What if COVID-19 didn’t first appear in Wuhan, China sometime last November? What if the coronavirus actually first popped up in North Carolina, USA — three months before China got hit?
That’s what a supercomputer programmed to detect COVID-19, Tianhe-1, proposed after analyzing medical data taken from a US patient last August. Tianhe-1 is housed at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, China.
The unidentified American patient, who lived in North Carolina, was treated by doctors for EVALI, or e-cigarette and vaping-associated lung injury. In case you forgot, that’s the other lung illness that the CDC obsessed over before the coronavirus pandemic blew up.
Anyway, Tianhe-1 looked at the US patient’s CAT scans. One feature, in particular, stuck out to the supercomputer: White blotches that resembled “ground glass” on the lower parts of the patient’s lungs. Similar blotches appear on lung images taken from COVID-19 patients.