He is not the first person to ask this question and go back in his memory to identify the most risky situations for contagion in which he may have been exposed.
Could it have been that time on the subway where you happened to be next to a man with a persistent, hacking cough, or at the supermarket where there was some crowding at the checkout counter?
So here is where doubt sets in: maybe I had it but didn’t realize it!
There is no mistaking that, it is a feasible hypothesis given that the virus, for it to have caused a worldwide pandemic it must have traveled far and wide, and it may have affected so many people in its path that they may not have been aware that they were infected and therefore may have unknowingly transmitted the virus to others, greatly multiplying the number of sick people.
In the years before the pandemic, you didn’t pay so much attention if you had a cold, a few coughs, or a bit of a headache, but since the pandemic was declared by Covid 19, every slightest symptom becomes worrisome and foreshadows extreme sitautions such as severe respiratory problems or emergency hospitalizations.
A Covid 19 infection, when few or no symptoms are present, results in an infection lasting a couple of weeks before being out of it, whereas a common cold wears off in a few days. Fever can be a distinguishing feature , often present in Covid infection, also accompanying more labored breathing , which is not the case in the common cold.
- The symptom of shortness of breath is typical of Covid and not ascribable to other types of colds or symptoms characteristic of an anxiety or panic attack.
- Covid breathing difficulties do not last a few hours but several days and are often associated with joint pain typical of flu syndromes.
- Stiff, persistent cough is a specific symptom of Covid, whereas in other respiratory forms, such as allergies or colds, the cough is gradual more or less increasing and not equal and persistent from onset.
- A cold can cause watery eyes but not make them watery and heavily reddened, just like when you have caught conjunctivitis, which is then another Covid-specific symptom.
It is known that a cold clogs the nose and does not allow you to smell but, if you have lost your sense of smell and also taste and these symptoms have lasted for several days, then you can be sure that it is Covid.
Colds and flu can certainly make one feel tired or exhausted, but the symptom of extreme fatigue is typical of a viral infection such as Covid 19.
In reviewing the symptoms that you have had, not knowing whether you have been affected by a trivial cold, a less dangerous flu virus, or Covid, you should also remember whether you have felt some sort of tightness or pain in the chest, or if you have felt an accelerated heartbeat or palpitations. Colds or other flu syndromes do not usually bring these complaints, but Covid can bring them and at least for a couple of weeks.
If the symptoms reviewed are still hazy and there is no certainty, all that is left is to practice antibody testing, spontaneous immune defense agents that the body opposes against the onslaught of the virus.
If they are present in the body, it means that there has been an infection, perhaps by a variant of the virus, which is more aggressive and quicker to make its way through cells , which may have been followed by an immune response. It must be said, however, that there can be no certainty that defensive action will be available against future new exposures to the virus, although those already infected should be less susceptible to new infections.
