
SARS-CoV-2 was already spreading in France in late December 2019 - tomtung
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.106006
======
lvspiff
One of the standout locations of virus activity for me, and just due to sheer
lack of it, is Vegas. It makes no sense how a global city like Vegas who had
multiple large scale events during the January/February even into early March
time frame, and tons of visitors especially for the Chinese new year...215
reported deaths so far. That number although sad is still remarkably low. In a
region of 2.2 million with a not great reputation for health and hospitals to
only have a death rate of .01% seems amazing with how NY, and countries like
France, Spain and Italy have fared.

Studies like this and I'm sure the many to come make me really wish we had
better contact tracing from the get go and hopefully in years to come there
can be some better implementations

~~~
memonkey
A little tin-foily, but I went to Vegas with my family in late December. About
2 weeks after we got back, my dad had a severe case of the flu (so far as we
know) and so did my cousin's girlfriend. They were both showing symptoms
similar to Covid-19, but because testing was not available then, it's hard to
say for sure. And it was flu season then.

~~~
matthewowen
1) flu symptoms aren't the same as covid19 symptoms 2) most tests come back
negative, despite generally being limited to people with symptoms 3) other
coronaviruses have similar symptoms.

It's really very unlikely that any of you had covid 19 in Las Vegas in late
December.

~~~
matwood
> It's really very unlikely that any of you had covid 19 in Las Vegas in late
> December.

I think this needs to be repeated more often. Everyone who had a sniffle in
the last 6 months thinks they had COVID-19. There are always a lot of
different diseases going around in the winter.

~~~
tapland
That's why they don't think they had it, but are wondering if they could have.
You are reading things into other peoples statements and dismissing them
because of your own mistake.

------
luka-birsa
As somebody living in Europe I find this data very interesting. We had a super
strong flu season, which was incredibly contagious. This is the first year (in
a decade) that everybody in my family got it. One kid first, then the other,
then wife, then grandparents that were babysitting while wife was down. I'm
the only one that didn't get it, but I was on travels during that time.
Effects were mild on the kids, while the grandparents needed 14 days to
recover. Wife lost sense of taste and smell.

I really want to do a serological test for Covid just to see if we might have
gone through it in January, when 0 cases were reported in our vicinity
(Slovenia, which is next to Italy).

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> We had a super strong flu season, which was incredibly contagious.

Same in UK, people were sick a lot of the time, October through December 2019.
But that wasn't the COVID-19. It was just a bad colds and flu season.

~~~
gadders
Anecdata, but two people in my office had really persistent coughs in
February, lasting multiple weeks, not days. I wonder if that was the Rona. One
of the people that had it thinks it might have been.

~~~
koheripbal
Statistically speaking, it's still more likely that they had something else.

~~~
gadders
No doubt. But that applies to anyone who has cold or flu like symptoms.

------
baybal2
I am out of China at the moment, but I can say from Chinese media buzz is that
it is now almost certain that China's SARS numbers already passed hundreds by
early-mid November.

It appears that by late November, the government first took a notice of the
outbreak, and by early December it was already a complete freak out.

How the government knew? China has built a nationwide electronic infectious
disease reporting system after the first SARS outbreak with specific intent of
spotting SARS recurrence. Hospitals in China are required by law to report
anything with a remote semblance of SARS into the system. China also holds
nationwide drills for infectious disease specialists annually with SARS
comeback in mind.

Any claim that China was caught unprepared are hard to believe.

Given that first reliably confirmed info on Beijing dispatching orders to
provincial governments on handling a "disaster" also comes onto first days of
December, it seems very, very likely to me that they already knew of it being
SARS in December.

I also heard of what I have no ability to confirm, like the talk of huge
pileups at HK border crossings in first days of December, and a spike of
private jet departures.

~~~
yfzhou
Any source for that?

Google doesn't give me any result if I search "武汉 肺炎" (Wuhan Pneumonia) prior
to December 30. December 30 was definitively the first time it appeared on the
news, and when it did, it quickly became the top news in about a week.

~~~
microcolonel
Why would media in China be publishing articles including that term before
December 30; and what does not seeing those articles say about the parent
post?

~~~
yfzhou
Do you think Chinese politicians are superhuman who know things before anyone
report on them?

