zlacker

I live in a rural place in the middle of the USA, but we have a large number of international travelers pass through. I am aware of several local cases that seem very COVID-like that predate January 2020. Two of these I knew about before anyone heard of the outbreak in Hubei. I remember discussing at the time how it was weird to hear of someone in their early 50s to be hospitalized with pneumonia from 'flu'. Anyway I wonder if you have heard any similar reports and your thoughts on the potential for much earlier transmission in the US.

>>dboreh+(OP)
Honestly it's really really hard to say for sure.

It's not super likely, because we don't have the epidemiological data (increased deaths from non-influenza pneumonia at a large scale) to support that, to my knowledge.

It's certainly possible. And it is true that our methods of detection of viruses are ill-equipped so you can assume we're almost always behind the curve a bit.

But there also isn't much more than anecdote to support this. Lots of people get influenza-based pneumonia in the winter. Could you consider the possibility that your recollection is now tainted? And that you are primed to notice those events more? It was also already a very bad flu season. See here:

-https://time.com/5758953/flu-season-2019-2020/

-https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/924728

Another kind of issue is that early reports of "SARS-2 positive serum!" were overblown, which colored a lot of news reports on this. They basically made the tests too "promiscuous" so they also detected antibodies against common cold coronaviruses. That was a big problem. If you're curious about how tests like this work, you can check out this other post I wrote on that! Antibody tests are actually my specialty!

https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/g1ty3g/are_immuni...