Community spread. I wonder how long COVID-19 has really been in the U.S., but was not diagnosed because there were no test kits.
Given the fact that thousands of people from the Wusan epicenter entered multiple points in North America from Dec.15-Jan23, there is little doubt that the virus is here. also given the fact that there are relatively few diagnostic kits, it is likely that many more than the 500 or so documented infections exist in the United States. However it is somewhat reassuring that there have been no China or Korea like outbreaks thus far in the United States. The ICUs are not full of desperately ill people in respiratory failure with ground glass lesions noted on Chest CT scan. It just might be that Caucasians and Africans are simply not as susceptible to serious disease as Asians unless they are elderly, immunocompromised or have significant underlying pulmonary disease.
Consider the following:
1) At the Wusan epicenter there were many Caucasians and Africans living and working. They did not become seriously ill and none have been reported to die
2)The region in Italy that had the breakout is heavily populated with Chinese immigrants and Asian workers.
3) The modern Iranian population has a large Asian contribution to its population genome. The Silk Road transversed Iran and the Mongols once conquered it
4) Unless the race, age and underlying medical conditions of those afflicted as well as the severity of the disease is revealed by the CDC or the press, total numbers tell little about the nature of this disease and just who is susceptible and likely to become seriously ill. The CDC and the MSM thus far, for whatever reason have not shared that information.
A St. Louis, Missouri woman who arrived from Italy is a “presumptive positive.” There’s also the case of a woman in Johnson County, Kansas (Kansas City Metro on the Kansas side), who recently traveled to the northeastern U.S.
There’s a fungus amongus.