During CNN Global Town Hall on Covid-19 Pandemic, Chris Cuomo Baselessly Suggests the Virus Could’ve Been Spreading in U.S. Since October

During CNN’s Thursday evening Global Town Hall on the Covid-19 pandemic, anchor Chris Cuomo joined in to discuss his and his wife’s experiences after testing positive, during which he suggested his children might’ve contracted the virus months ago and then baselessly theorized that it could’ve been circulating in the U.S. as far back as October.

That claim contradicts the official World Health Organization timeline about the appearance of the virus. On December 10, what’s believed to be the first patient identified with the nCov-2 coronavirus showed up sick at a local clinic in Wuhan, China. It should be noted, that Chinese authorities have come under widespread scrutiny for failing to raise alarms and fully briefing global health officials about the true nature of the origins and early days of the outbreak.

Cuomo did not mention this fact during his discussion. Neither did Anderson Cooper, who anchored the town hall, nor Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical expert, who was sharing the screen throughout. Gupta had begun the segment by asking Cuomo about the primetime host’s home quarantine situation, which led to Cuomo riffing on the the virus’s history.

“Well, I’m not a doctor, but here’s what I’ve learned,” Cuomo began in his answer about why his doctor has recommended that he and his wife isolate from one another in their home. “In an abundance of caution I could get reinfected, so they want us to stay separated. We do have completely different symptoms, which is, again, part of the weirdness..”

“The kids now, anecdotally, Christina believes at least two of them have had it in the last few months,” Cuomo then added, before citing as proof symptoms that can accompany other diseases like the common flu or pneumonia. At this point, Gupta subtly drew in and bit his bottom lip but remained silent. “Why? We don’t know,” Cuomo said, “atypically long duration sinus, fever, lethargy. I think we’re going to learn coronavirus has been in this country since like October, that there have been cases.”

“And as you guys both know, I hear all the time all over the country how many people do you hear saying: ‘I think I had it, I lost my sense of smell and this and that, but I never got tested?'” Cuomo went on, sharing anecdotes and rumors. “Those cases are, like, abounding all over the country.”

Unchallenged over these claims, Cuomo then went on to describe the prolonged symptoms one unnamed medical expert told him he might experience during recovery, for up to five weeks. He concluded by saying: “We don’t know any of this and that’s scary.”

Cooper ignored Cuomo’s earlier unsubstantiated hypothesis about the chronology of the virus and instead pivoted to ask Gupta about the length of recovery time.

Gupta, likewise, did not touch Cuomo’s baseless claim of an early fall presence of Covid-19 in the U.S., but instead offered up a rather ambiguous comment: “We’re all learning as we go along.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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