[ioulaum]

Smallpox, yes. But another SARS variant (even a somewhat more aggressive one)...

Obviously, it's not impossible.

But, there were even RNA samples from Covid found in other countries, months before Covid really spread in China.

I imagine the main problem with the superspreader event there was more that enough people ended up in the same hospital, and thus it was easier to identify that Covid was a distinct virus.

If it was crawling around in a less dense population, its spread would've been meh, and the hospitals might not even notice the spike much.