As I noted this week in “The ‘War on Virus’ — What’s Our Exit Strategy?” formulating and implementing a way out of the current nationwide partial economic shutdown will be the most challenging policy decision of any presidential administration in decades.

One very significant question for the White House Coronavirus Task Force when evaluating an exit plan is the validity of the academic modeling, which leads to this question: When did the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus variant causing COVID-19 disease enter the U.S.? Of this I am certain — it was not with the man who was diagnosed 21 January in Seattle after his trip to Wuhan, China. He most assuredly was not “patient zero,” despite being the first patient identified once we were alerted to CV19.

But if not him, then who?

Let me be clear: I believe nothing the communist Chinese regime is reporting about its handling of CV19. China claims it identified the first case on 17 November, but one can fairly assume there were many cases prior to that date that were either not identified or not disclosed. There is abundant evidence that the ChiComs attempted to conceal evidence of CV19 for much of November and December, until it notified the World Health Organization on 31 December.

How many Chinese traveled to the U.S. in November, December, and early January, before Donald Trump wisely banned such travel? Specifically, how many came from or had contact with people in Wuhan? According to immigration records, about 3.4 million Chinese enter the U.S. annually, which means that from the time the first China Virus cases were disclosed until the president’s travel ban, approximately 600,000 Chinese nationals entered our country. And this number doesn’t include the many Americans who traveled between China and the U.S. during that time, including the aforementioned Washington state patient diagnosed on 21 January.

In the months prior to that U.S. diagnosis, the number of people in transit between the U.S. and China who were exposed to and could have been carriers of SARS-CoV-2, including many Chinese students, may be as high as 5,000-15,000. Undoubtedly, the disease was here before the first official CV19 case in January, which is to say that many illnesses and deaths in the prior months that were attributed to influenza could have been due to CV19 disease. As I’ve noted previously, the current spike in cases and deaths is primarily a reflection of the large number of tests now being performed, not only an indication of the spread of CV19.

Supporting the earlier arrival of the virus is the fact that the first confirmed SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus death in the U.S. was thought to be 29 February, but a California autopsy in has revealed it was much earlier, 06 February.

Why is pinpointing the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 into the U.S. so important? Because the Task Force must make decisions based on sound modeling. To avoid deep and prolonged economic harm, we should return to business as usual (excluding those at high risk) as soon as possible. And if SARS-CoV-2 actually arrived here between mid-November and mid-January, then the modeling trajectory of its spread and fatality rate is significantly different than what has been projected and reported.

To that point, Task Force response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx made a remarkable disclosure this week. She condemned the “Viral Fear Pandemic” fomented by the mainstream media and, though she did not name them, the Democrat leaders who have disgracefully politicized that fear.

Regarding the pandemic modeling that has been promoted by the mainstream media, Brix noted a significant revision in the “recent report out of the UK … that said there would be 500,000 deaths in the UK and 2.2 million deaths in the United States.” She added, “They’ve adjusted that number in the UK to 20,000. Half a million to 20,000. We are looking at that in great detail to understand that adjustment.”

She said the media should not assert “that when people need a hospital bed it’s not going to be there, or a ventilator it’s not going to be there [because] we don’t have evidence of that.” She added, “It’s our job collectively to assure the American people. There is no model right now [and] no reality on the ground where we can see that 60% to 70% of Americans are going to get infected in the next eight to 12 weeks. I want to be clear about that.”

The original UK report predicting 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. (with no mitigating actions), weighed heavily in the modeling used by the CV19 Task Force for its measures to partially shut down our economy. That study’s Imperial College of Medicine authors originally estimated that basic mitigating efforts would only cut its dire death predictions by 50%. But now, those researchers have revised the UK death toll to 20,000 given current UK mitigating action, and indicate that most of those would be people so sick that they would have died by the end of the year regardless of CV19.

And another note about modeling… The most condemning evidence of China’s abject negligence is, pandemic researchers now estimate that had Xi Jinping informed the world three weeks earlier than he did, that would have reduced the spread by 95%.

Footnote: Since the CV19 outbreak, more than 300 Chinese nationals have been arrested by ICE as they illegally crossed our border from Mexico. It is estimated that almost 13,000 Chinese nationals illegally entered across that border undetected in 2019.

(Visit our comprehensive China Virus Pandemic response and recovery page, and see our related pages.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

Join us in prayer for our Patriots in uniform and their families — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way, and for our nation’s First Responders. We also ask prayer for your Patriot team, that our mission would seed and encourage the Spirit of Liberty in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

(Updated)