I have friends all over NYC and Long Island and Jersey City, plus colleagues, their friends and family, etc etc. Collectively we know thousands of people.

The CDC officially became aware of coronavirus on Jan 1, and the first documented case in the USA was Jan 20. Now, we could have all had the flu, but really the flu doesn't have such a horrible deep chest cough like we all had in my opinion.

Given that some people say coronavirus was circulating as early as November 2019, I think we all had something more than the seasonal flu. By march 2020, the only people I knes who were sick were in nursing homes.