5 ms·

> I still think there's a possibility this virus was already in the US before 2020. Yeah, I don’t understand why people are so against the idea of it being in

> I still think there's a possibility this virus was already in the US before 2020. Yeah, I don’t understand why people are so against the idea of it being in the U.S. before 2020. There’s no possible way we can trace every American who may have traveled within the China region or interacted with another person who was in that region around the start of COVID spreading. Just because there were no official cases of COVID does not mean it was not here. I had a roommate visit Japan in November. He came back and was extremely ill for about a week. No hospitalizations but he was out of commission and isolated by himself.

kbenson 6y ago
I think the main evidence against it being here siginifgantly earlier is that we see how it spread when it was definitely here, so why wouldn't we have seen hot spots like Atlanta and New York earlier then?
- Filligree 6y ago
  Perhaps it mutated at some point to become more infectious, and that mutation happened in Asia.
- docbrown 6y ago
  I understand that line of thinking but that would imply the prevalence rate of COVID was in complete parallel with the incidence rate. The former is what we do not know and that's clear when we've had patients labs reran from 2019 and found it was positive for COVID. Government data from China says the first case can be traced back to 17 November 2019 and even then they're unsure if that was patient zero[0] How many American's were in Asia, China, or surrounding areas between October and December of 2019? How many of them were possibly infected? Nobody knows because there was no plan put in place with regard to travel to mainland China until the end of January 2020; even then since 1 January 2020, there were 430,000 people who traveled from China to the U.S.[1] 0: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coronavirus-chinas-first-confirmed-covid-19-case-traced-back https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coro... 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-trav...
- bb2018 6y ago
  Yeah - if someone could point me to a nursing home where 5% of the population died in a week in December/January I'd believe it - anecdotes about people being having the flu in the winter isn't the most convincing.
  - docbrown 6y ago
    > if someone could point me to a nursing home where 5% of the population died in a week Sure, if we were talking about mortality rates but we’re not. we’re simply talking about prevalence of COVID prior to the major breakout of February and beyond. These are two completely different things to be looking at. I’ve worked in nursing homes during that time of December where people were dying. Did we think to send bloodwork off to test for some novel coronavirus? Of course not. Secondly, using the example of a nursing home as the sample population is silly as they are not the ones who were traveling. It’d be their family members and caregivers who traveled and then brought the disease into the facility.
    - bb2018 6y ago
      I think you are missing the statistical point I and others are making. If the disease was introduced in a meaningful way in December/January it would be a statistical certainty we would see signs of it (such as nursing homes having huge waves of deaths or total mortality in subregions surging). I'm not sure what your counterclaim is? There are no samples in America tested from that time period that would show that there was Covid nor is there any statistical evidence that would suggest there was Covid.
      - docbrown 6y ago
        Why does it have to be introduced in a “meaningful way” to be relevant? If there was at most a single case of it within the U.S. that would show that the disease spread earlier than what is assumed. Again, your argument rests solely on the idea of there must be thousands of death in order for this disease to exist within the states. That is an odd way to think about this. It’d also be kind of hard to go back and rerun tests for people during those months, which shows why it’s very difficult to pinpoint when this disease started to really spread. I mean, if France and China both had cases during the month of November and December, you’d be hard pressed to say it’s not possible there were similar cases in the U.S albeit undiscovered.

kbenson 6y ago

I think the main evidence against it being here siginifgantly earlier is that we see how it spread when it was definitely here, so why wouldn't we have seen hot spots like Atlanta and New York earlier then?

Filligree 6y ago
Perhaps it mutated at some point to become more infectious, and that mutation happened in Asia.
docbrown 6y ago
I understand that line of thinking but that would imply the prevalence rate of COVID was in complete parallel with the incidence rate. The former is what we do not know and that's clear when we've had patients labs reran from 2019 and found it was positive for COVID. Government data from China says the first case can be traced back to 17 November 2019 and even then they're unsure if that was patient zero[0] How many American's were in Asia, China, or surrounding areas between October and December of 2019? How many of them were possibly infected? Nobody knows because there was no plan put in place with regard to travel to mainland China until the end of January 2020; even then since 1 January 2020, there were 430,000 people who traveled from China to the U.S.[1] 0: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coronavirus-chinas-first-confirmed-covid-19-case-traced-back https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3074991/coro... 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-trav...
bb2018 6y ago
Yeah - if someone could point me to a nursing home where 5% of the population died in a week in December/January I'd believe it - anecdotes about people being having the flu in the winter isn't the most convincing.
- docbrown 6y ago
  > if someone could point me to a nursing home where 5% of the population died in a week Sure, if we were talking about mortality rates but we’re not. we’re simply talking about prevalence of COVID prior to the major breakout of February and beyond. These are two completely different things to be looking at. I’ve worked in nursing homes during that time of December where people were dying. Did we think to send bloodwork off to test for some novel coronavirus? Of course not. Secondly, using the example of a nursing home as the sample population is silly as they are not the ones who were traveling. It’d be their family members and caregivers who traveled and then brought the disease into the facility.
  - bb2018 6y ago
    I think you are missing the statistical point I and others are making. If the disease was introduced in a meaningful way in December/January it would be a statistical certainty we would see signs of it (such as nursing homes having huge waves of deaths or total mortality in subregions surging). I'm not sure what your counterclaim is? There are no samples in America tested from that time period that would show that there was Covid nor is there any statistical evidence that would suggest there was Covid.
    - docbrown 6y ago
      Why does it have to be introduced in a “meaningful way” to be relevant? If there was at most a single case of it within the U.S. that would show that the disease spread earlier than what is assumed. Again, your argument rests solely on the idea of there must be thousands of death in order for this disease to exist within the states. That is an odd way to think about this. It’d also be kind of hard to go back and rerun tests for people during those months, which shows why it’s very difficult to pinpoint when this disease started to really spread. I mean, if France and China both had cases during the month of November and December, you’d be hard pressed to say it’s not possible there were similar cases in the U.S albeit undiscovered.