Of course that's not the narrative that fits agendas so just like with "why cant we test people?" back then, there will be many official reasons not to look for antibody data and to doubt what data gets gathered.
My optimistic side wants the truth to be that there are many strains, and the worst one spread in the last few months. This would mean that there are other strains that provide adequate anti-bodies and yet are mild enough to go unnoticed by professionals.
http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/04/testing-pooled...
> The researchers found that the burden of COVID-19 in the Bay Area prior to mid-February was low. Only two of nearly 3,000 people with respiratory-disease symptoms who were tested in early 2020 at Stanford Health Care or affiliated clinics for common respiratory viruses were infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
It seems pretty obvious that we need to do the same experiment on samples from New York, Washington, Michigan, etc.
https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(20)301...
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/#S6
Look carefully at the black and red graph after the phrase “mortality surveillance data”.
If you look at the first set of graphs, you'll see a spike around the same time for influenza tests. I don't know how fast pneumonia occurs in people weakened by influenza, but I would expect some delay.
I think the spike in both influenza and in death due to influenza and pneumonia is probably due to testing. If you presented with influenza like symptoms in March, you were definitely given a flu test to rule out influenza.
Anecdotally, I remember in December / January reading about this being the worst flu season in years (time). it would have been interesting to know if the flu was effecting the normal cohort or ignoring children.
I myself got the 2nd worst sick I have ever been at the end of November visiting San Francisco. (really bad dry cough, fever). It was strange in the sense that I had mild symptoms for a bout two weeks and then 'took my breath away'. went to the hospital, no pneumonia, but low oxygen levels. my friends kid got the same thing, mild cough for a few days and fine. didn't really recover until mid January. Was it covid19? probably not, was probably the flu.
That doesn't discount the possibility this was running around the globe even in December. I don't stick my head in the sand and wait for people to tell me so to consider that's at least a very possible scenario.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...
Basically, if you're in a suburban area and pick up a few viral particles from one coffee-shop counter, it's possible that you're not in nearly as much danger as someone touching handrails and inhaling subway air all day long.