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It would be difficult to obfuscate or hide the evidence if there are serious outbreaks of Covid 19 disease in the United States. The word would get out from patients, their families and health care workers. What is really surprising is that there have been no documented outbreaks to date. Clearly until very recently thousands of people travelled from Wusan to multiple points in the US. It is very likely some of these people were symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19. Yet no outbreaks to date. Why? Is genetic susceptibility the key factor? Are the cases in Iran and Italy given the relative non availability of reliable specific diagnostic testing really COVID-19 infections? Still do not have enough information to determine if a true pandemic will occur.

Without any positive tests, how exactly would word get out?

CDC isn’t ALLOWING any testing.

All the ER/ICU know is that someone died of pneumonia...

Only when hundreds show up will anyone have a clue something is wrong...

It would be difficult to obfuscate or hide the evidence if there are serious outbreaks of Covid 19 disease in the United States. The word would get out from patients, their families and health care workers. What is really surprising is that there have been no documented outbreaks to date. Clearly until very recently thousands of people travelled from Wusan to multiple points in the US. It is very likely some of these people were symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19. Yet no outbreaks to date. Why? Is genetic susceptibility the key factor? Are the cases in Iran and Italy given the relative non availability of reliable specific diagnostic testing really COVID-19 infections? Still do not have enough information to determine if a true pandemic will occur.

I watched something tonight where a Dr. speculated that the Iran and Italy are new strains. I think we ARE seeing cases here except our system has been able to handle them so far. I've heard of several people that have been diagnosed with pneumonia over the last couple months. One school system up in Michigan two weeks ago was closed one day because of illness. I think we are still 3 or 4 weeks behind China though and the incubation period is still not known for sure so it could get bad soon.

What is really surprising is that there have been no documented outbreaks to date. Clearly until very recently thousands of people travelled from Wusan to multiple points in the US. It is very likely some of these people were symptomatic or asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19. Yet no outbreaks to date. Why? Is genetic susceptibility the key factor? Are the cases in Iran and Italy given the relative non availability of reliable specific diagnostic testing really COVID-19 infections? Still do not have enough information to determine if a true pandemic will occur.

Turn that around. The number of Chinese travelers from Hubei to the US was only a very tiny fraction of Hubei's population. Unless the Chinese numbers were literally off by 2 orders of magnitude or more, as of the time that travel from Hubei was chopped, the % of those in Hubei Province who were infected was also a very tiny fraction of that population. This gets us into literally only a handful or less people coming into the US from Hubei as potentially infectious carriers -- and I'll bet a few of the cases caught here were related to Hubei in some way.