22 ms·
Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus activity in Fall 2019
- brianbreslin 6y agoI'm curious, how did they get access to location data and Baidu search volumes for just Wuhan?
- andrewtbham 6y agoSearch query data Baidu’s database (http://index.baidu.com/ http://index.baidu.com/) contains logs of web and mobile search query volume in China. User confidentiality is maintained, since only the relative term frequency data is available. We obtained daily data for symptom-related searches likely associated with COVID-19 illness in Wuhan from April 2017 to May 2020. We extracted the relative search volumes of the terms “cough” and “diarrhea” using WebPlotDigitizer, v4.215.
- dillondoyle 6y agowow just searching 'cough' on google trends seems to be pretty accurate just birds-eye view would be cool to read similar research using US data, and the implications on policymaking. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&geo=US&q=cough,covid%20cough,fever https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&ge...
- starpilot 6y agoThis always goes up during winter, you also have to control for all the media attention that COVID-19 is getting. People are searching just to be safe even if their symptoms are weak. It might not reflect growing infections, just growing fear.
- dillondoyle 6y agoThe spike in the timeframe of the link I put is in mid March and the decreasing rapidly. Plus I think it's also cool at least intuitively the 'trending' states make sense - though I have no idea if they are weighted by population or not.
- mellosouls 6y agoIt's interesting - tho I've just plugged in China and various periods down to the last 5 years, and there's not an obvious jump beyond the seasonal ones until after December this year.
- pstrateman 6y agogoogle in china is less than 5% of the search market
- mellosouls 6y agoyeah, I considered that - but its still presumably a large enough sample for the phrases listed in the parent comment to stand out.
- hef19898 6y agoAs interesting as this is, but my understanding was that the genetic evolution / development of the virus can be used to determine when it started spreading. Or jumped from animal to human. Or did I understand that wrong? Not saying this study is wrong (no way for me to tell), it just seems a very indirect, and thus error prone, way to look at it.
- mellosouls 6y agoI've asked that question as a separate thread above, I think its an important one, at least for lay people like me. There is a suggested reason for the discrepancy (Chinese dishonesty about timelines) tho not an answer (yet) from the researchers who've commented elsewhere here or others with a strictly scientific explanation. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460742 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460742
- tindjinn 6y agoWell, considering the all-seeing Chinese government practically owns Baidu and most other Chinese brands it is not very surprising that they're able to track individual users across multiple platforms. Location data is merely one tiny point on the vast graph of data they have access to.
- Dahoon 6y agoBut this isn't PRC but Harvard.
- beervirus 6y agoIt's a little surprising the PRC would let this unflattering data be available.
- adventured 6y agoThere are a lot of points of data to scrub in such a large system, it's not surprising that they would miss numerous of them in the wild. Watch to see if this one disappears or not.
- cameldrv 6y agoThe official line now is that the virus didn't start in the seafood market. The bats that carry the closest viruses to SARS-CoV-2 are located 1000 miles south of Wuhan, and were in hibernation in November. For the theory that the virus was transmitted from a bat to a human in Yunnan to work, it needs to have happened earlier in the year.
- dificilis 6y agoIf the virus jumped from bat to some other animal 50 years ago, then the 1000 miles of distance is not hard to explain, and doesn't tell us anything about the time-scale of initial human infection. We need to find the close relative of Covid19 (TMRCA < 1 year) in a non-human host.
- bingdig 6y agoThe Chinese government and Chinese firms are often willing to share tons of data with researchers. One of my professors was able to get data on cell phone locations, metadata on all text messages sent and received, and occupations of cell phone holders from the largest telecom co in China for a paper on networks and job mobility.
- th0ma5 6y agoI would use Autumn here for clarity for sure
- koheripbal 6y agoSince they looked primarily at the month of October - I'd just say October.
- th0ma5 6y agoI guess the point is that Fall doesn't mean Autumn in some places, and the way this is phrased it seems to imply something about the rate of infection, that is, they are falling or something but that isn't what this is about at all.
- interestica 6y agoAgreed. And capitalizing the word 'Fall' (in an attempt to clarify) is problematic too - it's not usually a proper noun.
- bredren 6y agoThere is another report that suggested mobile data indicated the Wuhan lab “was closed from Oct. 7 through Oct. 24, 2019, and that there may have been a "hazardous event" sometime between Oct. 6 and Oct. 11.” [0] As far as I know, no federal agency has been willing to vouch for this conclusion. I recognize there is skepticism about it coming from the lab, though I thought this is related enough due to how the indicating data was collected to share. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/report-says-cellphone-data-suggests-october-shutdown-wuhan-lab-experts-n1202716 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/report-sa...
- robocat 6y agoIf you want to be clear, use the name of a month or a quarter number. Seasons are opposite in the Southern Hemisphere, and it is always confusing to read American or European information that references a season (I am in New Zealand). Please Don’t marginalise those of us that are down under (we are already marginalised by physics causing long ping times to servers in the Northern Hemisphere, which is harder to change).
