I been wondering that in Nov. I had a long lasting dry cough and fever for part of it. The cough lasted 4-5 weeks and fever was low grade for a week of less.A lot of people are wondering if this is the 2nd time around for this virus and they just did not catch it the first time. It would help explain how it spreads so quickly since it is already mutated to infect humans. Some people are thinking about the bad, unexplained cough, flu like symptoms, etc they had last year and the cause did not show up in test.
I know when I first got sick last year they ran all kinds of test and never could figure out what caused it. The CDC even got involved. A lot of the symptoms I had are the same as the Chinese Flu symptoms. So maybe it did start last year.