TennTradition
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I would think the widespread antibody results would say it has been here for a while.
And I forget the numbers we had previously discussed but the peak deaths was only a little outside of normal +15k vs 200k. So it seems very plausible that we didnt even notice the deaths because they weren't that far our of normal.
I think the other implication here is that Wuhan may not be the source. Or at least not as tied to the Lunar New Year celebrations as we thought.
It was happening before their Lunar New Year celebrations. Wuhan was entering lock down at that time - and with how aggressively they pursued that lockdown, you know the death situation was obvious and compelling. We were nowhere near that kind of obvious and compelling death situation until April.
The numbers of excess deaths per month (that's what the 200k number is, monthly deaths) is much higher than +15k. April will come closer to 60k. We reached +20k for a single week in early April (over 3,000 deaths / day above normal).
The issue is - what does "here longer than we realize" actually mean? To some - that will be confirmation that the respiratory infection they had in November was CV. However, everyone literally has 2-3 people in their extended family that fall into the bucket. Yet - do those same people have anyone in their extended family that have been CV+ in testing in the more recent outbreak? Probably not. So, for all those illnesses back last year to have been CV we would have seen it in excess deaths, IMO.
Also, we know how fast this moved through NY by watching excess deaths - which is a strong signal. I do not think you can have rooted, established community spread in a region and just reach 6% antibody levels after 4-6 months. The virus just doesn't work that way. Could the virus have appeared there 5 months ago? Sure. Could it have been so established that we all know multiple people that had it at that time? My answer to that is no.
I'm not an expert, but I've researched a lot, analyzed a lot of data, etc. With everything I think I know, I can't make that argument work. But all along I've resisted saying that "there is no way it was in the US in Dec.". That just seems silly. Big difference between a case here, and a case there but never rooting in and establishing widespread community transmission (which is what we saw from mid-to-late Feb through today).