A genetic study of samples from more than 7,500 people infected with COVID-19 suggests the new coronavirus spread quickly around the world after it emerged in China sometime between October and December last year, scientists said on Wednesday.
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Balloux said the analysis also found that the virus was and is mutating, as normally happens with viruses, and that a large proportion of the global genetic diversity of the virus causing COVID-19 was found in all of the hardest-hit countries.
That suggests SARS-CoV-2 was being transmitted extensively around the world from early on in the epidemic, he said.
I wonder what percentage of the population is/has already been infected, then. Quarantine protocols in the U.S. started mid-March and "the holidays" (October-December) have people socializing...
I wonder what percentage of the population is/has already been infected, then. Quarantine protocols in the U.S. started mid-March and "the holidays" (October-December) have people socializing quite a bit. Is it likely that many people had it then and treated it like a normal flu sickness? How many elderly died in that time-frame from undiagnosed COVID-19? If it really were spreading during that time, wouldn't we have heard about an uptick in hospitalizations? Were we just not putting two and two together? Did COVID-19 mutate into something deadlier?
I think they are saying it probably did spread to many places pretty early, and since many genetic strains were spread, it's likely to have happened multiple times. But a genetic study isn't going...
I think they are saying it probably did spread to many places pretty early, and since many genetic strains were spread, it's likely to have happened multiple times.
But a genetic study isn't going to show whether it was common than we thought. Based on what else we know it was probably still rare at first.
It seems like when the number of people who are infected is low, the timing of when it takes off will be pretty random.
From the article:
[...]
I wonder what percentage of the population is/has already been infected, then. Quarantine protocols in the U.S. started mid-March and "the holidays" (October-December) have people socializing quite a bit. Is it likely that many people had it then and treated it like a normal flu sickness? How many elderly died in that time-frame from undiagnosed COVID-19? If it really were spreading during that time, wouldn't we have heard about an uptick in hospitalizations? Were we just not putting two and two together? Did COVID-19 mutate into something deadlier?
Or... am I just misreading the article?
I think they are saying it probably did spread to many places pretty early, and since many genetic strains were spread, it's likely to have happened multiple times.
But a genetic study isn't going to show whether it was common than we thought. Based on what else we know it was probably still rare at first.
It seems like when the number of people who are infected is low, the timing of when it takes off will be pretty random.