Italian hospitals would have been aware of something with ir without testing. There’s no way its presence would have escaped detection for nearly 6 months, not when it infects 5,100 people and kills 560 people in one month. It would have been noticed
RC one wrote: “Italian hospitals would have been aware of something with ir without testing. There’s no way its presence would have escaped detection for nearly 6 months, not when it infects 5,100 people and kills 560 people in one month. It would have been noticed.”
Article in WSJ (behind paywall) states: “BEIJING—About 90 people were hospitalized with Covid-19-like symptoms in central China in the two months before the disease was first identified in Wuhan in late 2019, according to World Health Organization investigators...”
Also this: “In a recent study, Italian researchers found evidence of Covid-19 infection in a 4-year-old boy from the Milan area who was treated for respiratory symptoms and vomiting on Nov. 30, 2019. Researchers found RNA exactly matching part of the Covid-19 virus while retrospectively testing a respiratory specimen from the boy, along with specimens from other patients.”
IOW, this may have been circulating at a low level for months prior to what people have thought.