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This 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 dir

This 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 ago
Given 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 ago
It'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 ago
Most 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...
TomK32 6y ago
We now know that only a small percentage, maybe single-digit, of infected are responsible for super spreading events. The vast majority infect just one other person. Prof Drosten explained a simplified estimate for this: 1 infects another until the 10th who just by chance infects not 1 but 10. To expand a little with my basic math skills: There's five, maybe seven days between all those infections and it takes months to snowball into a noticeable epidemic. 10 hops to 10 infections, another 7 to 100 active infections, it probably takes three months just to reach 100, a fourth month for 1000 from which point it should get noticed even in a million people city. Secondly most people are infections for just a week, those with mild symptoms might be even less: Without coughing, singing or shouting (e.g. sport event) the chances drops even further. Thirdly: The weather. The warmer it is the more often we open the office window for fresh air, we spend more time outside and are less likely to get into close contact for long enough to spread the virus. For me August as a start of the local epidemic, even earlier for the initial animal-human transmission sounds very plausible.
- mvc 6y ago
  > even in a million people city Wuhan's population is an order of magnitude bigger than that.
cycomanic 6y ago
There is evidence that there was already community spread in France in November [1]. Note that the article there also mentioned a study that a case (without connection to China) in France was detected in late December. So there is significant evidence that COVID19 was spreading worldwide at least in December. [1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3083599/france-had-covid-19-november-hospital-says-after-analysis-chest https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3083599/fran...
autokad 6y ago
I was looking up "coronavirus" on google trends. What I saw was a flat 0 except for a blip in late august, and a score of 100 on September 21, 2019 coming from Hubei Province specifically. Those results remained the same for over a month until I posted the above in a hacker news comment. Then I was down voted heavily and the results suddenly changed. I do have a picture of it, because I wanted to share the results with my friend and they dont use social media, so I forwarded a picture. while I agree with the hacker news downvoters (the downvote, hate, hate, unsubscribe, rage, rage, you must be stupid crowd) that this doesn't prove anything, it is certainly part of the evidence building up.
- jansan 6y ago
  In this Google trends chart, which unfortunately has no data before January 2020, Coronavirus was not a thing until Mid of January: https://www.regenhealthsolutions.info/2020/03/21/google-launches-covid-19-information-resources-website/ https://www.regenhealthsolutions.info/2020/03/21/google-laun...
- sampo 6y ago
  Here's an article about this: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/long-fuse-big-bang/202005/mysterious-blips-raise-questions-about-covid-19-timeline https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/long-fuse-big-bang/2...
  - jchiu1106 6y ago
    Can someone enlighten me: with Google being blocked in China, how the heck does one search the term in Wuhan and had it being recorded by Google? I know people in China can use VPN to search Google, but the recorded IP would be the exit node of the VPN wouldn't it?
- fsh 6y ago
  Why would people from Wuhan (who speak Chinese) search for "Coronavirus" in English on Google (which is blocked in China)?
  - 6y ago
Knuthtruth 6y ago
Do you ever get tired of listening to this rhetoric all over the Internet. It is so obvious they hid the pandemic within their country. They didn't lockdown in time or prevent flights to other countries. It is also coming out as suspected that the WHO was in cahoots with China over misrepresenting the actual state of affairs. A simple search tells you how China has used this time to advance militarily across the South China Sea and other neighboring countries. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/05/china-hong-kong-pandemic-autonomy-law-aggression/611983/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/05/ch... https://m.hindustantimes.com/india-news/troop-movements-halt-at-4-ladakh-standoff-points-but-defences-are-up-deep-inside/story-OfoihTqPa6GqMINcgaMLUO.html https://m.hindustantimes.com/india-news/troop-movements-halt... Add to all this the anecdotes from several people on the Internet including several in this very thread that seem to suggest the starting of a viral spread as early as July. There are literally hundreds of articles, social media posts and anecdotes that indicate this has started as suggested around the August-november timeline last year. This is not racial bias at play, even though there is no dearth of that on the Internet. But calling it bogus and slandering factual content based on personal bias and opinion is not the way to get to the truth.
- Bjartr 6y ago
  So, assuming all that is true, why did the virus not spread worldwide earlier? That's the crux of what that person you're responding to was taking about. Can you share something from your knowledge of articles, posts, and anecdotes that provides some clarity on that question?
  - plafl 6y ago
    An analysis of sewer water has detected the virus as early as 15th of January in Barcelona. See for example (in Spanish) https://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20200607/481654145204/detectados-restos-coronavirus-covid19-aguas-residuales-barcelona-enero.html https://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20200607/481654...
  - iKevinShah 6y ago
    Here's a suggestion and no scientific evidence backing this. The virus might have spread worldwide earlier. There might have been deaths due to it earlier too. There was no way of knowing it until Jan 2020. No testing. Nothing. Also the fact that this virus affects people with existing conditions, there's a very good chance that initial deaths / patient 0 / index patient might have been tagged as dead under their respective conditions. As far as the symptoms go, there's no 'unique' symptom so that might have led to people saying that their coughing is due to cold or whatever.
blago 6y ago
I would also point out that Thailand received 11M Chinese tourists in 2019. It's reasonable to assume that a good chunk of those came in the second half of the year, and hundreds of thousands were plausibly from the Hubei Province. Yet they recorded their first case in January.
missosoup 6y ago
