This is the story of a person in Chicago, at the end of February, when the United States believed that it was still protected from Covid-19, which had not yet been declared a pandemic. This person had some mild respiratory symptoms, but not to the point of worrying, let alone confining himself.
This person, anonymized in a survey published Wednesday by the United States Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC), is invited to a funeral of a family friend and decides to participate. The day before the funeral, she goes to dinner with friends. For three hours, the three share a meal taken from a restaurant. They are served in the same dishes.
The next day, the day of the funeral, it is at a buffet that this “patient index” is used to eat, probably using the same utensils. He offers his condolences to the bereaved family, takes at least three relatives of the dead.
Three days after the funeral, he still has mild symptoms, which are not detailed in the investigation. He still goes to a birthday party, this time in his own family. The virus, which he carries inside him without knowing it, will wreak havoc.
A circle of patients which causes a second
There are nine people at the party. All come into “close contact” with each other. For three hours, they kiss and share the same food.
Of the nine present, seven will catch the coronavirus that day. Two will fall so seriously ill that they will be hospitalized. Three weeks after the birthday, these two will be dead.
They are not the only ones to fall into this catastrophic chain of communications: the two hosts of the first take-away dinner were also infected that evening; one of them will eventually die, 27 days after the meal.
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