For those of you currently involved I'm praying the tests come back negative. Having to deal with it inside the home must be a special sort of hell and I hope you all are able to stay safe and healthy.
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Based on tracking the disease, and travel, the foreign exchange students from China returned back to the US in January. One of our local schools has roughly 50 Chinese nationals that returned to the US in early January. We got lucky and none of those kids seems to have been infected and none seems to have spread it. But they do give us a reasonable timeline.
So the kids come back to the US in early January. The business travelers who had dealings in China mostly came back AFTER the kids because their American offices were generally closed for the holidays and they traveled to China and then back from China in mid-January. Most of the high school level students study in large metropolitan areas while most of the college age students are in college towns or urban colleges in large metro areas.
Vacation travelers would have met up with Chinese vacation travelers over the Christmas holidays and returned right about the beginning of January. These people could be from anywhere in the US but likely would be wealthier Americans traveling to places like Hawaii as that is a common destination spot for Chinese travelers. Other common places are also located in the South Pacific, like Bali.
So we have 3 timelines that bring us to the beginning to middle of January that are all plausible. The question is, for those who believe they were infected very early in the stages of this spread, how would you have come in contact with one of these people? Or even in contact with someone who was in contact?
Just based on timelines, it is unlikely that most of us could have been exposed to Covid in January. It is just statistically very highly unlikely.
As the time unfolds to February it is still highly unlikely for anyone from any rural area to have been infected unless they traveled to urban centers where infection was already setting in, namely New York, Portland or Seattle. Even at that time the outbreaks in LA and San Francisco had not become widespread.
It was not until early March that cases were confirmed in parts of the central mid-west, and those were typically traced to travel to a major coastal city. After mid-March then I'd believe anything could logically be tied to Covid in all but the most remote towns and cities.
There was a strain of the flu that was going our nation which started in the fall of last year and was still bouncing around in January and February and it is far more likely that anyone with severe respiratory symptoms prior to mid-March had a strain of the flu.
First, thanks for the kind thoughts. Much appreciated.
Secondly, whilst it is very unlikely that I suffered the Covid-19, my travels to the east coast in late January made it quite possible. And I can even suggest the person from whom I possibly contracted the ailment.
Add to that, I get the flu most every winter, this whether I or not take a flu shot in the fall. I can attest the case I had this year was unlike any other with the possible exception of the Hong Kong flu I suffered back in 1967.
In that case, at the age of 21, I almost died. Certainly wanted to. I never felt so bad ever before or since and I was out of sorts for over two weeks back then.
My wife, who seldom gets the flu, also contracted whatever that was last February.
The event this last February was worse than the Hong Kong. And had I not had Oxygen equipment on hand, I know I would have been in hospital shorty. Or deceased. But we didn't know much about Covid-19 then, so no one considered it a possibility.
I'm betting PG is of the same circumstances. And likely many Americans who were sick last winter and thought all they had was the commo flu. After all that's what Dr Fauci and the "experts" claimed at the time. Covid-19 was "just a flu." No worries.
Since that was six months ago, I doubt antibodies still exist for it. But if they do, I am hoping it protects me and the wife from exposure in my household.