No, you are mistaken. The testing being given now determines only if the patient is currently infected. Those who have recovered test negative. The number of serious cases does not indicate how widespread the disease is, only that it has hit a pocket of vulnerable people such as at the Life Care Center in Kirkland where in the past both my wife and I have been both paid to work and volunteered.
When antibody tests are developed we may be able find out what the distribution of cases actually was. But early infections of unexplained origin, patient histories and anecdotal evidence in this area all indicate that the virus has been circulating in East King County since mid-December and more likely sometime in November.
If it had been COVID-19 the number of serious cases and deaths would have already been apparent in the ERs and ICUs.
Wrong again... the issues that they had in Wuhan China and Italy are not comparable to here ion many ways. First in Wuhan they have a very densely packed population, approximately 1 million people per square mile. Several people often from multiple generations are packed into tiny apartments typically 400 sq. ft. or less. They share bathrooms and kitchens with other apartments. Their healthcare system is very inadequate for a highly contagious infection that spread through this type of situation like wildfire. 60% of the men smoke and TB and other illnesses that weaken the immune system are rampant.
Italy has the largest number of Chinese immigrants in all of Europe packed into the affected area like sardines. Italy has the oldest native population in all of Europe. Their local customs encourage hugging and kissing multiple people from casual acquaintances to family members. Italy and Spain have 20 million smokers. Both countries have a high incidence of respiratory illness and wretched socialized medical systems. These countries are not comparable to the situation here, so there is no way of knowing what type of burden a virus going through the local community in East King County that 80% of the population has either no or very mild symptoms from.
I appreciate that you have bought into the hysteria and are repeating what you have been told. One thing that I find interesting is that the number of deaths in per state in areas that have legalized marijuana are 4 times greater than in states that have not. This can be found by looking at the daily numbers from every state that are currently being posted.
Testing of currently infected patients does provide, as I said, and upper bound measure on people currently infected with the virus. If you test 1000 people and 90% of them don't have COVID-19 you have established that for that particular sample, at that point in time, 90% of the population represented by the sample does not have COVID-19. It is no different than making 1000 phone calls and asking "who are you going to vote for" except that the test doesn't lie.
There is some bias in the sample set since people who think they should get tested are not a random population sample, but they provide an upper bound limit in spite of them not being a random sample.
Your theory depends on some strange, and unsupported belief that COVID-19 actually already ran through the Seattle area last year, and that a huge number of people have already had it. And that somehow, that huge epidemic has already ended in the area since 90% of tested people don't have the virus.
Your theory also requires that current exponential growth rates of cases did not appear the first time the epidemic occurred last year, and now they are appearing. How exactly would that work? In fact, under your hypothesis, Seattle is not on the leading edge of the epidemic curve, so the number of cases should be decreasing daily.
I doubt anything I have to say will change you mind, so enjoy your day.