I think it very likely the strain DID NOT get spread by the first patient. We’d have seen more evidence sooner IMO if it was.
That doesn’t rule out it being introduced at about the same time though.
Shame that our front line states for this are so incompetent.
I don’t know, he’s a pretty well known I his field, and he makes a pretty good case with the statistical significance that the two was by chance as less than .03. It’s definitely not a fast moving disease, and people can retest positive even weeks after testing negative. Who knows if they can still shed.
As he said, the next few genome sequences will nail it down. It’s like DNA, which is probably why Wuhan stopped submitting sequences in January.