Talked with a neighbor and friend recently. Hadn’t seen her in some time.
She said a family member went on a cruise in autumn 2019. The cruise changed physicians in a Philippines stop (apparently, this was planned). Family member got sick with some virus they couldn’t identify, and the doctor told her there was starting to be similar cases in Asia.
Family member recovered, came home, and went to a family Christmas celebration. (And why not? No one had heard of COVID then.) My friend got sick in what she called the worst flu she’d ever had, but she tested negative for flu. A couple of other family members got sick, including her 90+ year old mother, who died.
I know that early on it was reported that the earliest case of COVID in the US was early 2020. Is this still true? Did my friend and family members get sick with something else, or was it likely COVID?
There was a flu like strain that went through our office in early February last year. Five peiple in my immediate work area had it, I had a lingering couth for weeks and it hurt deep into my lower ribcage. The cough was gone by March 1st and then people started talking about Covid19.
I went into the hospital for DKA on April 12th and there was no sign I had been exposed to Covid19 (they tested me five times). Never did find out what it was that gave me the bad cough, but strains of flu giving people Covid19 like symptoms have been around for awhile now.
There are all kinds of respiratory viruses, and cruise ships are notorious as havens for pathogens. Given the infectiousness of SARS-CoV-2, if it had been circulating in the United States in autumn 2019 we would have seen a much earlier surge. We did have a slightly above threshold value for the pneumonic and influenza-like illness in the 2019-2020 season prior to the identification of SARS-CoV-2, but not the out-of-proportion ICU admissions and specific signs and symptoms of COVID-19, nor the rapid contagion through elder car facilities that was seen in March though June of 2020.