[dragonwriter]

> But the timing was definitely odd.

A nasty cold or flu hitting in the middle of cold and flu season isn’t that odd, as timing goes.

Sure, in 2020 it’s a coincidence that naturally raises the “was it COVID?” question, but not really odd timing if it wasn’t.

[mattlondon]

Yep. There are readily available tests to see if you have antibodies so I took one (before vaccination) and sure enough I did not have any antibodies so likely had not had covid in the past few months prior.

Seems like everyone and their aunt had a story about how they "definitely" had it back at the start. Cough, itchy eye, nose bleed, aching knee etc - you name it...seemed like at the time lots of people seemed to want to ascribe anything to definitely having covid. I am not sure why this was - doesn't seem like people do this so much now.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> seemed like at the time lots of people seemed to want to ascribe anything to definitely having covid. I am not sure why this was - doesn't seem like people do this so much now.

I think the reason back then was that getting Covid was the only way to build immunity. Thus, if you had had Covid and recovered, you were better off than if you had not had Covid.

The big difference now is that we have a vaccine. You can be protected from Covid by getting the vaccine, without having to actually get Covid (Yay for vaccines).

[qqqwerty]

In this particular case it was the worst cough I had ever had by a fairly wide margin. This was definitely not a case of us having the sniffles and thinking we might have caught covid.

And for the record, I don't necessarily think it was COVID. Just confirming the OP's anecdote that there was definitely something that was going around at that time.

[InitialLastName]

I had one of the flu variants (tested positive for flu) from 2019-20 in December, followed by a really bad cold (no tests) in Feb, followed by COVID (confirmed by tested contacts, an antibody test and a fully checked "weird COVID symptoms" bingo card) in March.

2019-20 was definitely a season for nasty colds/flus, not just COVID.

[qqqwerty]

The timing was odd because of how severe the cough was. I have had plenty of colds through out my life, and this was by far the worst.

[asdff]

Another variable is that you are also older with a less robust immune system than when you've had colds in your youth. This is why anecdotes are always worthless. You need statistical power to overcome these latent variables that could be biasing your conclusions.

[ssully]

It's possible you had covid, but I think the odds are stronger that you just had a different respiratory illness that was going around at the time.