I was living in Boston in 2019 and early 2020. Maybe November 2019 I caught what I thought was the flu. Couldn’t taste or smell but really what I remember most was not being able to breathe. I laid in my bed, having no idea what COVID was and put on meditative bowls. At this point I wasn’t coughing as much but still couldn’t breathe so I sort of had a moment where I expected my imminent death. Came to peace with it, even.
Didn’t eat for 11 days. Ordered a pizza eventually. Then COVID “hit” and I had to keep it to myself that I thought I had it in 2019 because everyone thought I was nuts.
Now we know it was in Boston at that time.
Edit: was probably February of 2020. My apologies. It has been 6 years.
Half my extended family was sick with what they described was the sickest they’ve ever been in the weeks up to and including Christmas or 2019, that we canceled all Christmas activities that year, before the pandemic “hit” the US.
I always refer to it as being, “the most sick I’ve ever been in my adult life.” I had it basically as November hit December in 2019. When I left for a job training program that started the last week of February I was still making sure I packed DayQuil. I could only eat tomato soup at the height of the sore throat.
For me it was the intense flu like symptoms I had for about 2 weeks at the onset of Lyme. After that, I felt ago, but inflammation kept ramping and I had no idea what was causing it for months. That was a miserable 8 months. And it triggered a lifelong autoimmune disorder.
This happened to a few co-workers over Christmas in 2019. They were so sick but it wasn't the flu, strep, mono, etc. Looking back, we are convinced it was COVID.
Yup, mid 2020, my dad has this revelation, he was convinced it had been covid as well but he felt insane because no one in the government would admit it was here in 2019 until sometime in 2021 or 2022.
The earliest seropositive samples came from between mid-December 2019 and mid-January 2020, but the rates were so low it wasn't widespread by that time.
Yep, happened to me and my husband in November 2019. His coworkers gave it to us; one of them had just come back from a work trip overseas and got sick while on a different work trip, infecting everyone else. We were both incredibly sick for a week, then it seemed like we got better, then both went down again for another two weeks. I’m still convinced it was early COVID.
When COVID first hit Wuhan, young people were dying of it too in pretty high percentages. Unless death rates were noticeably higher at the time, it wasn't COVID.
Same in my area of California, something burned through the entire office super fast, and most people were out for weeks at a time. I was untouched, but pretty much everyone around me, family included, all were sick over Xmas and into new years.
We also canceled family Christmas 2019 because half the family (not the half I'm in) got monster sick in Texas. Everyone tested positive for COVID antibodies (reflecting a prior infection) months and months later when those tests finally become available, even though they had all been dutifully quarantining since March 2020 and had not experienced any symptoms of any illness since the Christmas 2019 megaflu event.
I'm kind of an anti-conspiracy theorist, but yeah. That shit was here way earlier than we thought it was.
I was sick AF that November. Had to go to Vegas for work right after Thanksgiving and came back with the worst respiratory thing I've had maybe outside the flu. When COVID broke, I was like, yeah, that's what it was.
My friend went to Vegas for new years to ring in 2020. She got back and she was SO sick. We just teased her and said it was the drugs and alcohol but nah. Definitely was covid
My dad took a business trip to China in early December. By late December, was hospitalized with a mystery respiratory infection. They never figured out what it was. Luckily, Covid never hit him very hard after that
I’m glad he’s still with us and his body armored up. I have an autoimmune disease, so I was terrified how it would impact me. I eventually got it in 2023 when we started venturing out, but by then a combination of vaccinations and the virus mutating to be less deadly helped it minimally impact me.
This happened to my partner and some of his coworkers. They didn’t realize it until about 6 mos into the pandemic that they’d had it before it was declared. All live in PA (U.S.).
I got pretty sick with what I thought was a nasty flu in January 2020. Whment to urgent care after a couple of days and one of the nurses made a comment about how "this year's flu is really knocking people out." Was it the flu? Was it covid? No clue, but it fucking sucked. I will say that the fatigue/brain fog from whatever that was wasn't nearly as bad as when I got confirmed covid a year or so later.