> Suggesting the virus was circulating in China as early as August but was being covered up? It's a well established fact that the existence of the virus was initially being covered up and local doctors trying to raise the alarm were being silenced. Even mainland Chinese know this (and are angry with the authorities). One of those doctors was Li Wenliang who has become somewhat of a national hero after his death to covid[1]. Him and dozens of others were given a very stern warning to stop talking about the possibility of a new disease outbreak in the weeks prior to covid becoming official when overwhelming evidence made it no longer possible to sweep under the rug. The only angle here is that the time when the outbreak began is earlier than thought. This isn't even related to the notion of any coverup. It could have been circulating for months in low volumes without anyone really paying attention. Until the outbreak reaches critical mass, all you'll get is micro clusters which appear and disappear without really blowing up - as we're now seeing in countries that got their first wave under control. The fact that people here still think that the initial coverup is some sort of conspiracy theory, when it's common knowledge even in China, is a bit mind blowing. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/chinese-inquiry-exonerates-coronavirus-whistleblower-doctor-li-wenliang https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/chinese-inquir...
- xster 6y ago
  I call this intelligentsia-baiting. Where one needs to educate others parroting insights(/memes) from coastal-elite-marking editorials without reading primary sources. Li Wenliang was neither a whistleblower nor did he have any first-hand novel data to share. He, an ophthalmologist, received a private group message within the hospital from ER department director and he simply re-shared the message to other private groups with his classmates. The ER director, Ai Fen, was the source of the hypothesis that some patients in the hospital had, incorrectly, SARS and she was the right channel to escalate in the first place. And her escalation was successful when 1 nurse was observed to have been infected on January 11th. Li never intended to broadcast anything to the public. What he did privately share was far less detailed than was on the official Wuhan government site [1], the Hubei provincial site [2] and just general mainstream social media [3] from the same date anyway. [1] http://archive.is/s9elD http://archive.is/s9elD [2] http://wjw.hubei.gov.cn/fbjd/dtyw/201912/t20191231_1822343.shtml http://wjw.hubei.gov.cn/fbjd/dtyw/201912/t20191231_1822343.s... [3] https://finance.sina.cn/chanjing/gdxw/2019-12-31/detail-iihnzhfz9452319.d.html?from=wap https://finance.sina.cn/chanjing/gdxw/2019-12-31/detail-iihn...
hmwhy 6y ago
Not trying to prove you wrong, but I really don't think anyone has enough facts to claim either way confidently. I don't necessarily agree with all of the data presented, but I think your response to it is emotional and unwarranted—the authors haven't said anything about cover up as far as I can tell. Also, I think just because it's circulating doesn't necessarily mean that there is a good chance of it being brought to other countries. If it really started off in a wet market, I can imagine that the people who are most susceptible to catching the virus initially are not those who can afford/have the opportunity to travel. If I'm not mistaken, August is about when people return from summer holiday, and there aren't really holidays until Chinese New Year. There a week of holiday in October for National Day, but people typically travel back to their home town instead of overseas. It feels possible that the virus could be limited to just transmission within China for a while, which gets spread with every festival between August and late December/January, eventually reaches a critical mass and spread to the rest of the world with people travelling due to Chinese New Year in early 2020. I honestly don't think I'm right, and you probably spotted logical flaws in the example I have given above. I just want to point out that the problem is extremely complex, and even the facts that you have pointed out are only a small part of the whole picture that just happen to support your views and arguments.
- dannyw 6y ago
  A highly contagious disease like COVID19 simply can’t only spread to people who don’t travel. The timeline of this disease being spread from August 2019 is incompatible with a lot of what we empirically know about the virus, and should be treated as wrong.
fingerlocks 6y ago
Anecdata, an old relative of mine died of pneumonia earlier this year. My relative did not test positive for influenza despite having flu like symptoms for two weeks prior. The local hospital’s ICU was overwhelmed with patients having the same symptoms. This was in January. COVID was not on the local radar. But this was in a senior citizen community town, so overwhelmed hospitals aren’t really newsworthy. And I personally only entertain the idea it was COVID-19, but it doesn’t make sense because the dates are all wrong. Then articles like this make me wonder, what if it swept by undetected? Were the most vulnerable communities already hit and we didn’t notice? Could that happen?
- cryptonym 6y ago
  Athletes from military world games (Wuhan - October 2019) claim they contracted COVID, spreading the virus when they went back home.
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    A group of Athletes from Sweden suspected they did, as several had symptoms after returning. However, they now all tested negative. If they had tested positive now, that would have been big news.
    - mikemotherwell 6y ago
      For antibodies or the disease?
      - alkonaut 6y ago
        Antibodies. The test was months later so the chance of finding something in PCR would be small.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- javagram 6y ago
  CDC tracks pneumonia deaths across the entire United States through two separate systems. It couldn’t sweep by undetected. When we actually got hit by coronavirus hard, alarms starting blaring immediately both in local health department stats and in CDC FluView which tracks “influenza-like illnesses” and pneumonia mortality. 1. CDC FluView data - the coronavirus outbreak in the United States is clearly visible as an historically large spike of pneumonia mortality. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm 2. New York city’s own surveillance system “ While only about 100 cases of the coronavirus had been confirmed in the whole state, the city’s surveillance system was, by the end of the first week in March, signaling a spike in influenza-like illnesses at emergency rooms. A few days later, the number of police officers calling out sick jumped noticeably, as did calls to 911 for fever and cough.“ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-response-delays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/new-york-coronav...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
acqq 6y ago
Quoting a professor of Computational Systems Biology at University College London about the OP paper, it's: "most implausible. The analysis of genomic data consistently and robustly points to the ancestor of SARSCoV2 (i.e. the host jump into humans) dating back to around November 2019, see e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134820301829 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S156713482... " (The quote is from here: https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1270294906788098049 https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/12702949067880980... ) Around november as the earliest month also matches the speed of spread of the virus, which we were able to observe and track all around the world. With that speed, August or September aren't plausible too.

