re: More credence to the theory that this virus was in the United States as early as December

My doubt that it was here in December is that the nursing home and other old people cases (the initial red flags in the outbreak it seems) don’t correspond with the disease being here undetected pre-Christmas.

Someone,somewhere, would have visited nana in the nursing home with a cough for Christmas without thinking twice about it. Same with the non-nursing home bound elderly, they would all be together with extended family on Christmas - and wouldn’t really avoided Timmy if he said he didn’t feel too good.

Anytime after that is in play for some areas. I don’t think many people go spend a whole lot of time with their elderly relatives in January so from then on it could circulate amongst the healthy before hitting a more vulnerable population which is where we see the nursing home spike.