Over at The Wall Street Journal, Betsy McKay offers this intriguing article:

Covid-19 Likely in U.S. in Mid-December 2019, CDC Scientists Report

The bottom line of the article is that examination of blood samples collected from December of 2019 show that the virus was already in the U.S. a few weeks before China identified the disease and about a month before the first “official” case was found in our country.

Way, way back in late March of 2020, when the lockdowns were first starting and everyone was shutting down, I wrote about how I thought maybe I, and several people around me, might have contracted the Coronavirus in early/mid January and into early February. (You can read my entry about that here)

Mind you, there was no thought at that time the Covid-19 was in the U.S., yet as I noted in my post above, our family business was very busy at the time and we were in contact with people from quite literally all over the world. There was also a little thing called the Super Bowl which happened on February 2nd in Miami, and which caused our area to fill up with many people… also from all parts of the world.

So back then, my father and several people we knew around us got quite sick and the illness lasted a long time, some two weeks or more, before they kicked it out of their systems. In later January and into early February I too caught something and I wasn’t sure what. I had my flu shots in October of 2019 and it seemed unlikely I caught the flu.

However, I caught something. I felt incredibly weak/exhausted at the end of workdays and, especially, work weeks. I literally felt I needed to collapse in bed and rest.

Luckily, my wife didn’t catch it and, eventually, whatever I had left my system.

Afterwards, I couldn’t help but think maybe those around me and I caught the Coronavirus in the very early -and for many unknown- days of its spread. Given the Wall Street Journal article, it certainly is possible.

It’s scary to think we may have had a potentially fatal disease at a time when no one thought it was spreading in the U.S. and, had any of us gotten really sick, in those very early days of the virus treatment would have been far from well thought out.

If indeed it was COVID-19 we had, we were lucky and made it through. Happily, everyone who caught whatever it was is back to normal.

Still, the idea the people around me and I could have been exposed to Coronavirus before it became known is a chilling thought indeed.