New Covid-like virus that’s not Covid? In your area?

[matrips]

So my friends dd is sick- super sore throat, bad cough, high fever, bad joint pains, etc.  Four Covid tests say negative over the past few days. No strep.  No flu. Dr at ER says he’s been seeing a lot of this recently.  All Covid like and sick, but testing negative.  Anything like this in your area? Just wondering what is going around now and what prognosis and treatments are.

[sbgrace]

I know 3 sets (4 people but one a husband/wife pair)--all geographically and relationally unconnected. All had extremely sore throat and flu like symptoms. Felt quite sick. All negative for COVID and strep and, in some cases, flu as well. One had been exposed to COVID through household so took several rapids and then PCR (plus strep and flu). All were negative. So weird. 

All of the above recovered well. It was pretty short lived (all under 5 days, with just a slight cough remaining). It did ramp up for each--starting with just throat and then getting worse over time. 

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by sbgrace

[Pawz4me]

DS23 was hit by very sudden onset chills and body aches Monday evening around 6:00. Temp 100, no appetite, rapid test negative. Tuesday morning temperature was up to 101 but appetite was back and he started feeling better quickly. Had PCR test about 1:00. By later in the afternoon his temperature was normal and he felt perfectly normal. PCR was negative. So he had something that came on quickly, went away quickly and was apparently not Covid. We also assume not flu since it resolved so quickly.

[Mrs Tiggywinkle]

I have it right now.  Or something similar.  Negative Covid, negative flu, but it feels like the flu. Of course since I’ve had multiple negative tests I have to come to work anyway.   I feel like death.

And yeah, the ER has a lot of it. It’s just another seasonal virus but people are definitely feeling crusty, even if it’s not serious.

[BusyMom5]

Before Covid this was a normal thing, though. You got sick,  stayed home and took OTC meds, rested, and recovered in 3-5 days.  We didn't ever worry about figuring out the exact virus making us sick.  We go to the Dr if we need meds or get worse, but I think its normal to get sick- nothing to worry about unless there are other underlying conditions or you need abx bc of a lingering infection.   

[Elizabeth86]

11 minutes ago, BusyMom5 said:

Before Covid this was a normal thing, though. You got sick,  stayed home and took OTC meds, rested, and recovered in 3-5 days.  We didn't ever worry about figuring out the exact virus making us sick.  We go to the Dr if we need meds or get worse, but I think its normal to get sick- nothing to worry about unless there are other underlying conditions or you need abx bc of a lingering infection.   

Right? It feels so hard to remember this!

[Spryte]

17 minutes ago, BusyMom5 said:

Before Covid this was a normal thing, though. You got sick,  stayed home and took OTC meds, rested, and recovered in 3-5 days.  We didn't ever worry about figuring out the exact virus making us sick.  We go to the Dr if we need meds or get worse, but I think its normal to get sick- nothing to worry about unless there are other underlying conditions or you need abx bc of a lingering infection.   

Yes. Our family would head to the doc if sore throats were in play (we’ve a family member who ended up in the ICU for undiagnosed strep, so we take it seriously), or if we suspected breathing issues (asthma/pneumonia history). But mostly, we just stayed home and got well.

Right now, though, we have very little exposure. I would probably suspect Covid or something very transmissible if any of us became ill right now, as we don’t go many places, and are always masked when we do.

[sbgrace]

7 minutes ago, Spryte said:

 

Right now, though, we have very little exposure. I would probably suspect Covid or something very transmissible if any of us became ill right now, as we don’t go many places, and are always masked when we do.

I think this is the thing that feels weird to people. All but one of the 3 cases I mentioned were taking precautions (limited interactions generally prior to infection and always masked) that you would think would limit the spread of "ordinary" viruses. But, I agree, we're all hyper-vigilent and out of practice with run of the mill stuff right now. 

[AmandaVT]

Yep - I know of multiple people that had something similar right before Christmas. They all reported feeling flu symptoms but tested negative for both flu and covid. Seemed to knock people on their butts for about a week to ten days, then they would be ok. 

[Halftime Hope]

My adult dd, spouse, and two littles traveled for Christmas half-way across the continent to visit the in-law family.  The other side of the family has been quite COVID-cautious and includes 7 MDs in a large family, most of them living in a blue state. (Not COVID deniers, caution

to the wind, in any way.) 

My dd's mother-in-law was sick when they arrived for Christmas, with something that turned out to be treatable, finally, with antibiotics. 

After Christmas, dd's 1 year old picked up COVID likely in the airport on the way home (pos PCR on the 1 year old) and got sick at about the same time as dd came down with the same symptoms as MIL. (Dd was neg on her PCR). Dd was finally diagnosed with tonsillitis, and began recovering after starting antibiotics.

Get this: 3 year old came down with COVID a few days later -- obvious Omicron symptoms, multiple days of fever, croup and hot sweats at night, just like the baby -- but the pre-schooler's PCR was negative!   The ped has seen a few cases where kids have all the symptoms of COVID but neg PCR.  

