Soar throat, sniffles, sneezes, coughing, vomiting, diarrhea- any combination of these could be covid, flu, common cold, adenovirus, astrovitus, strep, etc
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Many of the symptoms that we associate with being sick are not actually directly caused by viruses or bacteria. Our immune system can respond in both general and specific ways and many of the “symptoms” we get are really just general immune responses. One example of this is fever! Many different viruses, bacteria, parasites etc. cause us to develop a fever. A fever is nothing more than your immune system cranking up your internal temperature so that you can essentially “melt” the proteins that the pathogen is creating. In fact, it is not that uncommon for your immune response to be the direct cause of death in severe cases of infection. Your immune system doesn’t know that by giving you a fever it could melt your proteins as well as the invading proteins. All it knows is invader=raise body temperature. Another reason many different pathogens cause the same symptoms, is that there are only so many pathways a pathogen can take to infect you. If you breathe in a water droplet with some virus on it, you will most likely develop respiratory symptoms (ie. sneezing, coughing etc.) because that’s just the part of your body that is fighting back. Similarly, if you eat food contaminated with a pathogen you will most likely experience diarrhea, vomiting etc. because that is the part of your body fighting back!
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