So widespread in fact that it's even hitting those with high positions in the Iranian government. The most recent example being Mohammad Mir-Mohammadi, an adviser to the Ayatollah.
I believe they meant that it's scary that we don't have data in here from a place where we have heard the virus is both spreading quickly and having a high mortality rate.
Not ominous as in any way indicative of a conspiracy or otherwise.
Here in New Zealand we are at 3 confirmed cases, one of which was an individual who recently return from Iran. There is a case that there are more yet undetected cases, but I suspect we are currently talking about dozens of people rather than "widespread" outbreak.
Most of the initial testing was sent to Australia and I'm not sure what capability NZ medical labs have yet and I doubt they are sequencing much. There is a chance that the Iranian was sequenced, with media referred to a "deeper" testing protocol after initial tests where negative.
No more so in Africa or in New Zealand [1] than in Finland, which is represented in this dataset. I'm not really seeing the basis for whatever conspiracy theory the original parent comment seems like it wants to point toward, is what I'm getting at here.
These are the early stages of what looks to be a pandemic of a disease at least an order of magnitude, possibly several orders of magnitude [2], more lethal than seasonal flu, which is no picnic already. Isn't that enough to be worrying about, all on its own?
People should remember the context of a respiratory disease in China. 2/3rds of men smoke, and air pollution is common. Things also spread faster there as it’s densely populated with lower hygiene standards than developed countries (for example: spitting is still common in some areas).
The two "fast"'s are relative. Epidemic dynamics are likely to differ in different countries for a bunch of reasons.
And, it does appear to be less lethal outside of China. That may be because healthcare systems are not yet overwhelmed, or it may be because of the smoking and pollution exposure in the different demographics. It is probably even both of those things.
I mean it's no more widespread in Africa or New Zealand, which are not represented in the genomic dataset charted here, than in Finland, which is represented. I've edited the earlier comment to clarify that, since the surrounding context evidently does not suffice on its own to do so for everyone.