STEVE Wozniak said the CDC “ignored him in January” at the start of the coronavirus pandemic when he said a flight from Asia was “full of sick people.”
The Apple co-founder told TMZ that he and his wife were in Asia in December 2019, saying they were traveling through several hotspots where Covid-19 is believed to have first spread.
Wozniak, 70, said when he and his wife were on a flight from Hong Kong to the US on January 4, and there was several passengers coughing heavily.
“January 4th was when we returned to the United States from Asia and we have all the symptoms exactly the way people describe them.
“I was coughing up blood, and they tested her [wife] for eight hours at the US hospital and they couldn’t find anything they had tests for, it was that new,” Wozniak told the outlet.
“The US government, all the press said ‘there was no Covid in the United States in January. Not in early January, we did not have Covid we had something else.’
“But now all of a sudden the longer we go in months you get back and find out oh my gosh it was probably going around in Asia and even China and maybe to Europe in October,” he added.
The 70-year-old went on to explain that he and his wife were on a cruise in Vietnam, Cambodia and Singapore.
The millionaire said he took a selfie with a guy from Wuhan while in Vietnam and commented, “Oh where the sickness is”.
Wozniak explained how the symptoms lasted three to four weeks, calling it “the worst flu of our lives”.
“I gave my data to the CDC and they came back with nothing, they could care less about my story or talking to me.”
Wozniak said his case proves the CDC was wrong when it said the first cases of coronavirus were in Seattle in mid-to-late January, and he believes there were a number of people infected way before the alarm was sounded in the US.
In fact, during the early stages of the pandemic the CDC was late in their response to Covid-19 in the US.
The CDC was late in testing Americans who were experiencing symptoms and were unable to contain the spread of the virus in the country that to date has over 15million confirmed cases.
The country lacked essential supplies and equipment for first responders, as nurses and doctors across the country raised the alarm of lack of personal protective equipment.
In the early days of the pandemic, the World Health Organization and the CDC were sending inconsistent and inaccurate messages about the virus.
Health officials claimed masks wouldn’t protect people against the disease, but have advised folks to wear masks in places where social distancing is not possible.
The US has amassed more than 290,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
Worldwide there have been 69million confirmed Covid cases and 1.6mimllion dead from the virus.
