Is anyone SURE they had a mild Covid-19 infection? What was it like?

The Quarantine Zone
1

I have a little bit of a reason to think that I MIGHT have had a mild infection. Statistics suggest against it, but I had a cluster of things, none of which is abnormal for me in isolation, but the cluster (over three days) is what makes me wonder.

I don’t know where I would have been exposed. I was “sick” (it was so mild, I have to use quotes) over three days, and it was a weekend, so I didn’t miss any work. It happened not to be a Friday I had to go into work, nor a Sunday with religious school, so I really had three days to laze around, and I did, because I was a little fatigued. It was before the first case was reported in Indiana, and about a month after the last time I was out of the state. But I was in LA, and in LAX, and Legoland, so in very crowded area, around lots of people, and on airplanes. I was with my son, who is young enough, at 13, to have gotten it, and been asymptomatic. So it’s remotely possible he was the one who actually caught it, sometime around Jan. 3, then gave it to me, and if the two-week incubation period is accurate, I could have been sick not quite a month after returning, or around Feb. 27-Mar. 1; this would be about 9 days before the first Indiana case.

So what is a super-mild case like? Can it last three days, and behave like a case of mild food poisoning mixed with seasonal allergies? Can you wake up on day 4, feel so much better, that you didn’t even realize how “fuzzy” you felt until you felt better, drink a cup of strong coffee, and go on with life as before-- at least until everything started shutting down?

I never took my temperature, because I didn’t feel bad enough to think I had a fever. I remember having trouble getting the heat in the apartment adjusted comfortably, but that had been a battle for over a week, because it would get down to 30’F every night, then some days, get up to 65, and others, only up to 45. My thermostat doesn’t work well, at the place is drafty, setting it for 70’F doesn’t mean it holds that temp well. It can be anywhere from 67 to 75.

So at this point, I’m agnostic. I’m washing, disinfecting and isolating as though I am not immune (and while the boychik might be, I doubt DH is), but if I could be immune due to a past infection, I’d like to find out. I could volunteer at a hospital, or delivering food to the elderly if I am immune. But I’d need a test first, and I need to justify their using one on me.

2

I had what was almost certainly a mild case of infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus a few weeks ago. I had a persistent but mostly dry cough with relatively little sputnum, a mild fever, and intermittent abdominal pains. The fever lasted a couple of days and barely rose above 100 F, and then went completely away (monitored for the next three days and oral temperature measured steadily at 97.5 F which is normal for me) and abdominal pains disappeared and then came back in the next few days while the cough went away, came back slightly, and the completely disappeared. I voluntarily self-quarantined for five days after all symptoms disappeared just to be as confident as possible that I wasn’t shedding virus. I didn’t really notice it at the time because my sense of smell is normally pretty poor but I think I had reduced olfactory and taste sensation as well as I recall feeling like the normal amount of seasoning I put on food wasn’t working. (This was before the “no smell or taste” symptom was recognized so I didn’t make note of it at the time.)

I’ll point out that I got this despite the fact that I was already taking precautions in February and am kind of normally “socially distanced” anyway. I worked mostly from home for the month of February and early March except for the few days when I had to start a new employee, and was vigorously handwashing, not touching doorknobs, sanitizing, and staying away from crowds except to grocery shop. I don’t normally hug or kiss people, and I usually wash or sanitize my hands soon after handshaking. I’m not routinely around people at high risk for contagion and I actually told my team to minimize their air travel and work from home if feeling unwell as soon as the first cases in the US and Canada were revealed. So, basically I followed every recommended public health measure short of wearing a respirator mask, and still managed to pick up the virus. I can’t verify the infection for certain until antibody testing is available but the timing and symptoms are just too on the nose to be coincidence.