Xi Jinping had no problem locking down cities after he learned the severity of
it. It's ludicrous to think he knew it in December but somehow decided it was
a good idea to wait till it spread to the whole country to do it.

~~~
kmonsen
A few things:

\- He had no problems locking down cities after the severity became known. Is
fairly Reasonable to think that in the beginning they thought it was something
they could keep quiet and it would go away

\- people in China don’t report things that might be negative for fear of
consequences, he is creating a situation where he doesn’t get to know things
before it’s too late this way

------
hokkos
They talk about potential false negative, but should have talked about
potential false positive from sample cross contamination, because this
isolated case seems in contradiction from everything we know about the french
contamination history, a researcher that follow closely the phylogeny of the
virus seems very dubious about that one. Now we need a sequence of the genome
and serological test of the patient, the family and co-workers.

Also this is not the first hospital to do that in France, IHU Méditerannée
Infection, from Raoult and Chloroquine fame did that at the beginning of the
epidemic in China, they tested 2500 samples from several month ago and found
absolutely nothing.

~~~
skwb
French contamination history? I'm sure the French have modern microbiology and
virology techniques...

That said, I do agree that a seismological test of the patient would be more
definitive, but sometimes you cannot contact the patient due to privacy
concerns/ IRB rules. I don't know how French hospitals deal with patient data,
but if it's anything like America, you are highly unlikely to be able to do
those sort of things without additional approval.

~~~
jacquesm
Do you propose to shake the patients really bad?

~~~
troymc
I suspect they propose to detonate lots of small explosions at regular time
intervals and at regular spacings on the surface of the patient, and then
measure the responses using seismographs attached elsewhere to the patient,
like what the oil companies do to produce maps of subsurface geology.

~~~
whatshisface
Well now you've gone full circle back to something reasonable, you're
describing ultrasonic imaging.

------
bb2018
Does anyone know if there is currently a source, or if there would be a way to
calculate in retrospect, outbreaks in nursing homes? There are hundreds of
nursing homes where a sizable portion of the community died in a couple of
weeks which is very abnormal.

The only reason I'm confused about stories like the one above or the few about
Covid-19 in California in January is that wouldn't we see such data
inevitably?

A lot of people have stories about getting the worst sickness of their life in
February which I understand but am also skeptical of (with bias probably 10%
of the population gets a self-described worst flu of their life every year and
Bayesian thinking would suggest almost none of these were Covid). However, it
seems like nursing home data would be concrete.

~~~
bredren
I have a private list of every nursing home / retirement center in the United
States. I can not share this, but if someone can propose a way to mesh this
with other data, looking for a specific finding I could try it.

~~~
maxerickson
Medicare publishes lots of data on 15,000 of them:

[https://data.medicare.gov/data/nursing-home-
compare](https://data.medicare.gov/data/nursing-home-compare)

------
jupp0r
Seems dubious. Everything we know about the phylogenesis of SARS2 points to
the origin being China. All RNA sequences that were published have been shown
[1] to be mutations of earlier samples from Wuhan. If we would have had
community transmission in France in late December, we would see that being a
distinct branch in the genealogy. We don't see that, all RNA we've seen being
sequenced in Europe is descended from China.

[1] [https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global](https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global)

~~~
not_a_moth
Why wouldn't this suggest to you it was spreading from China in December?

~~~
jupp0r
What happened to the strain of the virus? The previously known first case in
France is this one [1]. If there was community transmission in France for a
month, we should see different mutations than the ones in China.

[1]
[https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?branchLabel=aa&dmax=2020-...](https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?branchLabel=aa&dmax=2020-01-27&s=France/IDF0372/2020)

~~~
not_a_moth
To be clear, the claim is if there was earlier community spread, the current
virus in France should look different because of presumed mutation rates,
because right now it looks similar to China?

~~~
jupp0r
I don’t think the current virus would need to look different. For the other
first few cases in France a month later, we are relatively sure that they come
from China because their RNA has mutations that have nit been there in
December. If there would have been transmission in France in December, we
would expect to see a strain if the virus without the mutations that happened
in China in January (but potentially with different mutations).

This makes me think that either

1\. nobody else in France was infected by the spread that they now found to
have happened in December, the strain died

2\. the findings are wrong

1 seems pretty unlikely. We’ll know once they hopefully sequence and publish
the genome of the virus they found.

------
elipsey
This seems like an important result, but one that we might need to approach
with measured confidence.

Of 14 samples, from 124 patients in Dec/Jan, one tested positive for COV by
PCR. How well can we bound our uncertainty about false positive in such
circumstances?

~~~
Johnjonjoan
Dr Yves Cohen stated the sample was tested twice to make sure.

