I really want this to be true -- I had that vicious bronchitis in January -- but I really doubt it.

I also don& #39;t want it to be true, because I don& #39;t want to have been a spreader. https://twitter.com/chrismattmann/status/1249367188936331268">https://twitter.com/chrismatt...

As I& #39;ve said before, I think it& #39;s much more likely that there was a separate bronchitis going around pretty widely -- not the flu, symptoms didn& #39;t match, maybe *a* coronavirus but not COVID-19.

Anecdata, but a lot of people in my extended/global social network seemed to catch it back in December or earlier. If it were COVID-19, that would be reflected in both the overall mortality statistics (earlier spike) and the phylogenetic tree.

The phylogenetic tree in particular carries a lot of information. eg: the Seattle flu study was (IIRC) able to infer a single point of introduction sometime in January. By the end of February, that had only grown to something like 100-1000 cases (again inferred).

To rephrase all of this in a more concise way:

Sure, it might have been introduced back in December or even November. Your chance of having had it back then would still be essentially zero. That& #39;s how exponential growth works. Long fuse before the boom.

This thread answers most of the questions raised, go read this one and forget what I said. https://twitter.com/trvrb/status/1249414291297464321?s=21">https://twitter.com/trvrb/sta...