I guess we need to know the total number of cases to figure out what the deaths mean, and until everyone has gotten an antibody test, we can't know that total number.
To make the numbers work for the "weird cold" in early February case, I guess we have to work backwards. Assume that when we went into lockdown was the actual peak, 8 million people in New York City had COVID-19. That means that there is one death for every 500 cases. Then we have to pick a reproduction rate, which I have no idea how to pick, so I'll say that it increases by 1.5x every day (so on day one you have x cases, then on day 2 you have x + 1.5x, then on day 3 you have x + 1.5x + (1.5)^2x, etc. Going back a month from March 20 (which is approximately 30 days, and when a lot of people report their "weird cold"), that would mean we'd expect around 8 million / 383500 = 20 cases on Feb. 20. With 1 death per 500 cases, you'd have 0 deaths at that level.
I know I've pulled these numbers out of my nether region and so they are likely very wrong. But with some back-of-the-envelope math, I think we can have some sick people in February without a lot of deaths.
Obviously my 8 million total cases in NYC number is too high, and the 20 cases on 2/20 is too low for me and my friends to be those cases. But that exponential can be tweaked to make something plausible. If we make it 1.2 instead of 1.5, then we should have had about 7000 cases on 2/20, and that means around 14 deaths. That seems quite plausible to me. So I dunno. There was a weird cold. It's weird. It could mean anything.
I signed up to get an antibody test. 1 test is not data, but it will be very interesting to see the results.