Originally Posted by
Rochester
It is obviously impossible to be definitive until a) tests are available to show that people have been infected in the past and recovered (without which everything is simply speculation) and b) long after the event, by then of historic interest only. What we need to do is decide what our response should be in the here and now.
FWIW I am pretty sure that the number of infected / recovered is high, much much higher than most assumptions made. I say this because I believe that the virus first landed here unknown at the end of December / beginning of January, and that both my partner and I have had it and survived. However until a test kit is to hand we are stuck here in our micro flat twiddling thumbs...
The reason I say this is that back at the end of January we had a week off work on holiday when we both came down with a very bad cough and fever, exactly fitting the profile of the virus. She was coughing so badly it was touch and go whether or not she headed to Hospital - she has COPD and asthma - but of course back then we had no idea Covid-19 existed, let alone the fact that we might have been infected by it. Thankfully we both recovered and thought no more about it at the time. Now looking back....
How could we have caught it so early and at that time ?
Background: my other half was working in the NISA supermarket attached to a BP garage just across the road from the local University. It has a very very high number of Chinese and Asian foreign students on campus, 4,000 odd +. They make a very strong point about it and even have an office in China with five permanent staff coordinating Student applications and visas.
After the Christmas vac all of these students came back here in the last week of December / first week of January. Guess where a great many students do their emergency late night shopping for pot noodles, fags etc.
She was therefore in just the right place to meet and serve a great many and varied body of Chinese students returned from their vacation trip home to China, just at the right time to allow for infection and bingo, four / five weeks later after the incubation period we were, we believe, hit with it.
In the absence so far of a test to prove it we can't obviously be sure, but it seems very likely in context. In which case you may well be stuck with me for a wee bit longer. Fingers crossed and good luck to anyone else affected.