Hacker News Reader

Comment by prewett | Hacker News Reader

I suspect a lot of these flus are Covid... I just got Covid recently, but I only felt ill for maybe two days. I only tested myself because I'm in a choir that requires testing for certain rehearsals, otherwise I would have figured it's "the flu" or something. The guy I sat next to this week said he had a similar illness a few weeks ago, but he didn't test himself and attributed it to a random cold (but was surprised he's had lingering symptoms).

View on HN

From my experience if someone under the age of 50 has mild cold like symptoms or as you did only feels ill for about two days then the chance of it being COVID is IMHO higher than the flu. I think in young people the flu hits you much harder and you never get away with less than a week minimum of feeling ill but with COVID one could have no symptoms or mild symptoms for less than a week which is very common.

You're probably right - I think a lot of people have a fundamental misunderstanding of severity and statistics here. As far as I can tell, if you have respiratory "cold"/"flu" symptoms, it's most likely that it's COVID, just based on prevalence and contagiousness.

Also, a lot of people haven't had the flu in years - it's not mild. It's often a week of being miserable in bed, not two days of sniffles. Mild COVID can feel like a cold, but COVID is more contagious and (I believe) more prevalent at this point. If you have any of those symptoms, you should probably assume it is COVID and take a test if you need to be around others.

People say this and I cannot fathom it. I just tested positive for flu last week. Yes I took one day off work. Yes I had a fever. But I kept working and other than isolating, lived my life as normal. If you're stuck in bed for a week I would seriously consider your health. Flu was one day of high fever and a few days of sniffles and this is confirmed influenza. Seriously Americans are way too unhealthy. Even COVID... Everyone said it was a week and I had one day of high fever (but I didd take my free week off works that was great!)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com