I'm no doctor (except in electrical engineering), so I'm just giving my superficial understanding. I think the initial symptoms of COVID are very much like a cold -- it's a coronavirus, of course. The truly distinctive symptoms are a complete loss of taste and/or smell. Once the spike protein takes hold, it can manifest in many ways, the worst of which are blocking energy and oxygen from getting to your cells, partly by intracellular actions within body cells (involving the ACE2 receptor) and partly by messing up the blood cells so they both fail to carry oxygen and clump together instead of flowing smoothly through the tiny capillaries. This can result in the failure of any and all organs, and ultimately death.
I think most of what's going on out there is plain old colds with a few flus thrown in. Once people have turned their furnaces on for the winter, the dry air along with the close quarters and lack of natural vitamin D leaves the lungs more vulnerable to viruses.
At the school district where my wife works (but remotely, from home), they're seeing the usual collection of winter colds and flus. Some of them are testing positive for COVID, but who knows if they actually have it. I haven't heard of anyone dying yet.
A friend/colleague in San Diego came down with something after Christmas, including "green mucus". I'm trying to convince her to take ivermectin just in case (and it might just help with a regular cold), and have offered to drive out there from Tucson if she can't find a local supply. I've warned her to look out for the taste/smell problem.
I don't know if I've told this story before: my brother, in Houston, found out recently that his best friend, a refugee from Venezuela, had COVID. The friend couldn't get anything useful from his doctors and the problem worsened over six or seven days. Finally, my brother drove over and left a supply of ivermectin in his mailbox. Within 24 hours, the friend was ready to go back to work.
Whatever’s going around my immediate circle passing as the Coof in the past 6 months or so does not seem to include the “taste/smell loss” symptom any longer (last year it did, and illness was usually more severe then too). It’s more persistent than a cold, though - I don’t get those often, but when I do I’ve knocked them out in 8-12 hours. I can’t say if I’ve ever actually had the flu - which means I probably haven’t. Yet no cold I’ve ever had has demanded so much sleep from my body as this. I slept 10 hours the last 2 nights, in addition to almost all day Wednesday, and today (day 3) I feel 95% back to my normal self, except for a stiff, painful lower back, probably from sleeping too soundly to change positions often enough.
This is the first time I’ve been really sick, such that it is, in probably 40 years, if not longer. I sure hope it’s the Coof, so I get some natural immunity out of it for my trouble! LOL