Can't find the exact quote I read earlier but this link says basically the
same.

[https://www.heart.co.uk/news/coronavirus/french-covid-
case-d...](https://www.heart.co.uk/news/coronavirus/french-covid-case-
december/)

~~~
jonny_eh
What if the sample is contaminated?

~~~
skwb
Certainly a possibility, but I would think that it would very unlikely to
contaminate the source sample (usually they're frozen in -80 fridge), and if
you have a contaminated work station, then the rest of the samples would
likely be return false-positive as well.

------
Traster
On the one hand, I think quite a lot of people will have stories about Corona-
like symptoms in late 2019, early 2020 before the real 'outbreak'. I wouldn't
be surprised if a mild version of the virus had spread throught he world
earlier than the current pandemic, but at the same time I think we should wait
for more evidence. One case in France is just that - one case.

~~~
jyrkesh
I had such stories. I got the sickest I've been in years back in the first
week of Feb. Fever, chills, dry cough...I was in bed for a week.

Then again had some light respiratory stuff in early March. I live alone,
isolation was already starting in some places, and I'm fortunate enough to
work somewhere that WFH is easy.

I had plenty of "I might have already had it!" type conversations.

So I got my antibody test last week at my primary care physician. Negative.
Was just a bad flu, I guess.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yeah there are three other flus going around. Folks forget that.

~~~
jeremyjh
And there are vastly more people infected with them, especially in Dec/Jan.
I'm so tired of hearing people's big flu story at this point.

------
acqq
The most important information: Some old samples analyzed for SARS-CoV-2 in
April, finding one positive who spent two nights in hospital from Dec 27,
after admitted as emergency:

"taken from a 42 years old. ... One of his child presented with ILI prior to
the onset of his symptoms. His medical history consisted in asthma, type II
diabetes mellitus. He presented to the emergency ward on _December 27 2019_
with hemoptysis, cough, headache and fever, evolving for 4 days" ...
"evolution was favorable until _discharge on December 29,2019_."

\---

ILI == Influenza-like illness

Hemoptysis == coughing up of blood

------
ImaCake
Estimates for the most recent common ancestor point to mid January for France
[0]. Of course these numbers could be wrong. But I suspect the level of
surveillance of genomes allows for bioinformaticians to keep a close eye on
what the virus is doing in a big picture evolution sense. They do note that
while most samples are of `A2` strain virus (only meaningful at genotype
level, not at phenotype) there were some samples from different genotype
branches. Maybe their analysis finds the date for a later introduction of the
virus which is different from the potential cryptic transmission occuring in
late Dec?

0\. [http://virological.org/t/early-phylodynamics-analysis-of-
the...](http://virological.org/t/early-phylodynamics-analysis-of-the-
covid-19-epidemics-in-france-using-194-genomes-april-10-2020/467)

~~~
makomk
Note that their "slow molecular clock" estimate gives a most recent common
ancestor around the end of December. They reject this because it "finds a root
which seems very early given the data". It's also, of course, possible that
this particular cluster died out entirely, got genetically bottlenecked, or
only ended up causing a small proportion of cases just through random chance.

------
CapriciousCptl
I wouldn’t put much weight on this. They looked at about 15 stored samples
(actually 80 depending how you count) and got one positive. As far as I can
tell that forms the entire factual evidence. Contamination/false positive
works out to be a large concern. Clearly they wanted the result as well.

~~~
abtinf
No, that’s not the only evidence. The patient also presented with the relevant
set of symptoms:

“ He presented to the emergency ward on December 27 2019 with hemoptysis,
cough, headache and fever, evolving for 4 days. Initial examination was
unremarkable and the performed CT scan revealed bilateral ground glass opacity
in inferior lobes”

~~~
tinus_hn
The CT scans could be checked with today’s knowledge. I presume they still
have the images, right?

~~~
djsumdog
They're in the paper.

[https://ars.els-
cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S09248579203016...](https://ars.els-
cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0924857920301643-gr3_lrg.jpg)

------
noirchen
Initially Chinese people treated it as flu, then they freaked out finding it
to be SARS-like, and Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore set temperature checks.
During the SARS outbreak, Asian countries run totally unprotected for months
with only thousands of cases, and actually they were relieved to know that the
CFR is much lower. But this time, the virus is much contagious.

Actually many in China suspect that maybe a weak version has been around in SE
Asia and China for years (remember that Malay pangolin?).