It’s all anecdota but I’ve heard similar stories from so many people that I’m morally certain the actual rate of infection is vastly greater than what testing has revealed so far, and the stated replication rate in the population is much higher than the currently accepted value. There is still value in isolation measures now in trying to protect uninfected at-risk people so that there isn’t a glut of serious COVID-19 cases all at once, but it was probably never possible to prevent this outbreak from becoming a pandemic regardless of what Chinese officials did. It would have been much better, however, if government leaders around the world had taken this threat much more seriously much sooner, which is a lesson learned for the next pandemic that might be far more deadly than this one.

Stranger

3

I was skiing in Canada March 1-6 in very close proximity to 17 other people (helicopter/lodge) who had all just come through the Seattle and Vancouver airports, then stayed a day in Lake Louise on the way home, eating in crowded restaurants and the like. 10 days later I developed a severe lower back ache and some GI distress. I didn’t think to check for fever because at the time these symptoms were not being discussed. Now it seems very likely it was Covid-19.

It’s extremely frustrating that there is no testing. I could be out helping others, giving blood, etc. instead of sitting at home.

That said, my wife is helping coordinate the blood testing you may have read about in Telluride/San Miguel County CO and they are not seeing high positive results.

4

I had bad flu in mid-December. So probably too early. But I felt horrible for days and it took nearly 3 weeks to clear. These days I would check for COVID19.
But I think I was too early for it. Still, I hope I never get it.

Do you think its possible it was spreading for a time much before December 2019? Say even in the early part of the Northern Hemisphere Autumn?

5

I’ve seen some speculation that the virus may have been in the human population prior to the outbreak and thus why it is so effective at spreading asymptomatically, but I haven’t seen any hard science to back that up. And frankly, given how consistently it has attacked populations around the world now, it just doesn’t seem likely that it was somehow laying dormant previously unless there was some kind of major mutation that suddenly increased its virulence. Once there is more serologic testing and multiple labs looking at the viral genome and its variation in the population there will be a more definitive answer, but the zoonotic transfer from a ‘wet market’ is exactly the kind of epidemic origin that virologists and epidemiologists have been warning about though the dominant opinion was that it would be a strain of Influenza A because of some of the unique ways that virus can recombine into an emergent virulent strain and how easily it transfers between species.

Anyway, it sounds as if you may have had a ‘normal’ influenza infection, which is still around and killing the usual numbers of at-risk people that it always does. Did you have an annual flu shot prior to the illness?

Stranger

6

No, not this year.

7

Know a guy who thinks he had a mild case while scuba diving near Indonesia in Dec. He said some of the others on the dive boat were sick too.

8

I got a flu shot last year (the first time in a couple of decade, owing to a severe reaction I had the last time I got one) specifically because it was shaping up to be a bad flu season and potential an epidemic year and looking at the CDC Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report shows that the P&I mortality has slightly exceeded the epidemic threshold. So it is entirely possible what you got in December is just one of the circulating strains of influenza.

Stranger

9

Isn’t it true that the only way someone could answer YES to the thread title’s question is if they’d been tested for Covid-19? Because any symptoms of mild Covid-19 could also be symptoms of something else instead?

We had another thread: Dopers who speculate they have (have already had) COVID-19. In that thread, several Dopers said they thought they’d had it. I was skeptical and asked:

to which I only got one answer.

It sometimes sounds to me like people have forgotten that other infectious diseases exist, and they think “I was sick, therefore I must have had Covid-19,” where in any other year they would have thought something like “Must have been a touch of the flu.”

10

Right? One of my coworkers got sick a couple of weeks ago, and she was sure she had it. She tested negative. It was just a cold. People still get the flu, colds, severe allergies…all of which share some symptoms with Covid’s vague list of symptoms. When they widely circulate an antibodies test I think a lot of people are going to be surprised that they did not, in fact, have it.

11

That’s actually kinda what I was asking-- but I thought maybe there would be people who lived with someone who tested positive, and were told by a doctor that their symptoms represented a mild case, even though they were not tested. I heard someone like that interviewed on NPR. They interviewed three people, all recovered: one asymptomatic, one a mild case, and one a very serious case, who had been hospitalized. The mild case talked about having something that was like a really bad allergy attack, that made her feel weak sometimes. I think it lasted less than a week.

