I’d like an antibody test to find out if what I had in December had anything to do with COVID-19.
You are not alone.
I absolutely had it in November, and I’ve chatted with people at work (over the Internet) that had it then also.
Sounds like it. Don’t know if you read this anywhere, but I have seen it a couple times out there that the virus tends to hit people who got a flu shot this year. FWIW......
I had seen a report a couple of weeks ago suggesting that many people who tested positive for COVID-19 actually tested negative for the COVID-19 antibodies 4-6 weeks after they recovered. One of the reasons people like Drs. Fauci and Birx are concerned about a flare-up later in the year is that there may be NO permanent immunity to COVID-19 after recovery.
We had THE ICK last December
Thanks.
Try Christus Mother Frances in Tyler. They have developed an antibody test.
It may well be super wide spread already, let us assume it is for a moment. What does this tell us about how deadly it is on average? Answer: Not nearly as deadly as we thought.
Welcome to the club. Our company was hit VERY hard with something and almost everyone had it back in Dec-Feb. Have been telling our folks for a while that we were likely on the TRAILING Edge rather than the LEADING edge of this and the sad part is, I think our medical folks in Washington knew it and were trying to take the Obama approach to just mitigate the virus, but the deep state and the media was not going to let a good “crisis go to waste”. This is a serious pathogen, but the inordinately disproportionate response was in part driven by more “nefarious” agendas.
I think it’s quite likely you did have it, hope you and anybody else who wants one can get an antibody test ASAP.
It’s a nice idea in theory.
Problem is that the virus test only tells you if you are currently infected. You’d have to take it daily to keep updated.
The antibody test was just created. They project we’ll have 20 million of them in six weeks or so.
The economics/logistics of testing everybody just don’t work.
They’ll test first responders, nursing home workers, and others in especially vulnerable roles. And do a large enough random sample to convince themselves that the original models were crap.
I totally agree as I had something similar in ;ate November and it lasted until just before Christmas and then in March, I got it worse than before...cough, shortness of breath, headache...it lasted about 4 weeks each time.
Now that you mention it, both me and my wife had a dry cough after returning from a cruise on Feb 29th this year. But it never got much worse, we just ignored it and the cough was gone after a couple of weeks. Like you, we both had flu shots last November.
I agree. If this is as communicable as advertised, it should have run wild through the population between December and February. I believe it did.
Antibody testing should tell the tale, I hope it’s honestly reported.
By the way, I’ve not heard one person propose the common sense solution to restarting things - send everyone under 50 back to work immediately. They have very little to fear.
Many older folk can work effectively from home these days, including the vast majority of managers. Let them do that until we have a verified therapy (not vaccine), and/or testing as you bring up.
Then, everything IS “back to normal”, except that now we know how to prepare for something far more deadly.
You need to go check to see if you have antibodies.
I remember back in January I believe that there were multiple school closures around East Texas and everyone just attributed it to the flu. I wonder if that could have been the virus and would explain why there are so few cases in Texas. I am not sure if they did any testing as it was entire schools. Could have been both contagions as well.
I still think if it was widespread in November, there would have been unexplained cases of ARDS and the CDC would have been all over it and found it.
Not only that, it would have been widespread in China too. And all the evidence is that while it might have been slowly spreading, it didn’t take off until it hit the wuhan market.
The current speculation that it spread from a research lab, has a research assistant getting sick. Spreading it to his wife. And his wife went to the wuhan market.
If that story is true, that doesn’t leave a lot of spreading prior to the wuhan market. But since the illness can be a 3 or 4 week illness, that story could line up with the first case being found in November and the wife spreading it to Wuhan in early January.
I too would like an antibody test. I had a mild cold towards the end of February. There was sneezing, that is not supposed to be a symptom of COVID. And I always have a mostly dry cough due to allergies. And if I did, probably 20 people in my office would have caught it, as I was sneezing at work one day, before I realized it was more than allergies.
I had something similar in late October. I called my primary and told him I was going to the ER for what I thought was pneumonia. I never went, as it began to remit. What you had guys had wasn’t the flu, as the test showed.
My teenage son was sick for two or three days with symptoms that sound suspiciously like covid-19 during the last week of February. In particular, the shortness of breath was an unusual symptom. We live in southern California.
I too am looking forward to an antibody test for our entire family.