------
IB885588
Are we sure this isn't a false positive?

~~~
wirrbel
Given the combination of a positive PCR test result, the symptoms and imaging
I think there is strong evidence for an infection.

~~~
skwb
I completely agree. Pr(False Positive| positive COVID-19 symptoms and positive
imaging results)... doesn't seem like a very high probability.

------
makomk
One obvious question: if this was already spreading in France by late December
2019, what about all the countries with even more travel to and from China,
such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc?

~~~
alliao
Taiwan started checking every flight from Wuhan as early as 31st of
December...

~~~
makomk
Which is apparently after it was spreading within the community in France.
Taiwan has substantially more travellers from China than France, as well as
direct flights from Wuhan. Based on everything we know so far, the 31st of
December was probably too late.

------
Jugurtha
I was in Paris in November and saw nothing, but I was back in late January and
I saw Asian people wearing masks in the airport and had the following
thoughts:

\- Airborne

\- 8+ daily flights between Paris and Algiers on one company (8 others)

\- It's a matter of days if it's not already in Algiers.

Went back to Algiers. I canceled meetings in Paris for February. Algeria had
its first confirmed case on 25 February 2020 - an Italian national coming back
from Italy, and no airport measures whatsoever at the time -.

We established work from home for some teammates - who take public
transportation - a few days later while we learn more about this as the
risk/reward of not doing it was high and we transitioned to exclusively remote
for everyone when it hit 17 confirmed cases in the country 4 March.

------
TeaVMFan
I know people in the US who thought they had COVID-19 in late December 2019.
Until now the earliest proven cases were in February 2020. Are there any
reports earlier than that now?

~~~
jdlyga
I work in Times Square, so I'd probably be one of the first to be exposed if
anything came to the US early. I had a very weird flu back in late January. It
wasn't serious, but I had a cough that wouldn't go away for a week afterwards.

------
haecceity
Interesting to see how people deal with this information given that mainstream
media has instilled in us that the moral responsibility of the disease lies in
China.

~~~
iKevinShah
> moral responsibility of the disease lies in China

Is there a another opinion on this? It's where the virus originated (Lab
created or from eating a bat or even US military doing it - whatever you are
opting to believe) in November 2019 and it took them until late Jan 2020 to
say that there's human to human transmission despite their own doctors warning
and telling the world earlier than that (and they were silenced)

~~~
thinkharderdev
That is patently false. The CDC head was briefed by the Chinese "around New
Year's Day" 2020 ([https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-
pa...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-
pandemic.html)). By Jan 7, 2020 the CDC had already setup a task force to deal
with the COVID threat. I certainly don't want to defend the Chinese
government. I'm sure there are a lot of things they did wrong (on top of all
the horrendous human rights abuses they commit on a daily basis), but the
whole narrative of blaming China for COVID seems like an obvious ploy to shit
blame away from our own incompetent response. The fact of the matter is that
we saw this coming in slow motion and comprehensively failed to respond in a
way that could have prevented this human tragedy.

~~~
iKevinShah
Even if they knew, if they had themselves been moral and decided to stop all
travel, it would've been fair to say we are all responsible. They did not do
that. Sure all the countries are at fault too definitely (me, as an Indian,
included) but doesnt take away the fact that Chinese authorities downplayed
this and led to the spread. No matter how you put it and the moment it had
spread world over, stopped flights to China to stop spread.

Sorry, all governments are to blame here, for sure (these deaths cant be
justified) but China and to a large extent WHO are in the blame here too.
Majorly.

------
lordnacho
Seems plausible. Wuhan is a very large city by any measure. Every large city
of that scale must be exchanging people with all the other large cities, it's
simply probability. You also have to figure that there's more virus than we
can find, ie each patient found in Wuhan represents a fraction of infection
cases. So chances are someone from Wuhan got it and spread it by flying to
some other large city.

------
busyant
I posted something (perhaps) related yesterday
([https://fdafaers.blogspot.com/2020/05/adverse-events-
cases-i...](https://fdafaers.blogspot.com/2020/05/adverse-events-cases-
involving-drugs.html)).

I looked at putative drug-related adverse event case reports submitted to the
US FDA. Interestingly, there are 61 case reports that mention drugs used to
treat "corona virus infection." 52 of those cases were filed in 2020.

Oddly, 6 cases involved drugs used to treat "corona virus infection" in 2019
(all submitted in the US). My speculation was that those 6 cases were
unrelated to SARS-CoV-2, but you never know.

