The first three months of the COVID-19 epidemic: Epidemiological evidence for two separate strains of SARS-CoV-2 viruses spreading and implications for prevention strategies

Knut M. Wittkowski

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10. 1101 A historical perspective This is not the first, and likely not the last time, that well-intentioned public health policies are inconsistent with our understanding of how epidemics spread. For instance, during much of the HIV epidemic, there was widespread fear that HIV could establish itself in the population as a whole, even though the data (including data showing absence of transmission to the wives of hemophiliacs) (Wittkowski 1995a) and models (Wittkowski 1992; Seydel 1994) contradicted this fear. (Wittkowski 1995b; 1996) These results have been repeatedly confirmed. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2019; Haddad 2019) In the case of heterosexual transmission of HIV one could argue that there was little risk associated with a the public health policy promoting condom use, but in the case of COVID-19 prevention, ignoring models and data may carry substantial risk.