4 ms·

The coronavirus may have reached Los Angeles before China announced its outbreak

8 points by pwg 6y ago

redis_mlc 6y ago
> The coronavirus may have reached Los Angeles before China announced its outbreak If by "may" you mean "almost certainly": 1) There were direct flights from Wuhan to California. (Around 100,000 passengers arrived weekly in the USA from Wuhan and Shanghai, with about half to SFO and LAX. Both Wuhan and Shanghai are international airports.) 2) We know corona was circulating in Wuhan in November, 2019, with the first admitted and identified case Dec. 1. (The patient did not work at the wet market.) 3) Satellite photos show Wuhan hospital parking lots full starting in August, 2019 and cell phone activity dropped to zero in some areas of the bat lab around that time. It's good to verify corona activity with US records, but the above shows there's a 99% chance it was in the USA in 2019. Interesting Sept. 2020 followup article on the Wuhan instant hospitals: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/09/10/909688913/whatever-happened-to-the-instant-hospitals-built-in-wuhan-for-covid-19-patients https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/09/10/9096889...
jsilence 6y ago
Why don't they test these patients for Covid19 antibodies?
- phillipseamore 6y ago
  Yeah, I can't really understand why they wouldn't verify this theory with antibody tests before publishing. It's not like they'd have to test every single one. Even just checking how many of them later got infected would be helpful, since that would make it very unlikely they had it in December.
Proven 6y ago
An informative comment by redis_mlc is already dead, eh? Whose fault is it that China covered up their outbreak? > The increase began the week of Dec. 22, 2019, and persisted through the end of February. Likely the first arrivals from China. The WHO got notified about Covid19 issues in China last December. https://www.france24.com/en/20200409-us-criticizes-who-for-ignoring-taiwan-virus-warnings https://www.france24.com/en/20200409-us-criticizes-who-for-i...

8 points by pwg 6y ago

> The coronavirus may have reached Los Angeles before China announced its outbreak If by "may" you mean "almost certainly": 1) There were direct flights from Wuhan to California. (Around 100,000 passengers arrived weekly in the USA from Wuhan and Shanghai, with about half to SFO and LAX. Both Wuhan and Shanghai are international airports.) 2) We know corona was circulating in Wuhan in November, 2019, with the first admitted and identified case Dec. 1. (The patient did not work at the wet market.) 3) Satellite photos show Wuhan hospital parking lots full starting in August, 2019 and cell phone activity dropped to zero in some areas of the bat lab around that time. It's good to verify corona activity with US records, but the above shows there's a 99% chance it was in the USA in 2019. Interesting Sept. 2020 followup article on the Wuhan instant hospitals: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/09/10/909688913/whatever-happened-to-the-instant-hospitals-built-in-wuhan-for-covid-19-patients https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/09/10/9096889...

jsilence 6y ago

Why don't they test these patients for Covid19 antibodies?

phillipseamore 6y ago
Yeah, I can't really understand why they wouldn't verify this theory with antibody tests before publishing. It's not like they'd have to test every single one. Even just checking how many of them later got infected would be helpful, since that would make it very unlikely they had it in December.

Proven 6y ago

An informative comment by redis_mlc is already dead, eh? Whose fault is it that China covered up their outbreak? > The increase began the week of Dec. 22, 2019, and persisted through the end of February. Likely the first arrivals from China. The WHO got notified about Covid19 issues in China last December. https://www.france24.com/en/20200409-us-criticizes-who-for-ignoring-taiwan-virus-warnings https://www.france24.com/en/20200409-us-criticizes-who-for-i...