It's flu season, it's quite possible they have had both flu and Coronavirus. My wife had the flu in Feb & early March and the symptoms are identical to the Coronavirus.
They're working in a hospital so they'll catch everything.
Occam's razor says she had the flu and not Covid-19.
Influenza isn't one thing and the flu can have severe symptoms. Swine flu is also still going around. My wife's coworker (large tech company in the Bay Area) was positive for swine flu around March.
I got the sickest I have been in years in December 2019. I had a cough for about 6 months afterwards that was sufficiently bad that I had a chest x-ray to rule out lung cancer. My partner got sick shortly after I did with similar symptoms.
I suspect it was the flu though. My desk neighbour at work was hospitalised for the flu (tested and confirmed) a week earlier. I had been vaccinated, but it's mayve the case I had a more mild case than he did thanks to the vaccination.
That being said, my partner is a nurse and was the only person in her department not to get covid. WE did get tested for covid antibodies in late 2020 and didn't have any, but it's possible they had diminished by then if it really was covid.
But the simplest explanation is still that it was just the flu.
I didn’t have anything early (I’ve never caught it despite multiple direct exposures, but I rarely get sick from anything anyway), but both my wife and son-in-law came back from separate business trips in late January/early Feb 2020 with all the classic symptoms. Both subsequently caught Covid in 2022 and both described the experience as very similar to their 2020 experiences.
No way to know for sure if it was Covid in 2020 since no testing at the time of their illness, but I would not be willing to bet against the possibility despite all the “it would have been impossible due to…” theorizing some folks have said on this thread.
late Jan / early Feb becomes more possible. there was certainly cryptic spread by then that was happening over airplane travel. both of them getting it would be unlikely though unless both of them were in china or italy or had contact with people from there.
but you simply cannot diagnose covid just via symptoms. every symptom that covid causes can be caused by other respiratory viruses, covid just makes it more likely that you'll get more severe symptoms.
2019/2020 cold and flu season, before covid showed up, was also a particularly bad year, with H1N1 back and influenza B spreading at the same time (plus RSV, common cold coronaviruses, human metapneumovirus and everything else).
Two people in my office were out sick. One came to sit at my desk to help me out with a DB query after she was done with sick leave.
I got sick a few days later.
Went to the doctor who said they couldn't give COVID-19 tests since they didn't have it, but she gave me a regular flu test.
Results came back and I was flagged as positive for Coronavirus, but it came with a note from my doctor saying there was no way to confirm that it was COVID-19. I assume it was given symptoms and timing.
A little tin-foily, but I went to Vegas with my family in late December. About 2 weeks after we got back, my dad had a severe case of the flu (so far as we know) and so did my cousin's girlfriend. They were both showing symptoms similar to Covid-19, but because testing was not available then, it's hard to say for sure. And it was flu season then.
I had wondered whether the flu our family got hit with over Christmas could have been coronavirus (had mentioned previously that my wife actually broke a rib from coughing).
But then a few weeks ago we all started to sneeze, cough, and run low grade fevers. Wife lost her sense of smell. And then a bunch of symptoms between us that I later learned are all coronavirus symptoms.
The dominant things for me was the shortness of breath, and the extreme fatigue. Like, feeling like you’ll just go “goodnight!” and collapse on the kitchen floor fatigue.
The breathing was the most disconcerting. I’d wake up in the morning thinking I was getting better, but by the afternoon I’d feel like someone was sitting on my chest. The cough never really got crazy bad for me. Where a panic attack might feel like you can’t catch your breath, this felt more like trying to breath under a swimming pool.
Caring for 3 young kids with a sick spouse has been... a test, lol. But fortunately we’re all young and healthy and things are returning to normal. As slowly as it came on. Luckily I stocked up on things just in case, but at the height of being sick it was impossible to get any grocery delivery windows. They did finally come through about a month into this process, so, feeling grateful all around.
I had what would be called a “mild” case, but it definitely sucked. Looking forward to antibody testing so we can know fo sure it’s what we had, but based on all of the symptoms, the long incubation time, etc, it seems very likely.
4 people in my company, my sister and their spouses (so 10 all together) just had Covid in the last 3 weeks. 2 reported mild flu like symptoms, the others range between that and full blown flu. The least affected said it was like a cold but went on for longer. The ones at my company all tried to work through it and all failed to keep a full schedule, despite being the kind of people who might work through a cold.
if they had flu-like symptoms, it's unlikely covid-19, because you typically have a lot of mucus in your cough, and covid-19's symptoms are principally (1) high fever and (2) dry cough.
My mother-in-law had an absolutely BRUTAL flu in early February. It was so bad my sister-in-law had to live with her for a while and take care of her. She had really, really bad fevers and an absolutely horrible dry cough that seems to have left some lasting damage even now. It took her about 3 weeks to get better.
There's no evidence that it was Covid-19. But she is a nanny for a family of doctors in Boston so it's not impossible that it's it.
It's been exactly the same story for someone I know. They had a mild-but-less-mild-than-usual flu in March that was 'strange' in all the ways covid-19 is said to be. They had 'issues' like yours well into April and still don't feel 100%. No official diagnosis though.
Well, the reason I say this is I caught seasonal flu in the fall, a few months before the coronavirus was discovered in China. It was one of the worst flus I have faced. It was a very body-achy kind of flu, which afaik is not a covid symptom.
I've personally observed two households where one member had some sort of very nasty flu thing with a dry cough, fever and breathing issues (likely covid but no test available) and other members were just unusually tired and with a tickily throat. The later could be classed as asymptomatic and would never have considered covid but they clearly had some symptoms.
Perhaps the corona virus is asymptomatic for some people (as is known to be), and the effects they are feeling are from the flu. How many people get a false positive (or true positive that would otherwise be asymptomatic) while also being positive for the flu?
Maybe corona virus is an enabler of some other disease, like a particularly virulent flu or some other respiratory infection.
This questions are inconvenient, so they'll go unasked by the media, let alone answered.
i had a weird flu in april 2020, right as the covid panic really began in my region. knocked me out for 2 weeks, i lost almost 10kg, sickest i've been in a long time. ticked off every box on the list of covid symptoms.
but the PCR test said it wasn't covid, and it can't have been all that contagious because neither of my roommates got sick. so yeah, sometimes people just get sick.
Anecdote: Metro NYC area. First week of March something weird ripped through my household. Wife lost all sense of taste and smell - complained she couldn't taste my cooking - and had a pretty bad cold. Kids and wife got weird pink eye at the same time with pink rings around their eyes. I was very lethargic during the same period of time and when I would lay down would get waves of chills through my body.
No clue if it was COVID-19, but it was strange. And we're ground zero for it (I work in Manhattan and used to commute every day on public transit).
They're working in a hospital so they'll catch everything.
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