Coronavirus: When did COVID-19 Start Spreading in the United States?

When did COVID-19 hit the shores of the United States? 

If we head back in time to January 2020, the first known case was reported in USA Today (Jan 23, 2020) as a man living in Washington State who had just come from China. He arrived in Washington State on January 15th and started to feel ill on Monday, January 20th. It now appears that COVID-19 was spreading much earlier than that.

Kansas Reflector (Aug 24, 2021) reported this:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data indicate there was a death in Kansas during the week ending Jan. 11, 2020, which would make it the earliest known death from COVID-19 anywhere in the United States. CDC media communications staff didn’t respond to multiple inquiries for this story.

Since it is my understanding that there is about a 2 week delay from illness until death (if that is the outcome), this individual likely started feeling symptoms in late December 2019. That would be perhaps 3 weeks before the Washington State case.

The Mercury News (Aug 23, 2021) reports that a Patricia Dowd was previously considered to be the first death due to COVID-19. Her death was on Feb 6th, 2020. So the Kansas death happened about a month sooner.

Is it possible that in December 2019, there were thousands of cases in the United States?