Had a couple thoughts this morning while walking. Please correct me if I am wrong on these.
Started this thread on 20 January. Today is 26 February. Been just recently, within the last week or so, that we've started to see cases in countries other than China. But the number of cases so far in these countries ranges from the single-digits to the low three-digits. So far less than 50 cases in the USA, and 40 came from the quarantined ship. The USA is geographically the same size as China, and there are about 335 million of us.
Am pretty sure there were Chinese with this virus running all over the world before all these cases started cropping up. Remember early on seeing one Chinese woman in Paris celebrating because she took meds to mask her fever. But am not aware of any cases resulting from any contact that woman had with anyone in France. Logically, least to me, there should be many more cases outside China than have been reported.
Have lived only in the USA and Korea. Here in the USA, the population density overall is much less than Korea or the more settled parts of China. In Korea, least when I was there many years ago, the only place you had US-style suburbs of single-family houses and duplexes, somewhat spread out, was on the big US Army base in Yongsan (Seoul). Most Koreans lived in compounds, where one or more residences were built around a central courtyard. Get to Seoul, started seeing groups of high-rise apartments, lots of them, and lots more being built. You see the same thing in China now. Chinese cities, and there are far more of them than anywhere but India, feature tons of high-rise apartment buildings, plus many smaller apartments cheek by jowl, and still Korean-style compounds. Seal these places up, just like on the cruise ship, and there's a great environment for catching and passing respiratory diseases. True, we have US cities, like SF and NYC, that are densely populated. But we have a lot of cities that are all spread out - LA, Houston, San Antonio, and many other cities, large and small.
My points - population density has a lot to do with catching this virus. And what I am seeing indicates this was indeed an engineered virus primarily aimed at Chinese. Mutations will occur that can affect others, but doesn't seem to be as virulent as what is present in China. In the USA, look for cases in some of the more densely populated areas, but having a lot of spread-out areas is going to be a big help. Europe is much more densely populated than the USA, but still not that many cases. Logically, there should be many more, a month-plus into this.
I don't know everything, but that's the conclusions based on what I've been seeing and what I know.
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