So, assuming all that is true, why did the virus not spread worldwide earlier? That's the crux of what that person you're responding to was taking about. Can you share something from your knowledge of articles, posts, and anecdotes that provides some clarity on that question?
Here's a suggestion and no scientific evidence backing this.
The virus might have spread worldwide earlier. There might have been deaths due to it earlier too. There was no way of knowing it until Jan 2020. No testing. Nothing. Also the fact that this virus affects people with existing conditions, there's a very good chance that initial deaths / patient 0 / index patient might have been tagged as dead under their respective conditions. As far as the symptoms go, there's no 'unique' symptom so that might have led to people saying that their coughing is due to cold or whatever.
It’s not a “unique symptom” of the disease exactly, but health care disasters like we saw later in Lombardy and New York would not have gone unnoticed even if we had no particular virus test.
NYC was putting patients into hospital cafeterias, the Javits Center, and a US navy ship in the harbor if you didn’t notice. Moreover, many people who called in sick were told to stay at home because there wasn’t room in the hospital for them like there normally would have been.
> It was only a month ago when Cuomo and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) suggested that the crisis would blow over. But as the need for more hospital beds became clear, Cuomo, at his daily news briefings, described his forceful push on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and then his calls to President Trump, to allow covid-19 patients at the Javits Center.
I’m not playing semantic games. I consider what happened to be a healthcare disaster, and if you don’t, that’s fine. We’re still talking about the same thing.