[HomeAgain]

So this sounds like what ds11 gets nearly every year - the off year being 2021 because he was masked and very sheltered.  I can look back through our school photos every year and see him looking absolutely miserable right around February.  He gets a regular flu shot (though, also not in 2021 because we avoided routine dr visits).  It's what we hoped to avoid at WDW in Feb 2020 by sanitizing everything, but we didn't escape it.  It's just normal in our life for him.  2-3 weeks of being absolutely down before getting back to normal slowly.  Could be a wicked cold, could be flu, if he got it this year I wouldn't rule out Covid no matter what the tests say. Given that the tests aren't 100% reliable I don't know that it isn't covid in a lot of people and flu in some.   All it means is the test didn't pick it up.

 

[Spryte]

7 minutes ago, sbgrace said:

I think this is the thing that feels weird to people. All but one of the 3 cases I mentioned were taking precautions (limited interactions generally prior to infection and always masked) that you would think would limit the spread of "ordinary" viruses. But, I agree, we're all hyper-vigilent and out of practice with run of the mill stuff right now. 

Oh right, I’m not saying it absolutely would be Covid, but more that I would treat it as such as far as exposing other people outside of our household. Nobody needs to get sick right now, with all the worry and inconvenience (re: testing, etc) it causes.

Times are weird. I’ve known lots of people with Flu A recently. And some random, we-don’t-know-what-it-was-and-couldn’t-get-tested people who really have no idea what they had.

What I find disconcerting is that now, with our local positivity rate at 48%, I don’t particularly want to take my kids to the pedi, even for a strep test if I’m pretty sure it’s not Covid. Like, why would we want to add Covid possibly, on top of everything else?

 

[WendyLady]

We had a virus at our house over Christmas that included congestion, sore throat, coughing and big sneezes. We all tested negative for Covid. Only my husband also had the test for flu and it came back negative as well. 
 

It’s been a couple of weeks and we all got over it. No loss of smell. We had Covid in the fall of 2020 and are vaccinated.
 

BUT two of my sisters that we saw over New Year tested positive for Covid on Thursday/Friday of last week. And now my husband who traveled out of state last week for a training (and tested negative again early in the week before his flight) is not feeling good and thinks it may be Covid… 

All that to say, who knows! It’s not unusual for me to get a cold with congestion in the winter. Perhaps we had covid over Christmas and both the quick tests and prc tests came back negative for all of us and the tests were all false? And we passed it to my sisters and my dh has it again? Or maybe we did just have a cold and my sisters had the actual covid virus snd now my husband has it? My son and I are both feeling fine, but we have an appt at a drive thru testing site for tomorrow!

I am not giving any extra energy to getting worked up about it. The current strain seems to be highly contagious and I feel like we will all likely get it at one point or another. We are masking and boosted but otherwise living life.

[KSera]

1 hour ago, Spryte said:

Nobody needs to get sick right now, with all the worry and inconvenience (re: testing, etc) it causes.

THIS. I'm worried about a lot of people who say their covid test was negative, so they're going on with life. Whether it was negative or not, people need to not be exposing people to illness right now at all. If you are sick, you should be at home, regardless of if it's covid or not. I realize there are some people with job circumstances that don't allow for that, which is a crappy thing that we don't have better provisions for people to be sick, but they should have N95s provided in that case, and I'm talking about all the people who aren't in that situation, but just go about life exposing people to their illness anyway, because they tested negative to covid. That has a whole chain of repercussions to others right now (not the least of which is that even with PCRs, many people are testing negative on their initial PCR and then positive on the next one).

[matrips]

Thanks for the responses. She has gotten progressively worse each day, started with mild sore throat and each day a new symptom, and the mom is concerned about how much worse it can get.  Or how long it goes on.   It really kicked off her asthma, so that’s why they needed the er.  Fluids and breathing treatment stuff.  Throat to sore to swallow much. And fever (104) wasn’t really going down.  Allergic to ibuprofen so just issuing Tylenol.  
 

so it sounds ‘normal’.

[matrips]

2 hours ago, Mrs Tiggywinkle said:

 

I have it right now.  Or something similar.  Negative Covid, negative flu, but it feels like the flu. Of course since I’ve had multiple negative tests I have to come to work anyway.   I feel like death.

 

So even though you are sick, they make you come to work and spread it because it’s not covid?!  Crazy!!  Hope you feel better soon!

[matrips]

2 hours ago, BusyMom5 said:

Before Covid this was a normal thing, though. You got sick,  stayed home and took OTC meds, rested, and recovered in 3-5 days.  We didn't ever worry about figuring out the exact virus making us sick.  We go to the Dr if we need meds or get worse, but I think its normal to get sick- nothing to worry about unless there are other underlying conditions or you need abx bc of a lingering infection.   

They did this for several days, but fever, throat, cough, breathing (asthma kid), and stomach kept getting worse instead of better.  

[KSera]

3 hours ago, matrips said:

So my friends dd is sick- super sore throat, bad cough, high fever, bad joint pains, etc.  Four Covid tests say negative over the past few days. No strep.  No flu. Dr at ER says he’s been seeing a lot of this recently.  All Covid like and sick, but testing negative.  Anything like this in your area? Just wondering what is going around now and what prognosis and treatments are.