- watertom 6y agoI read stories about exchange students from Africa going home and talking about a "strange" new flu that was circulating in Wuhan back in September of last year.
- Jabbles 6y agoStop spreading FUD. This is a rumour of a rumour of a rumour. Provide a source.
- koheripbal 6y agoSource
- joshuawithers 6y agoIt continually blows my mind how Americans think that referencing “Fall” means something. Southern Hemisphere human chiming in.
- jessermeyer 6y agoWell ... it does mean something to most Americans given their seasonality. But point taken, it's not universal.
- designdesign 6y agoIt's an article published by an American university and 90% of the planet lives in the northern hemisphere, so it doesn't seem like much to be in a twist about.
- lol768 6y agoI live in the northern hemisphere, there's still no such thing as a "fall" in my vernacular!
- jjgreen 6y agoNot even post-punk manc miserabilism? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_(band) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_(band)
- designdesign 6y agoSure, but it's commonplace enough to be understood (roughly) as September-December without much thought... yeah? I've always lived in a 4-season bubble that uses Fall and Autumn interchangeably so maybe I'm wrong.
- catalogia 6y agoPerhaps it depends also on whether the forests in your region are primarily evergreen or deciduous (with falling leaves..)
- 6y ago
- bdefore 6y ago...of 2019
- kube-system 6y agoI thought that was pretty obvious, fall 2020 hasn't happened yet.
- elchief 6y agoexcept in the Southern Hemisphere... :)
- chewbacha 6y agoWuhan is in the northern hemisphere ;)
- koheripbal 6y agoI think it's a fair point. You are both correct.
- doubleunplussed 6y agoSouthern hemisphere English dialects call it Autumn. Might not be a knockdown argument but it's pretty rare to read Americans talking about seasons in the southern hemisphere without clarifying, so I had no doubt we were talking about northern hemisphere seasons.
- vmception 6y agoa few weeks ago people would respond to this kind of speculation with "no evidence!!" "fear mongering!" "diversion!" until suddenly there is evidence. If you were interested in getting evidence for which there is none, what is the accepted way to talk about theoretical possibilities on this topic which doesn't illicit those dismissive and heavy handed responses?
- jasonlotito 6y agoI'll respond in the hopes that you learn. First, your general assessment is wrong. The news was already reporting about US intelligence knowing about this in autumn of 2019, as well as China knowing about it [1]. So I doubt a few weeks ago people were saying "no evidence" to the suggestion that China knew about this in autumn. That being said, what exactly is "this kind of speculation?" This article isn't "speculation." It's far more than that. So what do you mean "this kind of speculation?" What articles like "this" were posted a few weeks ago that were met with responses like the ones indicated? > until suddenly there is evidence. That's the difference between speculation and what "this" is. This has evidence. > ...what is the accepted way to talk ... which doesn't illicit those dismissive and heavy handed responses? I don't know what you are referencing a few weeks ago to offer up any specific suggestions. What I can say is that your comment hints on specific things, so I offer suggestions based purely on my assumptions. 1. Stop with the hyperbole. Be precise in what you are saying. Your comment here doesn't do that in the slightest. 2. Be humble. An active imagination is being equated to a researched article with sources. 3. Don't have an agenda. Your agenda here is questionable at best, and it's easy to see with the choice of words. If you are serious about having these conversations, the best approach is start to prove the opposing side first. Look to validate the opposing view from your speculation and approach it that way. If your speculation is correct, it will come out. [1] https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/intelligence/491712-us-intelligence-warned-in-november-that-virus-spreading https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/intelligence/49...
- vmception 6y agoYour mistake here is thinking I have a view. I would be one of the people making the observations that the virus may have been around longer than the currently official records, which would be met with vitriol I didn't make that clear because why do you think I have to do that?
- numpad0 6y agoWhat could be inferred from this? Does it mean the fatality could be lower than believed? Or that it takes longer than previously thought to spread? Or Asian countries could have had experienced it earlier leading to some level of immunity?
- davesque 6y agoHere are a couple of anecdotal data points: I was traveling in Japan and Taiwan in October of 2019. I came down with a weird flu-like illness that persisted for three or four weeks (much longer than a flu would have normally lasted for me). And it wasn't just that the symptoms persisted. I really felt sick for that long (with fever and sweats). The flu-like thing also came after a week or so of diarrhea. Could have just been GI issues related to traveling but who knows? Ever since it was reported that the pandemic may have begun earlier than had previously been thought, I've been wondering if I didn't in fact get this virus very early on. I also had a colleague with me who was traveling with his wife. His wife was also very sick with some kind of super-flu like thing. She was saying it was basically the worst flu of her life.
