Comment by eggy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eggy | Hacker News Reader

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I had a 100 to 104.5 F fevers, chills, sore throat and upper respiratory track infection over the course of 4 days with symptoms persisting for over two weeks back in the last part of January. I was tested for flu and strep, and they came back negative. My wife had similar, slightly less severe symptoms. My four year old daughter had the same symptoms as me that developed into pneumonia. Her fevers were up to 102.5 to 103 F The pediatrician prescribed antibiotics for my daugther who was already recovering. She was not tested for flu or strep, since I already had been, or that is why I think tests were not done on her. They were not diagnosing or looking for corona virus at the time in New York/New Jersey. It felt worse than the flu I had had two years earlier. I was very tired and weak as was my daughter. We are all OK now, but I keep thinking we may have had it. We spend a lot of time in Asian markets in NY/NJ, and there were a lot of people visiting the US from Hong Kong and China for the upcoming Chinese New Year/post Christmas season that we talked with at the markets in the weeks before getting sick.

I had 3 days of tired/weakness from 7-10 Jan, and a severe dry cough for about two weeks after that.

I strongly suspect I caught it from a friend that had travelled all over Europe and back the previous weekend and we were in close contact.

Unfortunately no way to rule out if I indeed had it or not. Would be super interested when an antibody test comes out to see though.

Are you saying it's possible to test for a disease after full recovery ?

I'm not a doctor but this is cool !

Not a professional so some of my terminology may be wrong, but here is how I understand it: after your immune system fights off a virus it often develops 'antibodies' to fight off the same virus if it should encounter it again. We can detect these antibodies via a blood test and thereby get an idea of whether you've had that particular virus before.

Yes, but confidence of detecting antigens becomes more difficult for some infections than others. And some viruses stay in your body like CMV. In the case of COVID-19, the virus does not remain, but the antigens do. The question is can the test detect them long after recovery. I'd like to know too for my own curiosity and to see if this means I am immune to it for this strain, this season.

Yes, an antibody test (a blood test) can do it. A swab test looking for the virus in your saliva probably wouldn't find any.

My wife and I had these exact symptoms in late Jan in Los Angeles. I’m an educator and noticed very many more students getting sick during this period than normal. Had I not caught it myself, I’d have chalked this up to increased hypochondria due to coronavirus in the news. But I find myself wondering if it’s been here much longer than currently estimated.

Mid-January in San Diego. Fever and head congestion. Extreme fatigue some days. Laid me out for a week and used my first sick time in years. Wife and daughter had less severe form exactly five days after my onset. It was unlike anything we had experienced before.

I worked at a large international company at the time and we had dozens of developers return form India and China after the holidays. It really makes me wonder if we had it.

If coronavirus was this far spread in Jan already then there would have been much higher positives in late Feb when people were starting to test outside China.

To an extremely high degree it was just the annual flu.

This is the crux of the matter. I believe this was widely spread in Jan and we are way further ahead than assumed

Looks like mid-February was the first spike in Italy: https://www.corona.cloud/italy

NEVER MIND. That chart appears to be global cases.

Not if you're only running tests on people ending up in ICU and not mild cases.

My mom had similar symptoms last week and got tested for influenza a, influenza b, RSV and COVID 19. All came back negative.

I add this anecdote just to show there are plenty of bad bugs out there.

I’m glad to hear you and your family are doing better.

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