An anecdote about allergies. I take zyrtec (generic) for mild hayfever. Have been for almost a decade. So, I sort of figured I had allergies covered. I’d get cold/flu symptoms twice a year at roughly the same time each year, and just figured it was the seasonal flu (especially with school age kids, you get it all). I finally realized a couple years ago, though, that that most of the symptoms disappeared once I got to work, with it’s recycled and filtered AC. It took a long time to put this together since I’d tend to stay home when I thought I was contagious. So now I’m more aware of when the trees near me are dumping pollen, and it definitely lines up.

I say this to let you know that if you’re stuck at home, you may be more likely to be feeling the effects of local allergens that you might not feel if you spent less time at home. The symptoms you describe sound a lot like allergies to me. I’m not a doctor though, so please do your own research. And talk to a doctor about the symptoms, especially if they progress...

3M sells some high-quality home HVAC filters under the "Filtrete Healthy Living Advanced Allergen Reduction" label; you may want to try one for a couple of months and see if it helps you breathe better. They make a difference for me versus run-of-the-mill filters. I'm sure there are better ones out there, or cheaper ones of equal quality from a different brand, but in my experience these work quite well.

From what I've seen online, a ton of people in the US got hit hard in December, myself included - I typically don't get sick. Even if covid19 hadn't happened I think this would've been a bad flu year.

I had a good sweat for half a night followed by a dry cough that lasted about 4 weeks from late February through March. It's gone now but I don't remember the last time I had a cough last that long. Once the antibody tests are more widely available I plan on taking one to understand if it was covid19

FYI, you can buy yourself an antibody test online directly from Quest Labs for $119.

That’s great news; here’s the link:

https://questdirect.questdiagnostics.com/products/

However, I’m disappointed that it’s not available in the states of AK, HI, OK, AZ, IN, nor outside of the U.S. Further silliness is that in CA and OR you have to wait a week to get the results because California and Oregon state laws require that lab results be held for 7 days before Quest can release them; this hold is in place so that your physician has the opportunity to discuss your lab test results with you prior to you receiving them.

Another annoyance is the little questionnaire you have to go through before they agree to sell it to you. You have to divine their intentions for each question. If you don’t answer “correctly”, this is what you get and they won’t sell it to you:

This test is not right for you. Based on your response, you may still have an active COVID-19 infection and this test may not be right for you at this time. COVID-19 Immune Response testing is specifically used to check for an immune response to the virus which can take time after an active infection.

I understand all that. I just want to buy the test. Maybe I want to keep it for a day when I or someone I know needs it. Or whatever reason. Why force users to reverse engineer the questions and then lie to get it?

Also if you give your date of birth as less than 18, you get the same “This test is not right for you” refusal. I guess they don’t want to sell to minors, though the message is deceptive since it has to do with regulation and not whether the infection is active. So if you’re buying it to test your children, you again have to lie to their questionnaire since the questions are posed for the person taking the test.

The bureaucracy surrounding medical products is just horrible.

Why do you feel that anyone is entitled to buy their test even if they do not meet their criteria for who they believe should receive their test?

A test is not a life-saving device, especially for a test that only detects recovered patients.

If it started in December, it's probably not covid 19. If you don't have a fever, it's probably not covid 19.

2020, the year COVID outranks Cancer as the webs goto diagnosis for anything and everything

At the start physicians insisted on fever being a core symptom, but since then they have eased off on this. No fever does not mean no covid.

The official record has traced the first case back to November 17, so it definitely seems at least possible it was spreading earlier than we know.

I saw a report today that said most people going to hospital with covid-19 don't have a fever.

I don't remember if it was on december or january, honestly, but it was before the wuhan market jumped to the newspapers.

All tested members of my family were negative so far, so probably more around Jan than Dec, and probably not corona. Maybe just fungus spores or pollen

probably but not completely discountable.

its because people have been saying "hey what about this" despite the loud banging of the scientifically minded people yelling "NO EVIDENCE THEREFORE ITS AN ABSURD IDEA" that we know of a community spread case in the US that died on February 6th. Instead of a travel related case that died on February 29th.

so then was patient zero in US from travel on January 15th? January 1st? December 15th? December 1st? How many hops are really necessary

If patient died at Feb 6th, then it contracted covid about 1 month before that from somebody else, so Jan 1st, maybe.

I was going with 3 weeks, but yes early January like 2nd week 6th - 12th

and if that person was also community spread or travel spread then we are looking at mid-december either way.

> If you don't have a fever, it's probably not covid 19.

If you do have COVID-19, you're statistically more likely to not have a fever than to have a fever.