- codezero 6y agoHave you had the opportunity/availability to get an antibody test? Everyone I've heard with such an anecdote has received multiple negative antibody tests, anecdata! (Only two people I've known)
- subsubzero 6y agoMy Brother was in China in November and got pretty sick with back to back to back colds/flu like bugs, I also was very sick for late Nov. - late December, didn't have a fever but had a hard time breathing than normal for a cold/flu, I asked my Doctor and a friend at Stanford and both of them said the antibody tests they have are not accurate. I really want piece of mind if I had covid-19 but am still waiting for a decent antibody test.
- jupp0r 6y agoFor your situation, existing antibody tests are fine. They are not accurate enough to do mass testing to find out how prevalent SARS2 is in the population. This is because the base rate in the population is pretty low. If you are reasonably sure that you've had it, a false negative/false positive for you is still pretty unlikely (in the 5% order of magnitude range for lateral flow antibody tests, better for ELISA lab tests).
- mellosouls 6y agoThis is very interesting but the date significantly precedes my (layman's!) understanding of TMRCA estimations of mid November (earliest cases examining the existing genetic evidence and extrapolating backwards through genetic drift calculations). How do the scientists here account for the disagreement - beyond the fact they are using completely different methods? Alternatively, I'd be interested in somebody explaining why my understanding of the TMRCA is incorrect - like I said, its not my field.
- akaryocyte 6y ago*TMRCA (Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor)
- mellosouls 6y agoThanks, corrected. I must have typed that two different ways several times in the last 20 minutes...
- pstrateman 6y agoTMRCA relies on accurate information about when specific strains were identified. There is ample reason to believe Chinese authorities lied about when they observed specific strains.
- ImaCake 6y agoCan you provide some evidence to back up your claim here? The TMRCA calculations would have ample information to provide a statistically accurate date without a single Chinese genome at this point. Those early Chinese genomes merely act as a validation that the genetic clock is "ticking" how the model(s) estimates that it did.
- MiroF 6y agoJust rampant misinformation in this thread - a mid-November start date is still by far the most probably and you are pretty much guaranteed to have had some other disease than SARS-Cov-2 in October 2019.
- jialutu 6y agoHere is the thing, I've been reading more and more about the spread of COVID-19 started in Wuhan due to the military games in October 2019: https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/coronavirus-france-fears-virus-may-have-spread-in-october-after-military-games-in-wuhan/news-story/b55680fc3b6a11b8c258317d3454961b https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/coronavirus... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327047/More-competitors-reveal-ill-World-Military-Games.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327047/More-compet... If the illness there was COVID-19, with delegates from over 100 countries at the military games, the origin of the virus then is still very much unknown! China being the first country to detect the virus and report on it, while being demonised, makes a really bad precedence for countries to not be the first country to report on a new outbreak in the future.
- pstrateman 6y agoAbsolutely nothing in either of those articles indicates the virus originated anywhere but China. That it was circulating in Wuhan in October widely enough for contagion at military games suggests strongly that it's origin is in fact China.
- jialutu 6y agoHow does it strongly suggest the origin is in China? The disease was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, where many countries (especially European ones) are starting to find that their first cases were in December 2019 (if not earlier) as well. Once again, this is really stating my point that China detected COVID-19 sooner than everyone else, and hence demonised by it, setting an incredibly bad precedence for future outbreaks!
- jvm_ 6y agoThe Spanish flu is called the Spanish flu because all the other countries refused to report on it, so all the news of this new disease came from Spain, hence the name. Sounds like a similar thing might have happened here.
- beefok 6y agoIt's unfortunate that we as a species cannot prioritize the health of the whole over preoccupied defensive posturing in order to hide all weaknesses. Like a decayed tooth that's just a shell of its former self...
- baybal2 6y agoThe smoking gun there is the search volume for word SARS has reappeared in Chinese search engines in August-September, and exploded in November. I believe the quiet whispers of SARS return in autumn last years have been largely validated. You can even check google.com that is blocked in China. Two regions light up: Hubei, and Beijing. Another artefact is Chongqing/Sichuan, which also had an early flare up, and severe lockdown. I hears of an opinion that it may have actually started there, and Wuhan only turned to prominence because it being a transport hub, and a more rich city in general. https://ibb.co/tcp2ZNx https://ibb.co/tcp2ZNx https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2019-07-01%202019-12-29&geo=CN&q=cough,covid%20cough,fever,sars https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2019-07-01%202... So, this also kind of gives more reason to look at rumors of mass exodus of officials during the winter months in China.
- user_50123890 6y agoEhh.. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-07-01%202019-12-29&geo=CN&q=sars https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-07-01%202... Seems that people only started searching SARS in december by which the new coronavirus was already public knowledge or at least public rumor
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- owl57 6y agoIf you zoom in, "December" here mostly means 12/31, the exact day the virus appeared in public news: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2019-12-09%202020-01-09&geo=CN&q=sars https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2019-12-09%202...
- xenonite 6y agoAccording to google trends, it started only after Dec 29 2019. Before that, there seems to be no particular interest, not more than usual.
