Minnesota went first, and Minnesota was specific. The Minnesota Department of Health is investigating an outbreak of Salmonella Javiana tied to jalapeños served at Mexican-style restaurants, and has identified 110 cases. Of the 84 sick people its epidemiologists have interviewed, 75 ate at a Chipotle between June 14 and July 14. The rest ate at other Mexican-style restaurants. Carlota Medus, the senior epidemiologist supervisor in the state’s foodborne diseases unit, said jalapeños are suspected as the vehicle, and that based on the evidence so far, the food that made people sick was served at other restaurants as well. Chipotle traced a common lot of peppers, pulled them from every restaurant that got them, and replaced them with product from different growers. Its chief corporate affairs and food safety officer said the peppers went to several food service retailers across multiple states.

Here is the part that is not yet nailed down.

NBC News reported Tuesday that Colorado health officials said testing had identified 110 cases associated with the same outbreak as Minnesota, that there are likely commonalities with the Minnesota cases, but that Colorado did not confirm whether its cases came from jalapeños or from Chipotle. 

What Colorado has published is a week older and points the same direction. On July 28, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment alerted the public to a significant increase in Salmonella cases: more than 250 reported since July 1, against a five-year average of 125 for the entire month of July. The state said its public health laboratory uses whole genome sequencing to compare genetic fingerprints and identify potentially connected cases, that it was coordinating with local agencies, CDC, FDA and partners in other states, and that federal investigators had not confirmed a specific food, restaurant, supplier or other source. Roughly 125 cases above normal, and 110 of them now said to belong to one outbreak. The arithmetic is consistent.

Now the things nobody has said out loud.

Nobody has said the Colorado cases are Javiana. Minnesota named its serotype. Colorado has not, in the July 28 release or in Tuesday’s statement. Until somebody does, “the same outbreak” is a characterization rather than a published fact.

Nobody has said whether the Colorado illnesses involve restaurants at all, much less Mexican-style ones, much less jalapeños. Colorado specifically declined to make that link.

Nobody has reconciled the numbers. Minnesota’s 110 and Colorado’s 110 come to 220. FDA’s outbreak table carries the investigation at 212, and the agency repeated that figure Tuesday while declining to identify a source. Two states now exceed the national count.

Nobody has named another state, though everyone has gestured at them. Minnesota says other states are contributing to the investigation and will not elaborate. Chipotle says the lot went to multiple states. FDA says it opened a traceback of multiple ingredients on July 22 and that it will provide additional information if and when there is an actionable public health update.

And nobody has named the grower. The peppers came from a lot, the lot came from a farm, and the farm has a name that Chipotle knew well enough on Tuesday to stop buying from it.

Consider what the phrase “associated with the same outbreak” actually requires. It is not a hunch. It means somebody put Colorado sequences next to Minnesota sequences and they matched. Colorado told the public on July 28 that it runs whole genome sequencing on every Salmonella isolate for exactly this purpose. Minnesota has been doing the same thing for thirty years. If a Colorado official can tell a reporter that 110 of that state’s cases belong to Minnesota’s outbreak, then the comparison has been made, the answer is known, and the only question left is who is willing to say it on the record and how long the public has to wait.

There is a reason to care beyond the counting. In the 2008 Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak — 1,442 sick in 43 states over a jalapeño investigation that spent months blaming tomatoes — the first pepper ever linked directly to an ill person came out of the home of a patient in Montezuma County, Colorado (she was my client), bought at a local Walmart. Colorado was where that investigation finally got physical evidence out of a sick person’s kitchen instead of out of a questionnaire. 

Two states, 220 people, one federal count of 212 that satisfies nobody, and a supplier whose name is sitting in a purchase order somewhere. I wrote yesterday that twenty-five years of Javiana history pointed at produce. It did. The history was never the hard part. Getting somebody to say the name out loud is the hard part, and it always has been.