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Comment by SideburnsOfDoom | Hacker News Reader

> We had a super strong flu season, which was incredibly contagious.

Same in UK, people were sick a lot of the time, October through December 2019. But that wasn't the COVID-19. It was just a bad colds and flu season.

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I can add one data point to support this (not that it is worth much).

I had the normal story of being sick in January in London with the "worst flu ever" and suspected it might have been COVID. But I recently had a lab-based IgG antibody test and it came back negative.

Everyone else in my family was also negative. Also, friends who have family members who work in the NHS with similar stories of being sick were also negative. No one I know directly has tested positive yet.

I can't speak to the overall accuracy of the test, but the one I took was the private IgG antibody offered through the company 'Qured'.

Another random datapoint. I had covid according to a PCR test and it was pretty much a non event - slight sore throat only. I think unless you get the full can't breath thing it's very hard to tell.

Correct - and it was the same in the US. Strong flu season. ...and tests confirmed that it was the "regular" seasonal flu - not covid-19.

People want to believe that covid-19 has already worked its way through the entire community because they want to believe that this is almost over.

The data does not support that position.

We do not have the data to support or refute the original statement. Mostly because the US has a poor understanding of the uniqueness and context of every person's immune system and how it plays a role in new viruses, reactivating old viruses, depleting nutrition required to successfully fight off multiple strains through the winter season, having multiple pathogens at once and a suppressed immune system, etc. This lack of understanding requires a lot more testing of pathogens, T-cells, mast cells, and signaling (cytokines, etc) from a lot of people. It's usually seen as too costly or invasive. Not that this current pandemic has been costly ;-)

In the US Midwest it was very harsh for flu, conjunctivitis, strep, etc. My children both had coughs, fever, ruptured right ear and one had chicken pox style rash (late December). Doctors never tested my son, my daughter tested negative for flu with multi-day symptoms and then positive for flu A (same test) ~10 days later. So there is/was a definite lack of data. Unfortunately, we do not have the samples to go back in time and apply newer tests. Luckily, France had the foresight to preserve some of the samples.

Why not get a serological test?

They are being offered inexpensively at least here in NYC by commercial urgent care facilities.

I expect the mail-in Labs will get geared up pretty quickly also.

Antibody tests are becoming more available. So that's an option for me and possibly my young children when I can afford to pay for it.

Anecdata, but two people in my office had really persistent coughs in February, lasting multiple weeks, not days. I wonder if that was the Rona. One of the people that had it thinks it might have been.

> persistent coughs in February,

That is more possible, both because of timing and symptoms. It's not certain (or even most likely) to be COVID-19, but is worth checking out.

Given things like this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52385558

if someone _died_ on 6 Feb, they were infected in mid-late January.

Statistically speaking, it's still more likely that they had something else.

No doubt. But that applies to anyone who has cold or flu like symptoms.

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