- 6y ago
- adventured 6y agoThe US Government already knew the virus originated earlier than China admits. During one of the early live briefings on the virus, Trump spouted off about the virus coming out of China maybe as early as late September. The press mocked him for getting the timeline wrong by several months. He wasn't confusing the timeline, he was leaking inside information from US spy agencies, their estimates on its origin date (which he obviously would have seen).
- Johnjonjoan 6y agoI've noticed he does this often. He leaves it completely open ended so there's plenty of criticism and then reaps the rewards. His supporters see him demonised by the establishment only to be proven right. Edit: by does this often I mean leaking inside information
- pnako 6y agoIt works because his opposition is still somehow convinced he's just "Trump", some rambling mad man who found his way into the white house, and not the POTUS, commander-in-chief, with access to intelligence.
- javagram 6y agoTrump’s own employees leak to the media regularly that Trump doesn’t read the intelligence briefings and can only focus on pictures and very short briefings. https://www.axios.com/trump-doesnt-read-his-presidential-briefings-report-1518192747-64a340a0-83dc-43ab-a749-391b48af475e.html https://www.axios.com/trump-doesnt-read-his-presidential-bri... > President Trump does not read the President’s Daily Brief, a document outlining the most important information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies around the world, reports the Washington Post. Unlike his predecessors, Trump instead asks for oral briefings on only certain intel issues. > > Why this isn't surprising: Since Trump took office, it has often been reported that he has a short attention span and prefers oral briefings and visual presentations over written documents and memos. Shortly after the inauguration, Trump told Axios himself, "I like bullets or I like as little as possible." While he does sometimes speak based on internal information, his tweets and public statements are often based on his favorite Fox News TV shows and tweets he sees on his phone from his supporters.
- ceedan 6y agoLink to a prior post of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23074528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23074528 China reports infectious disease counts and deaths each month. The numbers from December '19 were insane compared to '18
- simonh 6y agoExcept that we already know that the strain of flu around this winter was particularly bad, much worse than recent years, so a jump in deaths like that is actually not surprising. After all the number is about 700k even in a typical year. This could also help explain the hospital traffic data. I just don’t buy it. If Covid-19 was in wide circulation, affecting hundreds of thousands of people as early as September and October, how come it wasn’t all over China? Or the rest of the world for that matter. What was keeping it in Wuhan? There’s no way it could have grown within the wuhan population, to affect that many people that early, without it being propagated all over the place. People just travel too much these days in China.
- nraynaud 6y agoThere seem to be at least one case older than Wuhan. The new trend is just to consider the market has a spreading place, not precisely the source.
- ImaCake 6y agoWe also know that China is willing and able to lock down whole swathes of the country to prevent viral spread. If it appeared earlier on the scale of what happened in Wuhan, and local politicians didn't fuck up, the Party would have locked down wherever that was.
- Melting_Harps 6y ago> We also know that China is willing and able to lock down whole swathes of the country to prevent viral spread. They may have boarded up Wuhan, only after dissapearing journalists and citizens showing the severity of it as the CCP lied about its transmission, but the rest of the Mainland were free to rush into Hong Kong despite local opposition and Medical workers warning of spreading the virus. They overwhelmed the medical system and on were recorded on social media platforms sneezing and coughing directly into often touched areas in public spaces. It is seriously not hyperbole that the CCP should face Crimes Against Humanity for biological warfare.
- xorfish 6y agoWouldn't there be higher genetic diversity of the virus if this were the case? There doesn't seem to be any real evidence for this theory in the genetic data we have.
- lbeltrame 6y agoThe current phylogenetic data go as far as October as the farthest estimate, as far as I can see.
- xorfish 6y agoSeems like 28-Oct-2019 was the early limit of the confidence interval. https://virological.org/t/phylodynamic-analysis-176-genomes-6-mar-2020/356 https://virological.org/t/phylodynamic-analysis-176-genomes-...
- lbeltrame 6y agoThere's a recent paper that analyzed about 7,000 sequences of known isolates and tried to give an estimate, whose lower limit is close to that date, IIRC.
- woofie11 6y agoNot really. (1) Genetic diversity increases with both time and size of the infected population. You'll get a lot more diversity if it's mutating in 4 million individuals than in 4000. (2) For a virus this young especially, genetic diversity is not at all precise measures.
- MiroF 6y agoThis is not responsive to the parent at all.
- xorfish 6y agoI'm taking about genetic diversity over time. From there you can extrapolate back to when to common ancestor existed. To within a limited number of generations. This calculation shows this common ancestor existed between mid November to December.
- y-c-o-m-b 6y agoThere's also the "mystery respiratory illness" that was never identified in July 2019 which could potentially point to an even earlier start. Does anyone know if they've looked into it being related? https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/health-officials-to-give-update-after-respiratory-illness-sickens-dozens-at-virginia-retirement-community/135890/ https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/health-officials-to... > Three people have also died, but Dr. Benjamin Schwartz of the Fairfax County Health Department said Wednesday afternoon that those who died were "older" and had complex health problems. Officials don't yet know the extent to which the respiratory illness contributed to their deaths, he said.