I’d love to see adenovirus testing added to flu testing. In winter of 2019-20, there was a lot of bad adenovirus around, and my hunch is that that’s what a lot of people who thought they had Covid back then but were never tested had. Including myself. I’m wondering if there’s another one of those going around right now. The symptoms are very similar so as to be indistinguishable on symptoms alone. 
 

eta symptom list:

Adenoviruses can cause a wide range of illnesses such as

• common cold or flu-like symptoms
• fever
• sore throat
• acute bronchitis (inflammation of the airways of the lungs, sometimes called a “chest cold”)
• pneumonia (infection of the lungs)
• pink eye (conjunctivitis)
• acute gastroenteritis (inflammation of the stomach or intestines causing diarrhea, vomiting, nausea and stomach pain)

Edited January 9, 2022 by KSera

[Emba]

Yes, something like that seems to be going around here. No real treatments other than what you would do for a cold or flu. My FIL had it and then ended up on antibiotics, but because he always tends to get pneumonia or bronchitis about a week after a cold.  He was tested for everything under the sun, (Covid, flu, strep, & more) but negative for all of it.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Emba

[itsheresomewhere]

Yes.  It is running hard on my area. I know a few who have been hospitalized from it.  One of my coworker’s mom just was released from the hospital after 2 weeks from it.  It hits hard and fast. 

[Halftime Hope]

22 minutes ago, KSera said:

I’d love to see adenovirus testing added to flu testing. In winter of 2019-20, there was a lot of bad adenovirus around, and my hunch is that that’s what a lot of people who thought they had Covid back then but were never tested had. Including myself. I’m wondering if there’s another one of those going around right now. It would be the right time of year for it, and the symptoms are very similar so as to be indistinguishable on symptoms alone. 

An anecdote, only:  I have a friend who was sick for a month in Dec/Jan 2019, but unlike a lot of people, she tested positive on antibodies in early summer 2020 with no intervening illness.  Looking back at her symptoms, it was just like COVID, but no one knew it at the time. 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Halftime Hope

[fairfarmhand]

MY family all had this right before Christmas. Multiple negative covid tests but fever, aches, horrible cough and runny nose. I was the only one who somehow didn;t get sick at all. It's just some weird virus.

[Katy]

RSV is one option. Some people have brief symptoms from Covid but never test positive even after known exposure. They seem to have genetic immunity but I don’t think the genes have been discovered.

[Jaybee]

6 hours ago, AmandaVT said:

Yep - I know of multiple people that had something similar right before Christmas. They all reported feeling flu symptoms but tested negative for both flu and covid. Seemed to knock people on their butts for about a week to ten days, then they would be ok. 

Yes, dd and ddil have both had something that started before Christmas--actually even earlier. They are finally feeling better at almost a month out. Negatives on flu, covid, and strep. Steroids and antibiotics, which seemed to make a difference the second round. 

[Longtime Lurker]

6 hours ago, BusyMom5 said:

Before Covid this was a normal thing, though. You got sick,  stayed home and took OTC meds, rested, and recovered in 3-5 days.  We didn't ever worry about figuring out the exact virus making us sick. 

Ah, the good old days...

6 hours ago, Spryte said:

 Nobody needs to get sick right now, with all the worry and inconvenience (re: testing, etc) it causes.

Right. Even if it's not covid, we shouldn't be spreading it around, especially given the anxiety it causes about whether it's covid and the disruption to people's lives.

[happi duck]

I think why the response to getting sick isn't like the before times is because now we know the worst case scenario.

[Carrie12345]

My Saturday night home test came out negative, and my PCR from Wednesday came back negative Sunday. So, yay!

But I definitely had something. 3 days of a sore throat without fever or any other symptoms. My voice was ridiculous, lol. And I was battling a pretty weird headache for nearly two days after that. (Headaches are common for me, but not like that.)

Knowing with a decent amount of certainty that it wasn’t Covid allowed me to break my isolation earlier than if it had been. I mean… could I possibly be contagious with whatever that was? I suppose. But I’m confident that I’m not breathing a super infectious virus that could potentially seriously harm someone on the off chance it gets out of my house.  It also means dd is less worried about going back to work serving customers. (No one else in my house has any symptoms of anything.) I’m not about to go off galavanting, though!

A local friend’s family just had all their tests come back negative, so they’re figuring they had bad colds. Most people I know are coming back positive.

My older daughter IS pretty sick right now, saying she feels like she did with Covid at Thanksgiving time. Her testing appointment isn’t until Wednesday, and who knows how long her results will take?  Her previous results were marked as Delta. I have a hard time believing she’d get Omicron this soon AND feel this bad, but what the heck do I know?

Walmart *says* they’re delivering 2 boxes of tests to me on Thursday, but they haven’t shipped yet, so we’ll see. If they do get here, I’ll drop one to dd. If she happens to be positive, I think that’s an important data point to have.