bbarn 6y ago

Given 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 ago

It'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 ago

Most 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...

TomK32 6y ago

We now know that only a small percentage, maybe single-digit, of infected are responsible for super spreading events. The vast majority infect just one other person. Prof Drosten explained a simplified estimate for this: 1 infects another until the 10th who just by chance infects not 1 but 10. To expand a little with my basic math skills: There's five, maybe seven days between all those infections and it takes months to snowball into a noticeable epidemic. 10 hops to 10 infections, another 7 to 100 active infections, it probably takes three months just to reach 100, a fourth month for 1000 from which point it should get noticed even in a million people city. Secondly most people are infections for just a week, those with mild symptoms might be even less: Without coughing, singing or shouting (e.g. sport event) the chances drops even further. Thirdly: The weather. The warmer it is the more often we open the office window for fresh air, we spend more time outside and are less likely to get into close contact for long enough to spread the virus. For me August as a start of the local epidemic, even earlier for the initial animal-human transmission sounds very plausible.

mvc 6y ago
> even in a million people city Wuhan's population is an order of magnitude bigger than that.

cycomanic 6y ago

There is evidence that there was already community spread in France in November [1]. Note that the article there also mentioned a study that a case (without connection to China) in France was detected in late December. So there is significant evidence that COVID19 was spreading worldwide at least in December. [1] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3083599/france-had-covid-19-november-hospital-says-after-analysis-chest https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3083599/fran...

autokad 6y ago

I was looking up "coronavirus" on google trends. What I saw was a flat 0 except for a blip in late august, and a score of 100 on September 21, 2019 coming from Hubei Province specifically. Those results remained the same for over a month until I posted the above in a hacker news comment. Then I was down voted heavily and the results suddenly changed. I do have a picture of it, because I wanted to share the results with my friend and they dont use social media, so I forwarded a picture. while I agree with the hacker news downvoters (the downvote, hate, hate, unsubscribe, rage, rage, you must be stupid crowd) that this doesn't prove anything, it is certainly part of the evidence building up.