- drran 6y agoIt's one of thousands mystery respiratory illnesses caused by a virus/bacteria/fungus/chemicals/bad food/bad water/bad air.
- Munky-Necan 6y agoCulture negative pneumonia is a relatively common phenomena. It's also quite difficult to get adequate sputum cultures, but in this case where n=60 I'm skeptical that was the issue. There could be a lot of potential causes for this, but COVID is low on the differential. I want to say that spillover events, or a virus jumping from X host to humans, happens all the time. COVID became a pandemic because human to human transmission was possible from genetic mutation. Usually with spillover events humans are a dead end host and the person infected will be an n=1.
- arkades 6y ago> It's also quite difficult to get adequate sputum cultures Heck yes. PNA cx will come back negative a good 2/3 of the time. Doesn't mean an awful lot.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jimbob45 6y agoWe are separated from the schizos by acknowledging that this is just a theory, no matter how bad the circumstances may look. The schizo will take this theory as hard proof that China knew of the virus early. You and I will wait for hard evidence before we pass judgment, even if we privately believe that these circumstances are conclusive evidence.
- anon84598 6y ago"schizo" seems like a pretty rough term here -- makes sense if you replace it with "conspiracy theorist"
- dfryer 6y agoCould you use a term like "conspiracy theorist" instead of "schizo" here? There are probably plenty of people who have schizophrenia and don't subscribe to conspiracy theories.
- catalogia 6y agoThere must be a better term for this than "conspiracy theorist". If you believe the official 9/11 Commission report, as I generally do, that qualifies you as believing a conspiracy theory in any intellectually honest meaning of the term (a theory about a conspiracy.) The term seems to have entered the general public's lexicon in the aftermath of the Warren Commission report, which was decidedly not a theory about a conspiracy (it asserted that Oswald was a lone wolf, who didn't conspire with anybody.) Disagreeing with that meant you had a theory about Oswald or others conspiring; a literal conspiracy theory. But since then, the term "conspiracy theory" seems to be leveled against anybody who disputes an 'official' narrative, regardless of which side (if either) is putting forth a theory that involves conspiring. All theories about 9/11 are conspiracy theories (unless you can find anybody who seriously believes that all four plane incidents were perpetrated by lone wolves who, by pure coincidence, all chose the same date and methods.) As the term is commonly [mis]used today, it may as well mean "unpopular theory."
- pier25 6y ago> a theory More like a hypothesis.
- knolax 6y ago> While queries of the respiratory symptom “cough” show seasonal fluctuations coinciding with yearly influenza seasons, “diarrhea” is a more COVID-19 specific symptom and only shows an association with the current epidemic. Since when is diarrhea a COVID-19 specific symptom? Using Baye's the probability of Covid-19 given diarrhea is: prevalence of covid in general pop (medium low) * probability of diarrhea given Covid-19 (very low, given we only recently found out this was a symptom at all) / prevalence of diarrhea in general pop (the prevalence of diarrhea in general is definitely higher than Covid-19). Which lends to a very small probability. Pre-print publications like this based off of shaky data should be taken with a large handful of salt.
- zachguo 6y agoA few issues with the methodology. - only 6 small hospitals were included, and far away from the wet market - Baidu Search Index doesn't match what they claim https://imgur.com/a/UkcUZou https://imgur.com/a/UkcUZou - No test for statistical significance, really? COVID-like mysterious pneumonia was not that hard to detect, the hospital would be alerted once doctors and nurses got infected.
- djsumdog 6y agoYou mean SARS-CoV2, that's the virus. How would they be able to detect it? Would they even know what they were looking for? Would CoV2 trigger the same tests as SARS1 (for non-PCR tests)?
- zachguo 6y agoHospitals are obligated to report to the CDC once they discover pneumonia caused by an unknown virus that can transmit from human to human. SARS or COVID is just a name scientists gave to the sequenced virus.
- objektif 6y agoIf you don't know then you don't have to report. I don't think initially they knew that human to human transmission was possible.
- theli0nheart 6y agoThis is a nit, but SARS and COVID aren't the names of the respective viral agents; they're the names for the diseases that the viruses cause. The virus that causes SARS is called SARS-CoV, and the virus that causes COVID-19 is SARS-CoV-2
- grezql 6y agoThis guy is paid troll. Check his posting history
- 6y ago
- hsnewman 6y agoCorrelation does not imply causation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...)
