I’m hoping someone with more knowledge than me, like someone with medical knowledge, can help explain what I’ve seen & experienced.... it’s essentially that unless you’ve had “known exposure” that you just have the flu.

For context, I live in the US in a city that has not yet had a confirmed case.

According to the CDC “if you think you’ve been exposed and have symptoms call your Dr.” most of what I can find on the difference between the flu & covid is “known exposure”. My husband & I had a fever & flu like symptoms this weekend, so first thing Monday morning I called our dr.’s office’s designated Covid 19 phone line. The nurse asked if my husband or I had been out of the country. When I said no, she was like “you just have the flu then” I explained that my husband is a PILOT & literally is flying in & out of airports with other pilots 5 days a week & she was just like, “but he hasn’t been overseas?”

Obviously we are in a different position than most that I think makes us higher risk, but even if my husband wasn’t a pilot, I think this mindset that unless you’ve personally been to a high risk area or been in contact with someone KNOWN to have it, you must just have the flu, is part of the problem with the spread & causing a major false low in reported cases.

I do understand that I most likely had the flu & I understand that treating every case of the flu as corona could cause more panic & issues, but don’t you think out of caution for public health they would want to know? Insight on this would be very interesting to me....