> The total number of Americans to have contracted covid by that point was actually quite small, and very few people personally knew anyone, or at most one or t

> The total number of Americans to have contracted covid by that point was actually quite small, and very few people personally knew anyone, or at most one or two people, who had actually had the disease. If 30% of Americans had been infected by November 2020, then most people would know many people who had contracted CoVID-19. Unless you only know 2 people (plus yourself - that makes 3), chances are that you know someone who was infected before November 2020. Based on my personal experience, that's true. I personally know many Americans who got CoVID-19 before November 2020. I don't know a single person in China who got CoVID-19 in that timeframe (or to this day). > it would be very easy for things to feel like business as usual, even if 1.7 million individuals in China had died from the disease No, it would not feel at all like business as usual. First of all, a death toll of 1.7 million deaths implies around 450 million infections, or about 30% of the Chinese population. As we know from everywhere around the world, that would have meant stressed hospitals (and given how few ICU beds China has, it would have been much more stressed than the US). Because Chinese cities were almost completely open at this time, with very few restrictions on public gatherings, restaurants, etc., there would have been extremely sharp epidemic waves that would have swept through Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and all the other major cities. Everyone would know. Everyone would have friends, family members, colleagues, etc. who had gotten infected. Every doctor and nurse in the country would have seen countless CoVID-19 patients. Simply put, none of this is the case. If you think it's plausible, you have a fantasy view of China. We're not talking about Mars here. We're talking about a country of 1.4 billion people, with tens of millions of its citizens living abroad, with a million expats living inside its borders, with many millions of people who use VPNs. And even with internet censorship in China, it's impossible to keep major events like a large CoVID-19 outbreak secret. Just think of all the stories from the Shanghai lockdown that have spread around the world, despite internet censorship.