I’ve not seen any reports that China had the breakout earlier than November. And it wasn’t very many cases at that point.
Common sense tells me that every year we have a surge of Flu cases in the hospitals in December and early January.
If this has been around, there would have been cases of ARDS showing up in hospitals that weren’t explained by the flu, and the CDC would have been investigating and found it.
It could be out there, but I don’t see any evidence of that.
Do some research.