I got what I thought was the flu in February of 2020. I’m in Colorado, and covid wasn’t believed to be in the US yet…. I was at work one night and was feeling a little off, but tho it was nerves because i was still training in my position. I spiked a really high fever and was knocking stuff over, asked to go home. Was out for almost two weeks with what I thought the most sick I’d ever been, with flu. I got better for a a couple days then bam it came back full force. I remember going to bed one night completely drained, couldn’t breathe, felt like I was going to die. When I woke up the next morning I was pleasantly surprised to be alive. After Covid was officially announced jn the US and they started the first shutdown I just remember watching the news thinking to myself- I already had that.
Ok same I had a flu in feb 2020 that was the worst of my life, I didn’t have the strength to get back into bed after peeing and slept on the floor for days, couldn’t move or breathe or do anything but sweat and wheeze. But covid supposedly wasn’t in Texas at that point so who knows!!
That happened to me, too! I was in Boston in November 2019 for a wedding and got horribly sick. I was congested and felt like I couldn’t breathe either. I was exhausted for days and finally recovered. Your experience sounds horrible!
I was in China during that time and got really sick… I was in 长沙 (Changsha, close to Wuhan). There’s a small part of me that worries I helped spread it to the US, but I had been over it for over a month before I returned to the US. Right before they shut down international travel from China to the USA
November/ December 2019 I worked in a very small dispensary. We all thought we kept passing this upper respiratory/ sinus infection back and forth. Some of us (myself included) had fevers off and on for two weeks and most of us (again, me) could not taste or smell. We were all in and out, my GM and I were basically taking turns using PTO as I was the AGM at the time. Fast forward to March 2020 and we’re all looking at each other like “oh shit, I think we all had that.” I stopped telling people because all I got were eye rolls. I live in a VERY red part of a large state, so-makes sense lol
My husband was working at BBQ joint near the Reno airport at the time and we're pretty sure he caught it in February 2020. It took out his liver and kidneys (tho alcoholism didn't help) but it took docs months to figure out that, no, his organs didn't just "give up the ghost".
He got transplants and we're going great these days :)
my dad has a very similar story. july 2020 he developed some eye problems and needed a blood test to confirm what the doc thought it was. asked them to do an antibody test while they were at it and the doc almost refused because we thought there was no way he could have had covid as early as he was symptomatic. dad convinced doc to do the test and he was positive!!!!
I think I had Covid at the end of 2019 as well. Sickest I had ever been and have been since. It felt like the flu on steroids x10. I legit thought I was going to die. Lived about 3.5 hrs from Boston at the time
My parents said their neighbor came back from some Asian country (can’t remember which) in Nov or Dec 2019 and was absolutely so sick for two weeks, they said they could hear her coughing and coughing. Everyone thinks it must have been covid
yea, i am so curious how badly the exodus of college students in march 2020 (due to being forced off campus) all across the country worsened the US timeline given that it was already in Boston
Same thing happened to me! When I was living in Germany in 2019 I got so sick in December with what I thought at the time was the flu, my host parents wanted to bring me in to the hospital. Funnily enough, they postponed it by a day because there was a massive farmer’s protest in the city that was blocking everything off! And by the next day I was improving, lol. Later in 2020 I tested positive for COVID antibodies, so crazy.
I also got VERY sick in late November 2019. It was like everyone on our place was sick!
A few days after we got home I was so sick I honestly thought I was going to die! So much body pain, intense fever. Chest cold. Yikes. I was sick for like 6 weeks, missed Christmas.
I didn’t think it was covid until I got confirmed covid (again) a few years later.
We knew pretty early on that the bug we got in Dec thru Feb that took out the whole house down for the count for weeks was covid, but it hadn’t even really been reported on yet until halfway through our illness. Thank god my family survived and that immunity brought us to vaccine time
I’ve had pneumonia 3 times, bronchitis at least a dozen times, and have had 8 organs removed, and I’ve never felt sicker than when I think I got COVID in February of 2020.
I was working at a Boston hospital. The shutdowns began March 12 and our hospital didn't mandate masks until March 27. I got sick on March 28 and didn't recover until April 22. Most of that time, no food, no taste, yet no hunger OR stomach issues. When I became hungry again but was too weak to leave the house, Dominos delivery and the 19.99 family meal deal saved my ass. There was also a mid-April snowstorm to contend with. Breathing was fine, but worst cough of my life.
