonia December 2019. It was noticeable.  Then many in our church with severe, lingering virus, testing negative for the flu. It was weird. Long term chest congestion and fatigue. 

4 of my children came down with an intense virus starting in Nov. 2019. It lasted for weeks between them.  Severe sore throat, headaches, back aches, high fevers, night sweats,  mild hallucination in one, developing coughs later. I figured it was the flu at first but didn't get them tested. But it ended up being different than anything we've had before. 

Edited April 17, 2021 by KeriJ

[EKS]

19 minutes ago, Seasider too said:

Will they be able to tell, a year+ later?

We'll see.  He said they said it was a "special" test.  But I have no idea.

[Farrar]

4 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

But the problem is that we then select for people with severe illness and get an unrepresentative sample, you know? 

 

I mean, it's not like we're doing a study. I don't think anyone thinks this is great data. It's a casual discussion.

At least in my friend's case, a year on, her doctors apparently suspect it was Covid. 

[bookbard]

I got really, really sick with a virus in March 2020. Breathing issues etc. My son got sick too, but for 2 weeks - it was like 2 months for me. 

At the time, I was worried it was Covid, because it was just around the time everything was shutting down. The Dr was like 'well, could be Covid, who knows, you can't get tested' (at that time only if you'd been overseas).

Now, I don't think it was Covid, I think it was another virus. Very few people had Covid at that time and literally  no one in our region. 

[itsheresomewhere]

1 hour ago, Seasider too said:

Will they be able to tell, a year+ later?

My neighbor has been tested regularly ( every couple of months) by her cancer doctor and still tests for antibodies.  She had it in March 2020. 

[Katy]

1 hour ago, EKS said:

We'll see.  He said they said it was a "special" test.  But I have no idea.

I just read something yesterday that said people who have had Covid have such a strong immune response to the vaccine that they may not need a second dose.  That was certainly true for our pharmacist In the family. 

[Not_a_Number]

2 hours ago, Spryte said:

Yes, this is a very good point.

I regularly lose sense of taste/smell with viruses - it was familiar enough that I did not find it remarkable when we were ill last Dec, when DH came home from Germany.  And my mother permanently lost her sense of smell when I was a teen - after some sort of respiratory illness.  So that symptom doesn’t usually strike me as odd.

I’ve heard descriptions of it that sounded very different from what I personally experience with viruses. Usually, I just get stuffed up and it’s hard to taste. But it’s not like everything is identical, which is how people describe it for COVID. It sounds different to me, and people describe it as not being like other things in their subjective experience.

[Not_a_Number]

51 minutes ago, Farrar said:

I mean, it's not like we're doing a study. I don't think anyone thinks this is great data. It's a casual discussion.

At least in my friend's case, a year on, her doctors apparently suspect it was Covid. 

I think we all hold data in our heads, and it adds up to an impression 🙂 

[Spryte]

1 minute ago, Not_a_Number said:

I’ve heard descriptions of it that sounded very different from what I personally experience with viruses. Usually, I just get stuffed up and it’s hard to taste. But it’s not like everything is identical, which is how people describe it for COVID. It sounds different to me, and people describe it as not being like other things in their subjective experience.

That does sound different, I’m not sure I’d say that everything tastes identical - more like very, very muted. And extremely strong smells usually come through.  But I don’t particularly want to catch Covid to compare.  😊

My mom who lost her sense of smell years and years ago - she literally smells nothing.  Which has its good points.  

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Spryte said:

That does sound different, I’m not sure I’d say that everything tastes identical - more like very, very muted. And extremely strong smells usually come through.  But I don’t particularly want to catch Covid to compare.  😊

My mom who lost her sense of smell years and years ago - she literally smells nothing.  Which has its good points.  

People have described it as complete loss of taste/smell without congestion, which sounds like something I’ve never experienced. Any idea how your mom lost hers? Was it a respiratory bug?

[Spryte]

21 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

People have described it as complete loss of taste/smell without congestion, which sounds like something I’ve never experienced. Any idea how your mom lost hers? Was it a respiratory bug?

Yes, respiratory illness of some kind, we always called it a virus.  This was when I was a teen, so it’s ancient history.  I recall she was pretty upset about it a few months later (? I think it was months?) and kept going to docs who kept checking for sinus infections and giving her nose sprays.  They finally said it might come back eventually.  But it never really did.  She’s 80 now, and doesn’t miss it.

Oddly, I have a close IRL friend who lost her sense of smell as well, but I can’t recall how or why.  Now I must ask her tomorrow! 

Edited April 17, 2021 by Spryte

[prairiewindmomma]

I wonder about me.

I was very sick during the last week of December 2019...and I needed a nebulized breathing treatment every few hours for days.

My area had confirmed covid at that time due to studies done on samples from blood banks. They can date it to a few weeks before I was ill.

I haven’t had antibody testing done, so who knows, but I wonder.

ETA: I didn’t stop coughing until March, fwiw

Edited April 17, 2021 by prairiewindmomma

[busymama7]

I have allergies and am prone to sinus infections and honestly have caught every bug ever (feels like!). The loss of taste and smell with covid was not like anything else I've experienced. I had zero nasal congestion and only a light cough.  I could feel the air moving straight into my sinuses but couldn't detect any scent.  It was a very disconcerting feeling.  I thought I had read it was actually in the brain. That the brain wasn't getting the signal.  It certainly didn't feel like not being able to smell great or food tasting off because of being sick.  Like not at all.  My dad ran over a skunk about 6 months after being sick and he couldn't smell it at all.  My mom of course could and said it was awful but he couldn't detect any scent.

[Tap]

My daughter and her husband in early 2020 and my mom in spring 2020. 

My daughter and her husband were both very ill in Jan/Feb 2020. He said at the time, he was the sickest he had ever been (he missed 1 months of high school due to mono, and had to have hydration IVs and he says it was worse than that.) He had classic symptoms. My daughter got sick too, but a milder version. Even before covid....she was on vitamin D, steroid inhalers and takes impeccable care of her self due to significant health issues. All the things a person would do to treat covid, is her normal day. I really, really think they both had it and dd didn't get it as bad, just due to lifestyle.  After a full year of working in retail and him in the military, they have been exposed soooo many times and have never gotten it.

 

My mom has severe COPD but was hospitalized in the spring last year. She was on a ventilator, once they took her off, they sent home with a hospice referral. She was tested for Covid but it was negative. Covid was around, but only a couple documented cases in her area. They really didn't think she had it at the time, but honestly now, it really seems like she may have. She still has COPD, but is doing much better and is back to where she was before she got sick.

[Katy]

There was a nasal spray, homeopathic, I think maybe Zicam? That caused permanent loss of smell in some people. I remember being incredulous that the FDA didn’t ban all homeopathy even before that news came out. 

[1234]

I completely, and permanently, lost my taste and smell with the flu almost 10 years ago and the ENT I saw said it was very common with viruses. He even told me there was a clinic in PA that I could look into if I wanted. I didn’t. Now, I can taste and smell but none of it is normal and most everything tastes/smells bad. It’s not going to get better unless they figure something out since they’re studying it more due to Covid.

Edited April 17, 2021 by Joker2

[ScoutTN]

Yes! Dh! 
We know several families that had it in Jan or early Feb of 2020. 

Dh and the people we know who had it early, before testing, all got it again this past winter.