I'm really skeptical of the "I had a bad cough in late 2019, must have been COVID claims". I saw quite a number of them on social media last year. It seemed like people were eager to grab some sort of celebrity or a part of a conspiracy. Some of the people got really angry with me when I confronted their claims with skepticism. It's like they felt personally insulted.

The truth is, people get upper respiratory illnesses quite often. I had a nasty upper respiratory illness in late 2016 after a trip to London. I was miserable for weeks. If it had been late 2019, I could have joined in on the chorus of people claiming to have had something that "surely might have been COVID".