Wait, what evidence is there that the virus was spreading in August 2019? From a quick Google search, this source [0] published not long ago claims they think earliest it could possibly have been was mid-October of 2019.

[0]: https://health.ucsd.edu/news/releases/Pages/2021-03-18-novel...

It spread in the fall of 2019, which is late September, October, November, and December. That would put it in line with spreading in the US in December.

Hey, that’s my post :-D I think it still holds up. The virus being “present” in the US in December isn’t the same as being spread widely.

This new NIH survey still offers no reason to doubt the timeline that the virus emerged around October 2019 in Wuhan and only became a serious threat in late November/December, when hospitalizations began to rise and some doctors started warning of a SARS re-emergence. A widespread COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan during August 2019 continues to seem unlikely to me.

What I remember was people arguing that it was present earlier where also making the argument that infection was widespread. And thus the case fatality ratio was 100 times lower than the 0.7% the Chinese were reporting.

Reminds me of this, which is a comically recurring thing on HN:

https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...