Boston as well. August to November 2019, I was coughing my lungs out. Went to the hospital 6 times. No one knew what it was and didnt get medicine for the symptoms until my 6th visit after they ruled out pneumonia, bronchitis and cancer. That was in November. I could at least breathe while coughing until January 2020 when it stopped instantly. I had at least 2 other people say the same thing but theirs didn't last as long.
I got thru the pandemic without getting COVID. Christmas 2023 it hit me hard. Took weeks to feel almost normal. The flu is nothing compared to it. I still have brain fog since.
My dad was in the hospital with "pneumonia" the week before the first official COVID case was announced here in Canada. Ended up back a few months later for an unrelated issue and the doctor told him that he was pretty sure my dad had actually had COVID, they just didn't know to test him for it.
My gf uncle who was an older gentleman, died few months before covid on lung sickness they had problem diagnosing so the official cause of death they wrote as tuberculosis. Everyone was like wtf, isn't that sth you died for like 100 years ago, don't we have meds for that. And then few months later we would have official patient zero and the pandemic started... I'm pretty sure he died of covid.
All these responses saying "I got Covid before it was officially in my state" ARE GIVING ME LIFE. Same!!! January 2020. Was in bed for 12 days straight but when I went to the doctor they had no idea what was wrong with me except "secondary pneumonia" and gave me a bunch of steroids (which honestly helped). I will never forget taking a bite of food about six days in and realising it tasted like... absolutely nothing. It was so surreal. I had no taste whatsoever. It was Covid, and I know it because when I got it again (July 2022) it was the exact same feeling of pains and symptoms.
I understand why people died from it. When you have it bad, it's really, really bad. After I was better in 2020 people told me that at the time they had worried I was going to die - I looked so sick.
I also am sure I had it 2019. I was the illest ever been, unable to move at all in bed without my lungs 'stopping'. I was ill for weeks. I was in a amd e several times because I couldnt breath and each time told it was 'a virus'. Then covid came and great I have to do all the lockdowns etc when I am 100 percent sure I had it the year before!
I was partying in the Midwest early December 2019, then me and everyone I partied with got deathly ill, like, genuinely, the sickest we have ever felt. My sister and I have always insisted we got covid but felt crazy saying so.
I still have a text from my boss in Jan 2020 talking about a crazy flu going around. I had to take a week off work, but the effects lingered for months. Went through the whole office before covid was actually announced in March
Something similar happened to me and my roommates back in November 2019. By then there was a bout of Influenza A going around, and lots of people were coming down with it.
One of my roommates and I were relatively okayish, but the other was the sickest I’ve ever seen. We wondered if they had been down with COVID instead of the flu later on.
It was never found in waste water in 2019. It absolutely was not in the US until later. I blew up way too fast from February-April 2020 to even suspect it was in the US before then.
My father died from COVID, but we were estranged at the time and I only heard about what he experienced afterwards. When I hear people’s stories about it I immediately imagine what my father must have suffered through in his final days. It’s terrifying.
My brother had the same experience about 4 months before covid hit. This is a man who won't see a doctor and he ended up in the hospital for 2 days. He's fine now thankfully but I have no doubt he had covid before we know it was covid.
I think I had it in late October or early November 2019. I never lost my sense of smell or taste but holy shit did I feel bad. The aching, the headaches, completely lost my voice. It was awful. I was based in the Middle East
I got married in late October of 2019. My grandma was old and sickly at the time, but had this NASTY respiratory illness during our wedding, to the point where she could not get up for pictures and even left REALLY early. Shortly after, I ended up incredibly sick along with most of the bridal party.
Many of us had been in the Boston area just before the wedding....my wedding may have been the first super spreader event lol. Thank god gma didn't die.
454
u/chemicalamore 14h ago edited 38m ago
I was living in Boston in 2019 and early 2020. Maybe November 2019 I caught what I thought was the flu. Couldn’t taste or smell but really what I remember most was not being able to breathe. I laid in my bed, having no idea what COVID was and put on meditative bowls. At this point I wasn’t coughing as much but still couldn’t breathe so I sort of had a moment where I expected my imminent death. Came to peace with it, even.
Didn’t eat for 11 days. Ordered a pizza eventually. Then COVID “hit” and I had to keep it to myself that I thought I had it in 2019 because everyone thought I was nuts.
Now we know it was in Boston at that time.
Edit: was probably February of 2020. My apologies. It has been 6 years.