jansan 6y ago
In this Google trends chart, which unfortunately has no data before January 2020, Coronavirus was not a thing until Mid of January: https://www.regenhealthsolutions.info/2020/03/21/google-launches-covid-19-information-resources-website/ https://www.regenhealthsolutions.info/2020/03/21/google-laun...
sampo 6y ago
Here's an article about this: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/long-fuse-big-bang/202005/mysterious-blips-raise-questions-about-covid-19-timeline https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/long-fuse-big-bang/2...
- jchiu1106 6y ago
  Can someone enlighten me: with Google being blocked in China, how the heck does one search the term in Wuhan and had it being recorded by Google? I know people in China can use VPN to search Google, but the recorded IP would be the exit node of the VPN wouldn't it?
fsh 6y ago
Why would people from Wuhan (who speak Chinese) search for "Coronavirus" in English on Google (which is blocked in China)?
- 6y ago

Knuthtruth 6y ago

Do you ever get tired of listening to this rhetoric all over the Internet. It is so obvious they hid the pandemic within their country. They didn't lockdown in time or prevent flights to other countries. It is also coming out as suspected that the WHO was in cahoots with China over misrepresenting the actual state of affairs. A simple search tells you how China has used this time to advance militarily across the South China Sea and other neighboring countries. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/05/china-hong-kong-pandemic-autonomy-law-aggression/611983/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/05/ch... https://m.hindustantimes.com/india-news/troop-movements-halt-at-4-ladakh-standoff-points-but-defences-are-up-deep-inside/story-OfoihTqPa6GqMINcgaMLUO.html https://m.hindustantimes.com/india-news/troop-movements-halt... Add to all this the anecdotes from several people on the Internet including several in this very thread that seem to suggest the starting of a viral spread as early as July. There are literally hundreds of articles, social media posts and anecdotes that indicate this has started as suggested around the August-november timeline last year. This is not racial bias at play, even though there is no dearth of that on the Internet. But calling it bogus and slandering factual content based on personal bias and opinion is not the way to get to the truth.

Bjartr 6y ago
So, assuming all that is true, why did the virus not spread worldwide earlier? That's the crux of what that person you're responding to was taking about. Can you share something from your knowledge of articles, posts, and anecdotes that provides some clarity on that question?
- plafl 6y ago
  An analysis of sewer water has detected the virus as early as 15th of January in Barcelona. See for example (in Spanish) https://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20200607/481654145204/detectados-restos-coronavirus-covid19-aguas-residuales-barcelona-enero.html https://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20200607/481654...
- iKevinShah 6y ago
  Here's a suggestion and no scientific evidence backing this. The virus might have spread worldwide earlier. There might have been deaths due to it earlier too. There was no way of knowing it until Jan 2020. No testing. Nothing. Also the fact that this virus affects people with existing conditions, there's a very good chance that initial deaths / patient 0 / index patient might have been tagged as dead under their respective conditions. As far as the symptoms go, there's no 'unique' symptom so that might have led to people saying that their coughing is due to cold or whatever.

blago 6y ago

I would also point out that Thailand received 11M Chinese tourists in 2019. It's reasonable to assume that a good chunk of those came in the second half of the year, and hundreds of thousands were plausibly from the Hubei Province. Yet they recorded their first case in January.

missosoup 6y ago

> Suggesting the virus was circulating in China as early as August but was being covered up? It's a well established fact that the existence of the virus was initially being covered up and local doctors trying to raise the alarm were being silenced. Even mainland Chinese know this (and are angry with the authorities). One of those doctors was Li Wenliang who has become somewhat of a national hero after his death to covid[1]. Him and dozens of others were given a very stern warning to stop talking about the possibility of a new disease outbreak in the weeks prior to covid becoming official when overwhelming evidence made it no longer possible to sweep under the rug. The only angle here is that the time when the outbreak began is earlier than thought. This isn't even related to the notion of any coverup. It could have been circulating for months in low volumes without anyone really paying attention. Until the outbreak reaches critical mass, all you'll get is micro clusters which appear and disappear without really blowing up - as we're now seeing in countries that got their first wave under control. The fact that people here still think that the initial coverup is some sort of conspiracy theory, when it's common knowledge even in China, is a bit mind blowing. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/chinese-inquiry-exonerates-coronavirus-whistleblower-doctor-li-wenliang https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/chinese-inquir...

