🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
Users on TikTok have become captivated by an apparent new illness they're suffering, but the symptoms described appear similar to the common cold.
"Did anyone else get a little sick and thought it was allergies and they thought it was allergies and then it got worse. But it's not COVID, and it's not the flu, but they just can't figure out what it is, or is that just me?" said TikTok user @Sam22hunt, in a video shared one week ago. The clip has gained over one million likes at the time of publication.
"Did anyone start feeling bad, think it was allergies, but bam you have been sick for over a week and it's not COVID. And everyone I know that has it is a woman," wrote another user, with on-screen text in separate video.
"Same! I've had a cough/ runny nose for over a month," responded a viewer in the comments.
"Yes! I have mucus stuck in the back of my throat, a bad cough, not COVID tho," added another.
As reported by Vice, these mystery illness symptoms appear identical to those of a common cold.
Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston, told Vice's Motherboard: "When we talk about a cold there are actually hundreds of viruses that cause colds. That's why you keep getting them. That's why when you have a child in preschool, they are always bringing them home and you're catching them."
@sam22hunt Ok but is this just me? #allergies #feelingsick #relatable
♬ original sound - Sam
As most of us have been indoors for the past year, the spread of the common cold greatly lessened. Now social situations are entering our lives again, rates of the cold are increasing again. However, experts are unsure whether our immune systems have become more susceptible to the viruses in the meantime.
"It is true that we have not been exposed so much to colds during the last year. Whether our immune systems faded so much during that year to these viruses, we don't really know because we've never been in this situation before," Troisi told Motherboard.
"Theoretically it's possible that our immunity has waned somewhat, but I wouldn't say that's been proven and I wouldn't say that that's the only explanation," she added.
It's instead possible that a year's worth of COVID talk has simply caused TikTok users to forget about the common cold and its symptoms.
Elizabeth Scott, a microbiologist and associate dean and professor of Biology, College of Natural, Behavioral, and Health Sciences at Simmon's University, also told Motherboard that younger people, who happen to be TikTok's demographic, experience harsher symptoms.
"Generally speaking, children and young people experience more frequent colds and more severe symptoms, and TikTok users tend to be younger so the sample is biased in that respect," she said.
"The common cold is endemic in most human societies and it is not surprising that we are encountering it again as we start mingling more freely and without masks," she added. "I don't see it as a concern because whilst it is a misery to experience the cold symptoms, it is not a threat to our health."
