Your statement isn't logical. Disease spread tends to always show a pretty standard shape. It was that observation (Farr's law) that led to epidemiology being

Your statement isn't logical. Disease spread tends to always show a pretty standard shape. It was that observation (Farr's law) that led to epidemiology being born as a field. It grows, it peaks, it enters immediate decline. Importantly the peak doesn't last long - epidemics don't spend 6 months with a stable number of people getting sick at the peak. Look at graphs of COVID deaths and cases and you'll see the standard pattern. We know now that this virus has left hospitals virtually everywhere without overload, even in places like Sweden. A few other places were hit much harder. But the response in New York (with mobile morgues) wasn't reported anywhere else. It's apparently some kind of invention of New York policymakers during a brief peak rather than a worldwide phenomenon. A virus can be spreading and growing for a long time before it attracts attention. The evidence keeps mounting that the first reports in Wuhan were not in fact the first cases after COVID had mutated or crossed from animals but merely the first where doctors decided to search for a novel virus after coming under pressure and noticing some novel symptoms. What you saw in New York was a mix of: 1. Conditions at the absolute peak of infection, not at the start. 2. Media hype and fake news. For (2) I present https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/cbs-admits-to-using-footage-from-italy-in-report-about-nyc/ https://nypost.com/2020/04/01/cbs-admits-to-using-footage-fr... as evidence. CNBC spliced video from an ICU in Italy into reports about New York without telling anyone. Outright deliberate deception is also the tip of an iceberg: there's far more selective reporting, exaggerated anecdotes and so on. On April 6th Vox reported the entire USA was running out of sedatives needed for ventilation: https://www.vox.com/2020/4/6/21209589/coronavirus-medicine-ventilators-drug-shortage-sedatives-covid-19 https://www.vox.com/2020/4/6/21209589/coronavirus-medicine-v... On the same day Gov Cuomo was saying they had enough ventilators with some in reserve. A few days later he was sending them to other parts of the USA. Whatever you think you know about the situation in New York you really only have a tiny fragment of the whole picture (and the same for me and everyone else posting here). Our understand of reality lies shattered in pieces on the floor, smashed by speed, poor quality data, poor use of data, and extremely poor journalism. All we can do is work to piece together a narrative of what really happened by examining all the evidence we can get. Repeated anecdotes from many different people about having had a COVID-like illness before it was being discussed much are interesting for that reason.