xster 6y ago
I call this intelligentsia-baiting. Where one needs to educate others parroting insights(/memes) from coastal-elite-marking editorials without reading primary sources. Li Wenliang was neither a whistleblower nor did he have any first-hand novel data to share. He, an ophthalmologist, received a private group message within the hospital from ER department director and he simply re-shared the message to other private groups with his classmates. The ER director, Ai Fen, was the source of the hypothesis that some patients in the hospital had, incorrectly, SARS and she was the right channel to escalate in the first place. And her escalation was successful when 1 nurse was observed to have been infected on January 11th. Li never intended to broadcast anything to the public. What he did privately share was far less detailed than was on the official Wuhan government site [1], the Hubei provincial site [2] and just general mainstream social media [3] from the same date anyway. [1] http://archive.is/s9elD http://archive.is/s9elD [2] http://wjw.hubei.gov.cn/fbjd/dtyw/201912/t20191231_1822343.shtml http://wjw.hubei.gov.cn/fbjd/dtyw/201912/t20191231_1822343.s... [3] https://finance.sina.cn/chanjing/gdxw/2019-12-31/detail-iihnzhfz9452319.d.html?from=wap https://finance.sina.cn/chanjing/gdxw/2019-12-31/detail-iihn...

hmwhy 6y ago

Not trying to prove you wrong, but I really don't think anyone has enough facts to claim either way confidently. I don't necessarily agree with all of the data presented, but I think your response to it is emotional and unwarranted—the authors haven't said anything about cover up as far as I can tell. Also, I think just because it's circulating doesn't necessarily mean that there is a good chance of it being brought to other countries. If it really started off in a wet market, I can imagine that the people who are most susceptible to catching the virus initially are not those who can afford/have the opportunity to travel. If I'm not mistaken, August is about when people return from summer holiday, and there aren't really holidays until Chinese New Year. There a week of holiday in October for National Day, but people typically travel back to their home town instead of overseas. It feels possible that the virus could be limited to just transmission within China for a while, which gets spread with every festival between August and late December/January, eventually reaches a critical mass and spread to the rest of the world with people travelling due to Chinese New Year in early 2020. I honestly don't think I'm right, and you probably spotted logical flaws in the example I have given above. I just want to point out that the problem is extremely complex, and even the facts that you have pointed out are only a small part of the whole picture that just happen to support your views and arguments.

dannyw 6y ago
A highly contagious disease like COVID19 simply can’t only spread to people who don’t travel. The timeline of this disease being spread from August 2019 is incompatible with a lot of what we empirically know about the virus, and should be treated as wrong.

fingerlocks 6y ago

Anecdata, an old relative of mine died of pneumonia earlier this year. My relative did not test positive for influenza despite having flu like symptoms for two weeks prior. The local hospital’s ICU was overwhelmed with patients having the same symptoms. This was in January. COVID was not on the local radar. But this was in a senior citizen community town, so overwhelmed hospitals aren’t really newsworthy. And I personally only entertain the idea it was COVID-19, but it doesn’t make sense because the dates are all wrong. Then articles like this make me wonder, what if it swept by undetected? Were the most vulnerable communities already hit and we didn’t notice? Could that happen?

cryptonym 6y ago
Athletes from military world games (Wuhan - October 2019) claim they contracted COVID, spreading the virus when they went back home.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  A group of Athletes from Sweden suspected they did, as several had symptoms after returning. However, they now all tested negative. If they had tested positive now, that would have been big news.
  - mikemotherwell 6y ago
    For antibodies or the disease?
    - alkonaut 6y ago
      Antibodies. The test was months later so the chance of finding something in PCR would be small.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
javagram 6y ago
CDC tracks pneumonia deaths across the entire United States through two separate systems. It couldn’t sweep by undetected. When we actually got hit by coronavirus hard, alarms starting blaring immediately both in local health department stats and in CDC FluView which tracks “influenza-like illnesses” and pneumonia mortality. 1. CDC FluView data - the coronavirus outbreak in the United States is clearly visible as an historically large spike of pneumonia mortality. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm 2. New York city’s own surveillance system “ While only about 100 cases of the coronavirus had been confirmed in the whole state, the city’s surveillance system was, by the end of the first week in March, signaling a spike in influenza-like illnesses at emergency rooms. A few days later, the number of police officers calling out sick jumped noticeably, as did calls to 911 for fever and cough.“ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-response-delays.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/new-york-coronav...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

acqq 6y ago

Quoting a professor of Computational Systems Biology at University College London about the OP paper, it's: "most implausible. The analysis of genomic data consistently and robustly points to the ancestor of SARSCoV2 (i.e. the host jump into humans) dating back to around November 2019, see e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134820301829 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S156713482... " (The quote is from here: https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1270294906788098049 https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/12702949067880980... ) Around november as the earliest month also matches the speed of spread of the virus, which we were able to observe and track all around the world. With that speed, August or September aren't plausible too.