Coronavirus came to the United States in January.

A lone man walks his dog in California. Reuters.

The Coronavirus came to the United States in January in California. Reuters. Due to autopsy results the first recorded death in America was a woman in California on February 6th, which was much earlier than the first known death on February 29th in Washington. Medical examiners are now looking at other deaths in February, January and December to determine if other people may have died from the disease. The newly found deaths radically changes the timeline of the Coronavirus outbreak and may indicate that the virus is much more widespread than believed. 

My Comment:

This seems to be pretty critically important as it massively changes our understanding of the outbreak. If the virus was widespread enough in America to cause a death in February, it's pretty likely that nothing could have been to done to stop the virus. If someone died on February 6th that means the virus was probably in California at least by January 24th, which was before President Trump ordered the travel ban. 

This could also explain why California has been relatively less affected by the virus despite having cases and crowded cities. California has only had 33,000 cases and 1270 deaths roughly. This is despite the fact that they have many crowded cities. Though 33,000 cases is no small thing it is a lot less than New York, for example. 

If the outbreak started weeks or months earlier than it is widely thought than it isn't surprising that the state hasn't been hit as hard. The virus may have been raging through the state for months and a lot of people may have had it and recovered. With fewer people to infect it's likely that there were fewer hosts and California might be a lot closer to herd immunity that previously thought. 

This theory is backed up by the various California antibody studies that have shown that between 20 and 80 times more people had antibodies to the virus than confirmed cases in California. If those studies can be repeated and if more deaths are discovered than I think it's pretty clear that the virus was widespread long before we thought.

But why were deaths so low in California? Some of it may be demographics. Compared to New York, California is younger, fitter and generally healthier than New York. And it's also possible that California got a weaker strain than New York got. It's a huge question for sure. 

The theory also seems to mesh with the fact that a lot of people reported having a "bad flu" in December, January and February. With no testing available during these times and Coronavirus not even expected, it's very possible that many of these cases were not the flu at all but in fact SARS-CoV-2. 

The major policy effect this discovery would cause is the fact that we may be much closer to herd immunity in some places. That means that lifting the lockdowns is a lot less risky than it would seem. I believe immunity is widespread and will last for some time so there isn't much of a point in keeping these lockdowns forever. However, just because the virus was widespread in California it doesn't mean that it was widespread everywhere. More studies are needed for sure.