Hacker News Reader

Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

One of the challenges is that the further we get from the time, the harder it is to determine. We may never know.

I suspect I had COVID-19 in the US late December 2019, but as of yet, the CDC doesn't acknowledge that possibility, and I've had enough exposure since that time that there's no reasonable way to test the hypothesis.

At a certain point, some of the investigations stop being practical to investigate further.

View on HN

That would be in line with France's findings of COVID-19 cases from November [1], and Italy finding traces in waste water [2,3].

IIRC, public toilets due to fecal matter were a possible infection vector (I hope I am using the term correctly) [4], which suggests that there had been covid cases since December in Italy as the traces were in waste water [2,3].

Some hypothesise that covid had been circulating in humans long before the market outbreak [5], this hypothesis does seem to corroborate the hypothesis that the virus had long spread before the first 'official' outbreak in Wuhan.

[1] https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20210311-surprises-about-french...

[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53106444

[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiegold/2020/06/18/new-scient...

[5] https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/mar-27-covid-pandemic-origin...

I also suspect this with the same timeline and a large number of my coworkers here in NY had a severe illness at the same time.

I was laid out in bed with the worst upper respiratory infection of my life for most of late December and then again for two more weeks in early January after a brief recovery.

A handful of our coworkers had been in Wuhan in the 3-4 weeks prior.

Before you were vaccinated you could have donated blood and they would have tested for antibodies. A possible indication, but not something that would confirm it is if you had a reaction to the first shot. A number of folks I know who had covid had a more serious reaction to the first dose.

I had separate exposure to COVID-19 before vaccination, and before it was super easy to get tested for antibodies. The reality is, whether or not I had exposure or not hardly matters at this point, and it's impossible to prove one way or the other.

It may be very hard to determine if people sick in 2019 had COVID-19 or something else at this time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com