Well, yes - I had something that sounds awfully like it around
January 1st - (in the UK) - basically cold/flu symptoms minus the runny nose, which seemed a bit unusual.
Trouble is, anecdotal evidence and confirmation bias is very,
very dangerous - COVID-19 is not the only bug with flu/cold-like symptoms circulating in the winter, and there's plenty of variations in the symptoms you get from "regular" bugs.
You have to weigh up the possibilities that:
(a) all the experts are wrong and COVID-19 was circulating freely months before it was supposed to be,
versus:
(b) you caught a random cold/flu bug at the height of cold/flu bug season, maybe different to the last one you had, and it stuck in your mind because of the coronavirus stories (which absolutely have been circulating for months).
Now, (a) can't be completely ruled out, and would be really, really good news since a huge number unreported non-critical infections
that happened months ago would mean that the bug was far less serious than current thinking suggests.
Unfortunately until and unless someone finds some proper, non-anecdotal evidence for (a), (b) is by far the simplest explanation. The only way of confirming stories like this is properly-conducted research on a truly random sample.
That's not saying "stupid person thinks they've had coronavirus" or even suggesting people are lying -
nobody - smart or stupid - can make valid conclusions from anecdotal evidence, especially their own experience.
There's no point playing "coulda, woulda, shoulda" about things that happened in January - at the moment the total number of infections (and when they occurred) is a big unknown so the only option is to assume a worst-case scenario and take action to try and stop the number of serious cases swamping the hospital system (which is the focus of the report that led to the current US/UK restrictions). When there are fast, reliable antibody tests (real soon now - didn't exist in January) maybe there will eventually be some solid data on the actual infection rate (which is why the WHO keeps saying "test, test, test")
The two things that can end the current restrictions are either a vaccine or better data.