Here is the most relevant chart:
[https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hrhtVnswxPI/Xq_7-HsE97I/AAAAAAABv...](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hrhtVnswxPI/Xq_7-HsE97I/AAAAAAABv3w/VkdCd9_Nl5gNjb2KSlf5RWe_ChQ78Nv4wCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/corona1.jpg)

~~~
netsharc
Well, the current virus is a type of coronavirus, old fashioned SARS and MERS
are also caused by coronaviruses. They are so named because they have a crown
(corona) shape.

~~~
Izkata
On top of that, somewhere around 20% of the "common cold" viruses are
coronaviruses.

------
ceedan
China's infections disease numbers for December 2019 were unbelievably higher
than prior Decembers

Dec 2017 - 700k cases -
[http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/29/c_136933793.htm](http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-01/29/c_136933793.htm)

Dec 2018 - 712k cases -
[http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/27/c_137778435.htm](http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/27/c_137778435.htm)

Dec 2019 - 1.71m cases -
[http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/01/c_138748020.htm](http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-02/01/c_138748020.htm)

~~~
nabakin
Interesting. Influenza is a Class C disease.

    
    
      Dec 2017 - 93% of class C cases were infectious diarrhea, influenza, foot and mouth disease.
      Dec 2018 - 93% of class C cases were infectious diarrhea, influenza, foot and mouth disease.
      Dec 2019 - 98% of class C cases were infectious diarrhea, influenza, foot and mouth disease.
    
      Dec 2017 - 10 deaths were class C
      Dec 2018 - 16 deaths were class C
      Dec 2019 - 18 deaths were class C
    

Maybe they've been misclassifying COVID-19 as influenza or this has to do with
their misreporting.

~~~
adventured
> Maybe they've been misclassifying COVID-19 as influenza or this has to do
> with their misreporting.

We know that most countries have made this mistake, even if their intentions
are good.

We know that every authoritarian nation has intentionally misrepresented Covid
cases in extreme ways. Russia for example was aggressively lying about their
cases, claiming hospitalizations were pneumonia early on and not Covid.
Eventually Russia was unable to maintain the lies, which is what happened in
China's case as well (the lie gets overwhelmed).

Back in early January The Wall Street Journal caught China lying about Covid
deaths, they were putting pneumonia on the death certificates when they knew
it was Covid.

[http://archive.is/PkRF5](http://archive.is/PkRF5)

------
mytailorisrich
That area (North side of Paris) is interesting and very important, I think.

First that's where CDG airport is. This is the second largest airport in
Europe by passenger traffic and the main gateway into Paris for tourists (not
least Chinese tourists).

Second, that's where Paris' Gare du Nord is. This is the largest train station
in Europe by traffic, where trains from CDG airport arrive, and the start of
high speed trains to London, Brussels, Amsterdam.

So to me it's not surprising that this virus arrived there early.

But it also means that the area should be monitored closely, not only by
French authorities, but by British ones, etc. as well because any highly
contagious disease that shows up there will be around Europe in no time.

------
mirimir
FYI: [https://sci-
hub.im/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.202...](https://sci-
hub.im/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.106006)

------
flukus
How do we reconcile this with the known spread rate and lethality? If it was
spreading around late December when lot's of people are traveling, seeing
family and drinking over Christmas and New Years then where are the mass
casualties?

With a doubling time of 3 days and a morality rate of 1% a single person had
it December 31st it would have infected a million people by around the end of
February, killed approximately 10,000 and 150,000 would have been hospitalized
by it.

I've seen a lot of articles about how it may have been spreading earlier but
none seem to account for the exponential growth.

------
vondur
I'm sure this they case most everywhere where international travel is
widespread. If the virus started spreading in China in November, then it most
likely spread to most major international cities in December.

------
jweir
Caveat - this study may be wrong and needs to be verified.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/UNMC_DrKhan/status/12574400820191...](https://mobile.twitter.com/UNMC_DrKhan/status/1257440082019188745)

------
blackrock
This also just came out. This New Jersey mayor tested positive [1] for
coronavirus antibodies. And he says he got sick in November 2019.

Unless, the antibody test gave a false positive, and he did not get the virus.
Then, how the hell did an American politician get the virus, before China even
noticed it on their radar, and reported it to the W.H.O. in December 2019?

This timeline also seems to coincide with CDC warnings of strange flu and
pneumonia patterns late last year, with people having more difficult symptoms
than normal.

If you recall getting very sick late last year in 2019, then you should
consider taking a coronavirus antibody test, to confirm whether you got the
virus or not.

