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There's strong evidence it was in the USA well before the first cases were reported in China.
That's not to say that anything RFK says makes any damn sense. But it's also not clear that it started in China.
For people asking for evidence, check the statistics for respiratory-related illnesses and pneumonia in late 2019.
https://nchsdata.cdc.gov/DQS/#nchs-home_by-primary-diagnosis/diseases-of-the-respiratory-system/age-group/all-time-periods/1
There was an unexplained spike in respiratory illness across all age groups, and a spike in pneumonia deaths starting in September. Google also tracked a spike in searches related to pneumonia. We didn't even have COVID tests until January of 2020, which is when the first diagnoses started coming in. None of the deaths in 2019 attributed to pneumonia were tested for COVID.
That doesn't mean it was definitely COVID, but it is enough to make me doubt the Trump narrative that China started it.
You'll also notice the incidence of scented candle complaints began in the latter quarter of 2019.
https://www.reviewpartydotcom.com/blog/reviews-as-data-points-yankee-candle-covid-cases
In fact there is strong evidence against this conclusion. Here is a graph showing reported instances for China and the rest of the world (ROW) starting in January 2020:
In which you can see that Global Cases match China Cases until the end of February 2020.
And here is a graph showing cases in Hubei province, the rest of China, and the rest of the world starting in January 2020:
And here is an animated map showing confirmed cased starting January 2020.
source
It is very, very clear that the COVID-19 pandemic started in China, specifically in Hubei province, and that anyone who says otherwise is a liar.
What you've got there is a graph of testing. The slopes are all the same, because that's when each country received tests, and that's how quickly they ramped up testing. Covid 19 wasn't even sequenced until 40 people were extremely ill from the virus. We know now that it is spread through the air, and carriers of the virus can be contagious without being symptomatic. Zero countries were wasting precious tests on deceased people who died in the previous weeks.
China made for a convenient target for xenophobes and racists to blame. It spread quickly through dense populations, and their government was using (ineffective) draconian methods to contain the spread. Westerners spread the image of indigent communists eating bats and civets, ignoring the growing number of anomalous respiratory illnesses at home.
Maybe it started in China. Maybe it didn't. We cannot know for sure, because we deliberately did not collect the data. And anyone trying to convince you differently has an agenda.
No, they aren't. Because it's a semilog graph.