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| Science & Technology |
| New signs suggest coronavirus was in California far earlier than anyone knew |
| 2020-04-13 |
| h/t Instapundit [LA Times] - A man found dead in his house in early March. A woman who fell sick in mid-February and later died. These early COVID-19 deaths in the San Francisco Bay Area suggest that the novel coronavirus had established itself in the community long before health officials started looking for it. The lag time has had dire consequences, allowing the virus to spread unchecked before social distancing rules went into effect. "The virus was freewheeling in our community and probably has been here for quite some time," Dr. Jeff Smith, a physician who is the chief executive of Santa Clara County government, told county leaders in a recent briefing. How long? A study out of Stanford suggests a dramatic viral surge in February. But Smith on Friday said data collected by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, local health departments and others suggest it was "a lot longer than we first believed" — most likely since "back in December." "This wasn’t recognized because we were having a severe flu season," Smith said in an interview. "Symptoms are very much like the flu. If you got a mild case of COVID, you didn’t really notice. You didn’t even go to the doctor. The doctor maybe didn’t even do it because they presumed it was the flu." Just as New York has strong ties to travelers from Europe, who are believed to have brought the coronavirus there from Italy, the Bay Area is a natural hub for those traveling to and from China. Santa Clara County had its first two cases of COVID-19 almost a week before federal approval of emergency testing for the disease Feb. 4. Both were in travelers returning from Wuhan, China, where the virus was rampant. ...COVID-19 did not reappear in the Bay Area until Feb. 27, when doctors finally decided to test a hospitalized woman who had been ill for weeks. She became the region’s first case of community-spread coronavirus. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #3 I was diagnosed with pneumonia in early February after a CT scan. Radiologist noted groundglass texture in the lungs. Think I may have had it then. |
| Posted by: jpal 2020-04-13 19:29 |
| #2 I've had weird symptoms since mid jan. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2020-04-13 16:05 |
| #1 Chinese New Year The first day of Chinese New Year begins on the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February. In 2020, the first day of the Chinese New Year was on Saturday, 25 January, which initiated the Year of the Rat. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2020-04-13 15:00 |