[1] [https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/04/nj-mayor-thinks-he-
ha...](https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/04/nj-mayor-thinks-he-had-
coronavirus-2-months-before-1st-confirmed-case-in-us.html)

------
JVerstry
I am was on a mission in south-west France at that time and the local
pharmacist told me around February she was convinced Covid was there since
November 2019... She saw some of her customers having strong cases flu that
would not go...

------
ur-whale
[https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.202...](https://sci-
hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.106006)

------
qwerty123457
If the virus jumped species naturally from bats, chances are transmission to
humans happened more than once, through a long time period.

There could very well be a less infectious, less severe strain circulating out
there.

------
frr149
In Spain, there have been clear signs that mild cases of covid-19 where
misdiagnosed as flu during January 2020, specially among children.

------
Bang2Bay
I remember seeing a similar story from sanfrancisco, california about their
region.

------
mrfusion
Remember all those articles about cats and dogs getting this? And even tigers.
What ever happened with that?

------
seaghost
I’ve also had flu like symptoms mid December for like a week. Was working from
home though.

~~~
lostmsu
So, probably, flu?

------
baby
I was in France in December/January, flied back to SF then to NYC for Real
World Crypto 2020. I felt sick after flying back from France, got a really
weird flu, similar to H1N1 back then. Flying back from NYC I remember being
extremely sick in the plane... I'm convinced this was the coronavirus.

Maybe I was patient 0 for both california and new york :|

~~~
safog
Get an antibody test?

~~~
baby
I'm waiting for them to become free, it's 150$ at the moment in SF.

------
exabrial
I like in KC, KS, USA. So back in early late November early December, I had
something that was exactly like Covid19 symptoms: lasted 2.5 weeks, mild
fever, fatigue, persistent cough, upper respiratory problems. The doctor said
it was likely viral and they couldn't give me anything. Unfortunately, I don't
know if there's a way to test how old my antibodies are IF this was in fact
was Sars-Cov-2.

I think the bigger question is, let's say it _did_ arrive much earlier that we
think, does that mean the virus grows at a much smaller rate than current
models?

~~~
dgritsko
Given the correlation between cases and deaths, isn't one of the big arguments
against the early community spread theory that we would have seen death rates
increase earlier on than they actually did?

~~~
redis_mlc
No, because the mortality rate is very, very low outside nursing homes. And
cause of death in the early days won't be listed as corona, since it was an
unknown disease.

The Wuhan "first patient" was admitted Dec. 6, but nobody believes he was
"patient zero". Since he likely contracted it Dec. 1, that means there were
others with corona in Nov. or before. (Chinese people I've talked to
invariably mention Oct. as when they started to hear chatter about corona.)

~~~
taeric
I have been beating this drum for a while. I feel like I'm shouting aliens.
The CFR for sixty plus is staggering. Below sixty? Still crappy, but not shut
down the world. Below twenty? We wouldn't even notice.

The problem is not whether this is more or less scary than the flu (or
anything else), it is both. With no solutions aimed at buffering nursing
homes/elderly.

Am I just insane? This narrative seems completely absent in all of the
coverage.

~~~
Jabbles
You're not insane, but you need to take into account that the CFR would be
higher if the healthcare system were overwhelmed with patients. Also reducing
_death_ is not the only target, we are reasonably sure that many patients will
have long-lasting damage to their lungs.

There is of course some trade off between number of deaths avoided and amount
of money we should be prepared to throw at the problem. Where on this spectrum
are you?

~~~
taeric
I'm on a different angle, I think.

My specific point is that people need to stop looking at a single IFR/CFR
stat. It does no good. We look to be getting safer numbers there by simply
increasing testing. (Of note, NYC has a strict lower bound on its numbers with
how many in its population has died. But, do note they have more people over
sixty than most cities do people. Such that most places will not be
comparable.)

And that is the problem. The virus has not gotten safer as we get more data.
Our understanding is just not focusing on helping the elderly. We seem to be
taking a crap shot that everyone can stay home and we can out sit the virus.

I would wager we could have setup hotels and strict access controls on
supplies into and out of at risk communities cheaper than what we have done.
Certainly if you count on all of the job loss.

------
redis_mlc
As I've mentioned before, both Wuhan and Shanghai have busy international
airports. So it's nice that France has a confirmed corona diagnosis in late
Dec., but it looks like corona was widely circulating outside China by Dec.
10.

~~~
myth_drannon
Source?

