[Republican Wildcat]

The virus was already widely circulating before it hit the US - it was not an unknown. So how exactly would it be unusual?

[ConservativeMind]

Because “Patient Zero” in China was identified Dec. 1, 2019, and Moderna was stated to have had a vaccine candidate several weeks earlier than that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_mainland_China

Look at “Index case.”

They were already making the vaccine by January 2020:

“In January 2020, Moderna announced development of an RNA vaccine, codenamed mRNA-1273, to induce immunity to SARS-CoV-2.“

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderna_COVID-19_vaccine