A number of residents have posted on a social media that they believe they had covid-19 earlier than when it supposedly reached Arkansas in early March. Jill Slane said she and her husband, Rod, started sheltering earlier than most after a physician friend called them in February and warned them of what was coming.
“He asked us to please shelter in long before anyone else was doing it,” Jill said. “He went on to say that he felt that covid had been around for some time and in fact, he himself had come down with a virus in December that defied conventional testing. He had a cough so bad that he cracked a rib and a fever that went on for an unusually long period of time. His theory was that indeed he did have covid, or an early mutation of it, then. His suspicion was that the virus had spread around the world and like it does, mutated to a more aggressive strain while it was in China.”
She has other friends that were sick the same way in December. One also coughed so hard she also cracked a rib.
“Of course, those are just theories and personal opinions,” she said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization conclude that covid-19 began in China in late 2019, but some scientists are putting forth alternative theories, with recently published research indicating the coronavirus has been circulating harmlessly undetected for years before it mutated and became much more deadly.
The Veterans Today publication has quoted Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lijian Zhao as demanding U.S. authorities reveal what they’re hiding about the origins of covid-19, going so far as to suggest the coronavirus may have been brought to China by the U.S. military that traveled to Wuhan for the World Military Games in October 2019.
Health officials in the U.S. have indicated that there were a number of reports of some atypical influenza-like illnesses stating in December. Dr. Luis Ostrosky, a professor of infectious diseases at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston, said that puzzle won’t be solved until antibody testing is available, not just tests for detecting the virus.
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, was quoted in USA Today that he believes when researchers do more testing, they will probably find the disease was in the U.S. earlier than first believed.
Arkansas remains one of the states with the fewest confirmed cases of covid-19. According to the CDC, as of April 13, 4,160 cases were reported in Missouri, and Mississippi had 2,942 cases, Tennessee reported 5,308, and 1,475 cases were reported in Arkansas. However, Arkansas has also been testing fewer people with recommendation that only seriously ill people with covid symptoms be tested. In Mississippi, some people have tested positive who have no symptoms.
Alan E. Hodges, CEO, Ochsner Medical Center-Hancock, Bay St. Louis, Miss., said in addition to treating covid-19 patients in their hospital, they are also seeing patients through their emergency department that although they present as asymptomatic, some do test positive. The cases where there are no symptoms are troubling considering patients are unlikely to be taking precautions to prevent spreading the disease. And the unreported cases may give a false sense of safety.
The neighboring state with the highest number of cases is Louisiana with 18,283 positives, with many of those in New Orleans believed to have been related to Mardi Gras celebrations. Total cases in the U.S. have grown to 582,584 with 23,649 deaths as of April 14.
According to a model created by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Arkansas is projected to see its peaks in daily deaths around April 27 with Missouri’s peak estimated two days earlier. The model also projects both states will see their peak resource use by April 25.