- jcahill 6y agoThis paper is a trainwreck. Could be a case of scientific fraud. Gist of this paper: The authors look for circumstantial evidence of community transmission of COVID-19 within Wuhan for dates substantially prior to the seafood market outbreak. They do this by attempting to triangulate* web search volume data with satellite mapping of Wuhan hospital parking lots. *suggestively gesture back and forth between In the parking lots, they're looking for more vehicles than expected based on prior years' imagery. In the web search trends, they're looking for "disease signals". Specifically, they're looking at two terms: a symptom of sufficient specificity to be useful for differential diagnosis of COVID-19 vs. influenza ("diarrhea"), and a more generic term representing influenza-like illness ("cough"). Here's the teardown: 1. "We developed a comprehensive list of hospitals in Wuhan (using Google Maps, Wikipedia and PubMed)." List not provided. 2. Search terms are given in English even though they were actually input in Mandarin. You can verify this by trying to search the English terms yourself. By process of elimination and the shape of their graphs, the terms had to have been: "cough" → 咳嗽 "diarrhea" → 腹泻 Live link below. Requires signup. Make sure to select Hubei → Wuhan (湖北 → 武汉). http://index.baidu.com/v2/main/index.html#/trend/咳嗽?words=咳嗽,腹泻 http://index.baidu.com/v2/main/index.html#/trend/咳嗽?words=咳嗽... 3. "We extracted the relative search volumes of the terms “cough” and “diarrhea” using WebPlotDigitizer, v4.215." What? The values are provided on tooltip hover. This data is written into the page. You can just pull the real data out of the html. Based on a cursory glance at WebPlotDigitizer, the vague method quote above appears to be tantamount to saying "we made up the data from screenshots". 4. They're looking at seasonal trends. This is clearly visible from basic inspection. This is not interesting. 5. Their Relative Search Volume scale doesn't agree with Baidu. Their numbers are wrong. Just look at Figure 2b's y-axis. https://files.catbox.moe/v05oss.png https://files.catbox.moe/v05oss.png Maxima: It shouldn't go to 600. The actual values peak on Baidu at 711. Minima: None of their data should be plotting near 0. The minimum volume in their date range is 76. 6. The uptick for "diarrhea" (腹泻) that they claim exists doesn't. Again, this is Figure 2b. The red line is the problem here. This appears to be deliberate fabrication. No competent researcher can miss the discrepancy between what this graph depicts and what the source depicts. 咳嗽 ("cough" / blue line on harvard preprint) was following a completely normal-looking seasonal cycle during the period under discussion. 腹泻 ("diarrhea" / red line on harvard preprint) was, again, following a completely normal-looking seasonal cycle, with a slightly elevated baseline. The red line is mis-plotted to trend up in a sudden surge right where the researchers would need this to occur for their argument to hold any value at all. Then, rather than declining substantially prior to the January 2020 cluster, this plot depicts the trend holding through to 2020. This information is simply false. That's not what Baidu reports. Here's a side-by-side of the discrepancy: https://files.catbox.moe/5s6i7o.png https://files.catbox.moe/5s6i7o.png Here's a superimposed version, for charitable reading of Figure 2b. I've stretched it to fit. Red should overlay green. https://files.catbox.moe/eubuci.png https://files.catbox.moe/eubuci.png 7. Screw the sat mapping, frankly. If you can't be trusted to screenshot a graph without us having to arrive at this point, there's no point even assessing the content of your claims about something orders of magnitude more complex. The sat mapping doesn't constitute evidence so much as it constitutes having paid for the visuals needed to launder this preprint into mainstream news. The only thing that can currently be done with this information is a data dump for other researchers to use. 8. Proofread your paper. 2019 → 2020 below: > Both search query terms show a large increase approximately 3 weeks preceding the large spike of confirmed COVID-19 cases in early 2019 (Figure 2, c, purple). There is a large decrease in hospital volume and search query data following the public health lockdown of Wuhan on January 23, 2019 (Figure 2, third annotation). 9. No stats anywhere. Can't do time series analysis without math. Spinning a yarn / telling a just-so story shouldn't be the level of reporting expected of academics in this context. 10. No attempt to build a keyword list or other reference information of continuing utility. So the analysis dies with this one paper, essentially. There's nowhere to go from here.
- lolc 6y agoThey include an arbitrary choice of parameters from very noisy sources over a really short timespan to find "an upward trend". Looks like a fishing expedition to me.
- tonetheman 6y agoI caught a flu on Dec 23rd. Tested negative for A/B. Continued to have it. Went back in January still with the flu. Tested negative again for A/B and still had effects from it past Jan 20th. I felt like I was dying and my lungs were full of really bad stuff. Around the time I would have showed antibodies you could not get a test in the US. Needless to say, I believe the virus was around before it had been noticed. That time frame of late Dec is normal flu season. Many people could have been walking around with covid and no one would have noticed.
- ngcc_hk 6y agoThe key is to have open data and not let Chinese to have world data whilst they close theirs for themselves or not used it for fear of political consequences. Close an area and let china choose to do it or not is not the human right answer. You need to force them to join the world in a meaningful way. We cannot study photos or things like that like study Soviet Union politics.
