Link: earlier COVID-19 in California? Nope. UPDATED

[sonia]

I had just linked cynthia1960's warning about the racist quoted in the article below, and then I saw this detailed debunking: No, You Did Not Get COVID-19 in the Fall of 2019 by Jane C. Hu. Sorry to spread misinformation!

New study investigates California's possible herd immunity to COVID-19 by Caitlin Conrad. (Warning, there's a video that might auto-play.)(See cynthia1960's comment for content note about article quotes of Victor Davis Hanson.)

The hypothesis that COVID-19 first started spreading in California in the fall of 2019 is one explanation for the state's lower than expected case numbers. [...]
Hanson said he thinks it is possible COVID-19 has been spreading among Californians since the fall when doctors reported an early flu season in the state. During that same time, California was welcoming as many as 8,000 Chinese nationals daily into our airports. Some of those visitors even arriving on direct flights from Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in China.

My 30-person choir in Portland, OR had 3 people with pneumonia and a *lot* of coughing this winter. When I started hearing about COVID-19, I wondered. If this year's "bad flu season" was a COVID-19 preview on the west coast, I wonder why it didn't build up to the catastrophe other places have seen and are seeing.

Can't wait for an antibody test to become generally available!

Comments

[cofax7]

A good friend of mine had a life-threatening case of the flu over the holidays: 911 and all that. She says they tested her and it came back Influenza A, but it does make me wonder...

[sonia]

Yikes! My understanding is that COVID-19 tests negative for the flu, but hey, there's lots we don't know.