[flukus]

> One speculation I've read is that Australian/Japan/New Zealand's very-bad 2019 flu season was SARS-CoV-2 before it could be diagnosed

This is complete BS on par with 5G conspiracies. We know how quickly this virus spreads if left unchecked and someone would have noticed the excessive amount of dead bodies piling up. We also know it spreads very well via air travel, it would have been all over the world not long after it was spreading wildly across Australia. And if we had some sort of immunity already from a bad flu season, then why did it spread so fast when we did have outbreaks? There's absolutely no way this virus was spreading in Australia in mid-2019.

The idea it was in Australia earlier is created by people that don't like the solutions we used so they work backwards to create other explanations, quite often paired with a large dose of American Exceptionalism. Things Australia did that worked: Border closures (intenrally and externally), contact tracing, masks and lockdowns.