I had my worst ever cold/flu in August 2019 when I came back from China through Hong Kong, same sort of symptoms as your friend and very similar symptoms that I had when I caught the covid in lat 2021.
Now the Rona hadn’t even started (apparently) in August 2019 but I’ve often wondered if that 7-10 days of being knocked flat and losing my sense of taste was the Alpha variant.
After all Science is not actually Exact is it.
Science is the pursuit of trying to be more accurate ?