- redis_mlc 6y agoMost of the posts in this thread are noise. Here is the established timeline so far: Nov. 17 - earliest reported dates involving corona in China, reported by US disease experts Dec. 1 - first reported Wuhan hospitalization confirmed to be corona Dec. 15 - first date of non-Chinese people I know who became sick with a contagious flu in Shanghai with the same symptoms as corona Jan. 15-19 - first US confirmed case in Washington State Jan. 23 - Chinese internal travel ban Jan. 24 - Disney closes Shanghai theme park. Jan. 31 - Trump's travel ban on Chinese flights. So the window of interest is international travel from Dec. 1 to Jan. 15 - certainly SFO and LAX were flooded with corona - a large part of the 100,000 pax per week arriving in the USA from China. The hospital parking lot data is significant because China destroyed Wuhan Corona Lab data, and denied there was an epidemic. They will never admit to the coverup publicly except under extreme duress from Trump because they want to protect their dictatorship (Chinese rulers historically seek internal credibility, even when they don't technically need it in the short term.) If Xi has to choose between a total trade embargo (or seizure of all Chinese assets outside the country as reparations for deliberately infecting 200+ countries) and admitting the corona coverup, he will choose the latter: he will admit it outside China, and censor it internally. Note that HNers erroneously focus on post-Jan. dates, when corona spread internationally months before. First Confirmed US Hospital Case in Washington State https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191 For those new to the above data, Dr. Victor Davis Hanson is in agreement, so check out his Youtube lecture videos. Search for "Victor Davis Hanson covid-19".
- __m 6y agoSo there was an international coverup?
- redis_mlc 6y agoI assume you're trolling, but I'll address your question anyway. It's undeniable that there is a Chinese and WHO coverup. It's ongoing, with Australia receiving trade sanctions after they requested corona data from China. It's to be seen if there's a coverup between China and the US over the Wuhan Corona Lab, which received funding from the US because of containment lapses. (Video from there shows lab technicians sitting around tables with syringes, etc. wearing no protective gear. So I have to wonder where that money went.) The fact that clinical trials for the human version of the SARS-1 vaccine were never completed in 2003/2004 is absurd. (I don't know of any corona vaccines for sars or mers, although CNN had some article about "running out of a covid-19 vaccine" last week, which is not searchable today.) The international media hasn't been diligent on reporting how early corona (SARS-2/covid-19) spread outside China, which is certainly 2019. This is important because the earlier the models start at, the lower the fatality rate calculation result is. In other words, the lockdown in May/June doesn't make sense with a start date of Dec./Jan. New York is open, yet California, which has had flat corona hospital dashboard stats for months, is still on lockdown because Newsom plans a White House run. So there are multiple levels of government and press coverups, similar to a Russian doll. Does that answer your question? I think the reason that my analysis is at odds with HN readers is that my focus is on mortality and policy, and HNers are focused on individual outcomes and the press cycle. (Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, the US' leading historian, is also a policy guy, and we don't disagree on anything.) If you want to view more about the details about the effects of moving the goalposts on the initial date of corona infection: The Failure of Expert Predictions and Models | The Coronavirus and Public Policy (Apr. 30, Hillsdale College) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG2vdyfLv7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG2vdyfLv7U
- danielovichdk 6y agoWithout being emotional and having any sources to back me up, I just believe this virus has been around for a little bit longer than we have initial been told. It seems reasonable taking into consideration that a lot of countries has had a slow infection curve. But no matter how you spin this, IMO, the chineese is the source of this mess. And frankly it doesn't matter when it happened. It happened.
- blackrock 6y agoI saw this on the national evening news today, and was flabbergasted at its insinuation. The immediate thing that baffled me was why they thought, a year-over-year count of cars in a hospital parking lot, was an indication of an early coronavirus outbreaks, which again, China was concealing from the world. The news report only said they analyzed 1 year. Did they do it over several months? Or did they do it over 60 months, which might be a better sampling over time. Who knows. But that evidence is rather circumstantial. Did they also consider that Wuhan doesn’t have as many local clinics, so when someone gets sick, they all go to the same central hospitals, for everything. This is also what added to the problems in Wuhan with the initial outbreak. Then, regarding the increases in search queries for diarrhea and cough, two symptoms of the virus. But I’m sure searches for coughs go up annually during flu season anyways. I don’t think internet searches from random people over the internet, is a very good signal for anything, and may just be adding noise to the data anyways.
