I have seen those theories that it has already spread <in whatever area> and that is why there aren't the cases now, but I find it difficult to believe from the

I have seen those theories that it has already spread <in whatever area> and that is why there aren't the cases now, but I find it difficult to believe from the following reasoning: 1. California has ~40 million people 2. Herd immunity would start at what ~30 million cases? 3. Elsewhere in the world, it seems that there is a ~1% infection fatality rate So how did California get herd immunity without ~300,000 people who died of pneumonia from an unknown cause piling up in the corridors in a couple of months? I read elsewhere that fatality rate of people on ventilators is about 50%. Assuming that the Californian cohort were treated properly means there would have been ~600,000 people in critical condition and only half of them died. There will be more who went to hospital but weren't considered critical enough for ventilation. Its a rough guestimate but lets say twice as many "non-critical but hospitalized" as "hospitalized and critical" so there were ~1 million people queuing in the hospitals. These figures are pulled out of the air and can be adjusted, but it doesn't really help with the sheer numbers, for example there are ~7000 ICU beds in California, so the 300,000 who might have got better with care wouldn't have had access to it. It seems obvious that to get to the immunity, you have to go through the eye of a needle.. The basic premise of theories like this seems to be that the fatality rate may be actually negligible and therefore that the whole issue has been overblown. But I have seen video from Wuhan and from Italy and New York that shows images of body bags piled in the corridors. That is not normal and it would surely have been remarked on in California or <whatever area> at the time. Don't forget that Wuhan had ~3000 deaths. Furthermore, California is not an island and for it to have been widespread there that long ago means it would have had to be widespread across the whole USA if not the entire world. It is tempting I think to believe that <yourself> cannot be affected by <external threat> and obviously, extrapolating from the fact that it never happened before, <yourself> would be entirely correct. Unfortunately history is littered with people who chose to just live their lives like that until the <external threat> came along and wiped them out without blinking. All of us here are the descendants of the lucky ones!