gopherit said "I hear on the US news about what people have gone thru and about "long haulers"...getting better and then sick again or better but still have symptoms. Since this is an anonymous discussion group I was hoping people who've had covid would share how you felt, symptoms you had, how long it took to recover and if you still have symptoms...plus anything else you may think of to share. I wonder why some people are so sick and others barely suffer at all...could it be age, m/f, nationality or maybe even blood type.
Just curious.
It might be good for people to hear how bad this can be on a person or maybe give support to those having a hard time.
To start, I know of a few people who THINK they had the virus before we really heard about it. They ached all over and being tired and weak lasted a few months. One had pneumonia , another had a bad cold for a week or so and one had a respiratory infection. Of course, without an antibody test, no one will ever know for sure. "
There was an article quite a few months ago now that talked about a wastewater (sewage) study that was done in Italy. Basically, they discovered back in the spring that if they test sewage samples for a city, they can do a sort of sentinel surveillance, showing traces of the virus usually a few weeks before clinical cases show up.
When they went back and tested samples from Milan and Turin, they discovered that they could detect virus in the samples in December, almost 2 months before the first clinical case was identified there.
When they went and tested in Barcelona, it was found 40 days prior to the first clinical cases being identified.
It was reported that they have even found viral fragments going back as far as March 2019, but the results there were questioned and the information not peer-reviewed at the time of publication.
At the time this information was released, there was a very, very VERY long thread on Twitter with people (mostly in the UK) talking about how they had the worst flu of their LIVES back in December 2019, before Covid was ever identified, and they were convinced that's what they had. Some seemed to be what we now call long-haulers. Antibody testing was just coming available in the UK and many people were hoping to access it to see if their suspicions were correct. IDK if any of these people ever had antibody testing done or what the results were.
The lack of antibodies, however, isn't necessarily proof or disproof of having had the disease. Even in places like Sweden, where it was assumed the virus would be widespread, there are very few people with detectable antibodies (only about 10% of people tested).
It's an interesting premise - that Covid has actually been around much longer and was far more widespread that originally thought. However, if it's true it's clear that it didn't cause the death that it causes now (or maybe wasn't as virulant?), so maybe December marks when something about the virus changed.
We do know there's at least 6 different, distinct strains of Covid, with the D614G being the most common at this point (it's also the most virulant, although it might also be less deadly). It's interesting to note that the original "L" strain identified in Wuhan has nearly died out. That shows how quickly viruses can change and evolve, which adds to the mystery of where exactly this virus came from, when, and how widespread it actually is.
Information about wastewater testing in Italy and Spain:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-sewage-idUSKBN23Q1J9
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53106444
https://globalnews.ca/news/7119856/coronavirus-sewage-barcelona-march-2019/
Information about the evolution of the virus and the different strains:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200803105246.htm
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6
Information about antibody rates:
https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-coronavirus-chief-immunity-levels-studies-contradict-2020-8