- javagram 6y agoThis just seems so bogus. Suggesting the virus was circulating in China as early as August but was being covered up? It’s the 21st century. There were many direct flights between Wuhan and the United States every day, as well as with other countries. If the virus were circulating in august that would have given it months to spread to the USA. We know from antibody studies and the lack of deaths that didn’t happen - the virus didn’t spread widely until 2020. Vietnam has a population of 100 million and a land border with China. They activated their pandemic response in January and have had ZERO coronavirus deaths. Taiwan, again, activated their response on December 31, 2019, and has had only 7 deaths from COVID-19. These numbers are impossible to square with the idea that COVID-19 was in wide circulation in the Chinese population in August or September. Therefore the idea that it was circulating in human-to-human transmission in China as early as 4 months before 2020 just can’t make sense. This seems like science in service of politics or publicity - it’s already being breathlessly used as proof that China somehow covered up the virus for months as an attack on western civilization (again, this doesn’t make sense - when Wuhan actually did come under heavy threat from the virus, social media posts and videos did leak out to us in January).
- bbarn 6y agoGiven the lengthy incubation time, and lack of symptoms in many, it could certainly have taken months to be indistinguishable from any other virus. The first few generations of infected people would likely have been handfuls.
- krona 6y agoIt's not unlikely, in fact it's expected. The hypothesis of a virus circulating in August which eventually evolved into what is now SARS-CoV-2 is probably likely (and surely more convenient), rather than the alternative hypothesis of a virus suddenly emerging perfectly adapted to humans and human-human transmission close to a laboratory that studies and specialises in such viruses.
- legulere 6y agoMost infected people infect zero other people. A lot of infections can happen that don’t manage to spread far. There were cases in France in December without connection to China: https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europe-52526554 https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-europ... and suspected cases in November: https://www.google.de/amp/s/amp.rfi.fr/en/france/20200520-scans-show-french-patients-were-sick-with-covid-19-in-mid-november-doctors-say-colmar-haut-rhin https://www.google.de/amp/s/amp.rfi.fr/en/france/20200520-sc...
- __m 6y agoThey deprived us of 4 month of corona parties and inaction
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hbarka 6y agoRegarding the year-over-year comparison of cars in parking lots, have these researchers considered that perhaps car ownership is just growing that fast[1] in China? A highly contagious disease would hardly be not noticed during a time of free travel. You could also do the reverse math knowing what we know about its R-naught. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311910366_Cities_of_the_Future_What_Should_Be_Their_Form#pf6 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311910366_Cities_of...
- yurlungur 6y agoSorry but the methodology just sounds laughably stupid on its face. It would baffle me if this kind of analysis would meet the bar to identify any kind of epidemic, let alone a novel and possibly evolving virus. Not to accuse the authors of anything, but I think the level of bias and wishful thinking in some public and political realm, when it comes to the origin of this virus, is bordering on hysteria. Does anyone still remember the evidence that Trump and Pompeo were seeing about the lab leak theory? Why is there no update coming from any "intelligence" source? I think the fact of the matter is, the origin question won't be scientifically and satisfactorily answered until at least a few years from now, and only with teams of international scientists. In any case, it would be impossible to achieve that in such a politically charged environment.
- sriram_sun 6y agoThere was a sizeable group of folks visiting from Wuhan in CES. Several folks I know fell ill after the event. I've been trying to figure out if CES magnified it, but there is very little information available on this.
- accurrent 6y agoIts saddening to see the way we are responding to this pandemic. I understand that finding the source of the pandemic is important, however it seems like we are highly politicizing a world wide problem and trying to blame each other for cover ups. If the pandemic started in august and given the rate of transmission we are seeing world wide, we should have had a ridiculous spike in the number of deaths by now. Furthermore, there are many international flights coming out of Wu Han, the rest of the world should have detected the virus earlier then. The fact is none of us were prepared and we were all too complacent about things. Towards the end of February I made a trip from Singapore to Seattle. At the time the virus was peaking in China. I recall that the flight was extremely empty and already most countries in Asia had begun temperature screening at airports and started conducting quarantines. On the other hand as I walked through the immigration and customs in US there was not even the slightest trace of preparation for the virus. Not once was I asked "did you travel to China?" and for a country with such a large expenditure on defense I cannot see how much it would cost to place thermal cameras at the customs exit. In all honesty I would love to see a study done on how this virus came to be but this study should be conducted on a purely scientific stand point. In fact it'd be best if we took politics out of the picture and ask - what was the chain of transmission from its original animal source? - what type of mutations took place? - how in future can we come up with a robust international/interspecies virus surveillance program such that we can flag animal viruses which are likely to mutate to infect humans? As of now all I can see is that both US and China are misbehaving and taking shots at one another. Our global supply chains have come to a halt. There are countries like US and India which overproduced food yet out of fear of lack of food these countries have halted export causing problems for other countries dependent on them for food. Yet, farmers in these countries are having to throw away crop because they cant sell there produce domestically. As a human race can we really stoop any lower?
- RIMR 6y agoSeems like virus activity is going on all the time even without Coronavirus. Did the data indicate that virus activity in Fall 2019 was in excess of what would be expected from observing other years? This seems like low-value data that doesn't mean anything by itself.
- GoodJokes 6y agoHonestly, who the f cares. Stop looking for blame