Very interesting. It feels like the US is way behind on community surveillance, in part due to errors in roll-out of the test kit and low availability of test kits, but also due to the assumption that it’s not spreading in the community at large. The patient in Solano County, CA was only tested after having been hospitalized for several days, because he/ she didn’t have any travel risk factors.
Ok one more element for the theory that the virus is circulating undetected in many places around the world. Seems quite in line with the Italian scientist that also estimated that the virus is circulating largely in northern Italy since mid-January.
Perhaps Iran received an early transmission chain and is one or two generations ahead of most other places.
So Seattle is Wuhan in the last week of December right now