What I had was three days of what at the time seemed like unrelated maladies that ruined what should have been a pretty free weekend, right before I had a lot to do for Purim.

The first day, I woke up with a migraine and nausea. Nausea with a migraine is nothing unusual, except I actual puked a little. “Spit up,” not really vomited, like a baby, but not typical for me with a migraine. Even less typical is to wake up with one. They usually happen in the afternoon or early evening. But it responded to migraine medicine, and I was fine, until I got [bad] diarrhea in the evening, which made me think I maybe had some underlying thing that caused the headache. Took Imodium, and didn’t have a second episode. I have diagnosed IBS, even though it’s not bad, but I have these episodes from time to time.

Next day, nose was stuffy and runny at the same time, and I was coughing a little. I get seasonal allergies. Took Claritin, and OTC decongestant, and mostly it went away. Cough was productive, so I didn’t think anything of it. Seasonal allergies give me post-nasal drip. My neck was also stiff, but I had a VERY bad case of whiplash last fall, and was trying to taper off my PT exercises. Did them again, took naproxen, and neck was better.

Very tired in evening. Went to bed early, and slept about ten hours that night. Woke up kind of crappy feeling, and was sleepy during the day. I sleep badly a lot, and figured I maybe hadn’t slept well the previous two nights, with headaches and stuffy noses.

Woke up the next day and felt so good, I realized that I had felt crappier the last couple of days than I’d realized. Had a very strong cup of coffee, and was back to myself.

There was a day, at some point around this time, but I can’t remember exactly when, that I was eating some mixed fruit, and I couldn’t taste it much. The mango had no taste at all, and the rest just vaguely tasted sweet, but with no other flavors. Remember chalking it up to having a stuffy nose from allergies. Cannot honestly remember if it was this same weekend or not. It was around this time, though.

So, that’s what I had.

It’s all reasonably explained other ways. But it’s the cluster together that is suspicious. I just don’t know what to think.

12

Except that, everything I’ve seen says that runny or stuffy nose is not a symptom of Covid-19, though it is a symptom of colds and allergies.

13

The 14 year old daughter of our housecleaners (whom we have furloughed for the time being) had fever, headaches and eventually pneumonia. They tested her and the test came back negative. If you believe that test, then there is something else with very similar symptoms. She is fine now.

I guess we won’t know until there is a simple test for antibodies.

14

I got a weird feeling I had/have a mild case of it. But the thing I lack is a temperature.

And all the other symptoms can easily be written off to something else. But I sure would like to know if I have antibodies for it.

15

I suspect I had a mild case a few months ago, and here’s why: I had a “cold” with a mild stuffy nose and fatigue, and then it went away, only to come back a few days later. At the time, I attributed it to exposure to a different cold virus, but now, I’m not so sure. It wasn’t enough to stop me, just slow me down.

16

There are literally dozens of upper respiratory viruses, aka ‘colds’ that can and regularly do the same thing to millions. And a few months ago, COVID in the wild here in the US was just not a likely thing at all. Occam’s razor points towards other causes in such a scenario.

17

I’m sorry, who is DH? David Hasslehoff? Can’t you just spell out who you mean? It sure would be considerate. Thanks.

18

Anyone here tested positive for covid 19 yet had a mild case? That would be more valuable than guessing to have had covid 19. Many doctors and first responders with covid like symptoms have tested negative. They had a different virus, and there are plenty going around every flu season

19

Could be the flu. Most people who “die of the flu” like my mom also test positive for pneumonia.

20

The coronavirus test yields up to 30% false negatives, so no, I wouldn’t believe that test.

I got the same exasperated response when I used a similar term here awhile back. This is a common abbreviation on other sites–common enough that it may not occur to people that it’s not used here for whatever reason. DH stands for “dear husband.” Other similar terms are DW (dear wife), DS (“dear son”), and DD (dear daughter).