In Search of Wave Zero

The "first Covid wave" of March 2020 wasn't the beginning. SARS-2 had been circulating in Italy and probably in many other places since Fall 2019. Where, then, is the real first wave?

A disappointing null result.

More miscellaneous Covid thoughts as I continue to work on my book. Regular posting will resume, as promised, on Sunday.

There is the real outbreak, and then there is the false one. The false outbreak played out in the press in March 2020, as epidemiologists initiated testing and contact tracing campaigns to identify the earliest infections. The picture they painted was broadly fictional, featuring constructs of contact tracing like Mattia Maestri, “Patient One” in Codogno.

We know the real outbreak started no later than September or October 2019, when we have our first proof of the virus in Italy. It’s very unlikely Covid was confined to the Italian peninsula at that point, and there is no scenario in which it could’ve remained there through the ensuing winter. It takes just an hour to fly to Munich from Milan, the epicentre of the earliest Italian infections, and there are four flights a day – to say nothing of all the trains and the cars and the buses passing back and forth.