It began with 'Patient Zero' one long year ago

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

On Jan. 21, 2020, it was announced to the world that the United States had its first case of a new mysterious virus.

The night before, after a battery of lab tests, a 35-year-old Snohomish County resident was placed in deep isolation in an Everett hospital. He’d fallen ill four days after returning from Wuhan, China.

He became known as “Patient Zero” after a fateful test came back positive from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

At the time, images of people sick and dying in China and a few other countries seemed so distant. There were less than a thousand cases of the mystery illness reported, hardly a pandemic.

Little did we know just how much the coronavirus would change our lives and take so many. Over 2 million people have died worldwide, the majority due to community spread.

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/it-began-with-patient-zero-one-long-year-ago/

[Thekaspervote]

1. Actually covid was in the US in early December '19. Blood banks found covid antibodies in stored

Blood from then.

[Chemisse]

3. For about 3 days in mid-December, I couldn't seem to smell anything.

I only noticed because I was in the teachers' room during the lunch period and coworkers would come in just gasping over the smell of fish. Somebody must have eaten that for lunch a few days in a row and the room just reeked of it. Or so everybody said. I could not smell a thing! It stuck in my mind because I had recently recovered from breast cancer and it made me wonder (briefly) if it had traveled to my brain.

A few months later, when we found out that losing one's sense of smell was a symptom of Covid, I checked the calendar and thought back, then dismissed it since the new coronavirus had not even arisen then, much less arrived in Massachusetts.

Now I wonder if I had it, way back then. Certainly, my high school students were really sick, out for weeks at a time with what we all assumed was an unusually severe seasonal flu.

[Thekaspervote]

7. My partner and I bordered an Amtrak train 12/19 in the Midwest to flagstaff 31 hrs

We were both ill about 6 days later. He lost his smell, fatigued. I had a terrible stubborn pink eye, fever for weeks, and fatigue.

[Chemisse]

8. That's really interesting. (Well also a shame you were sick on a trip).

Loss of the sense of smell is such a unique Covid symptom (except of course for nasal congestion and sinus infections). I didn't realize conjunctivitis was a symptom too, but just Googled it and I found that 1 - 3% of Covid patients have it.

I wonder if we will ever really track down where it started and how it spread prior to the Wuhan market.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

11. Yes it was

There was also a woman who died in California whose later autopsy showed COVID-19 was the cause.

The case in the article however was the first known case of an infected person. Because of the correct diagnosis this person survived.

[JT45242]

2. Behind the disease by the time we found patient zero

We were at least one to two months behind in even looking for patients.

[MH1]

4. And didn't someone say we would have 400k deaths?

We're very close to that now.




And if I remember correctly that 400K figure was deemed too alarmist.

[kimbutgar]

5. In mid January 2020 both my husband and I got sick and it knocked us both out for many days

I always wondered if it was an early strain of COVID. We experienced a lot of the symptoms of CV. And it took a month to fully recover.

In October of 2019, I was in the Rome airport ready to fly back to SF and I saw so many different types of people in that international airport and thought we were ripe for a pandemic then.

[safeinOhio]

6. I think the test for anti-bodies

is pretty cheap and easy to get.

[Chemisse]

9. Funny you would have that thought.

Unless you think of such things often. (Actually I do; I've always found plagues and epidemics so interesting and have read all about many of the well-known ones).

[kimbutgar]

10. I had read an article about pandemics and epidemics in 2018 and it stuck with me

They talked about large gatherings of different people and germ particles that mutate.