4 ms·

Tinfoil hat theory : the SARS-1 outbreak was bigger than documented in east asia and possibly there was an escaped variant with mild symptoms that circulated un

by sgt101 6y ago

Tinfoil hat theory : the SARS-1 outbreak was bigger than documented in east asia and possibly there was an escaped variant with mild symptoms that circulated undetected for some time (testing was not so good 20 years ago). 20 years later places like Tiawan, Veitnam and South Korea have a chunk of their population with an immunity - a little like the immunity to Swine Flu conferred by Spanish Flu.

myself248 6y ago
I don't think that's tinfoil hat territory, it seems entirely plausible and not sinister at all. And super intriguing!
maxerickson 6y ago
It would be odd for the milder variant to have a significant protective effect at that scale and not have spread further.
- sgt101 6y ago
  I agree - a bit odd, but not totally implausible. Chains of transmission do break for odd reasons.
- dwd 6y ago
  We seem to keep circling on how it started, but the reality is that something happened in Wuhan. Viruses don't spring from nowhere, or jump from caves 1000km away to an urban population that just happens to have a lab studying them. I just find the coincidence here too great. My money is on still on someone associated with the lab became the vector where what they were working on gained function from some other highly spreadable coronavirus. Only takes one protocol breach for a PPE failure, and these labs worldwide seem to have lapses all the time. They need to find a sample of this mystery virus that was circulating beforehand and see if it had the novel ACE2 receptor binding that the bat virus most like SARS-Cov-2 lacked - maybe then they can put the hypothesis that the lab was involved to rest. This current we don't really know how it happened is bullshit.
subsubzero 6y ago
I posited not that sars-1 caused some of that immunity, but that another coronavirus which was spreading around later in 2019. I lost my sense of smell completely around thanksgiving 2019 and don't think that was covid-19 but a similar virus that possibly turned more deadly due to a mutation. My brother was in China earlier in October 19' and I believe he got me sick with it. He himself got sick back to back to back from whatever he had(and he never gets sick). But this is total conjecture.
- dwd 6y ago
  Maybe conjecture, but they are little pieces of information that seem to be common across many parts of the world at that time. The summer 2019/20 spike in hospitalised pneumonia cases in the southern hemisphere that were a non-flu virus is another data point out there - someone just needs to put them all together.
  - lamontcg 6y ago
    We can rule out anything other than cryptic spread in the US in 2019: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1249414291297464321.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1249414291297464321.html https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2008646 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2008646 The viruses going around 19/20 winter in WA included all kinds of non-flu viruses. The rapid flu test also suffers from the same 50% false negative rate that the rapid COVID test suffers from.
- lamontcg 6y ago
  SARS-CoV-2 was almost certainly spreading in Wuhan in October. If your brother was there, and caught a virus, and gave it to you, and you substantially lost your sense of smell, then you should buy a lottery ticket because you were one of a small set of cryptic 2019 infections in the US (or wherever you are). I would normally kind of shit all over anyone outside of China claiming to have caught the virus in 2019, but you tick off the two boxes which are complete and total loss of smell and contact tracing to someone actually back in China. Presumably you didn't pass it on to anyone or it otherwise died out and never found a superspreader (the majority of chains of infections of SARS-CoV-2 actually die out due to the way it transmits mostly by superspreading and it can take 4+ "seeds" on average before epidemic spread kicks off in an area).
Apofis 6y ago
The common cold coronavirus actually kicks COVID-19 out if you get both at around the same time. So not too tinhat-foily of a theory you got there.

by sgt101 6y ago

myself248 6y ago

I don't think that's tinfoil hat territory, it seems entirely plausible and not sinister at all. And super intriguing!

maxerickson 6y ago

It would be odd for the milder variant to have a significant protective effect at that scale and not have spread further.

sgt101 6y ago
I agree - a bit odd, but not totally implausible. Chains of transmission do break for odd reasons.
dwd 6y ago
We seem to keep circling on how it started, but the reality is that something happened in Wuhan. Viruses don't spring from nowhere, or jump from caves 1000km away to an urban population that just happens to have a lab studying them. I just find the coincidence here too great. My money is on still on someone associated with the lab became the vector where what they were working on gained function from some other highly spreadable coronavirus. Only takes one protocol breach for a PPE failure, and these labs worldwide seem to have lapses all the time. They need to find a sample of this mystery virus that was circulating beforehand and see if it had the novel ACE2 receptor binding that the bat virus most like SARS-Cov-2 lacked - maybe then they can put the hypothesis that the lab was involved to rest. This current we don't really know how it happened is bullshit.

subsubzero 6y ago

I posited not that sars-1 caused some of that immunity, but that another coronavirus which was spreading around later in 2019. I lost my sense of smell completely around thanksgiving 2019 and don't think that was covid-19 but a similar virus that possibly turned more deadly due to a mutation. My brother was in China earlier in October 19' and I believe he got me sick with it. He himself got sick back to back to back from whatever he had(and he never gets sick). But this is total conjecture.

dwd 6y ago
Maybe conjecture, but they are little pieces of information that seem to be common across many parts of the world at that time. The summer 2019/20 spike in hospitalised pneumonia cases in the southern hemisphere that were a non-flu virus is another data point out there - someone just needs to put them all together.
- lamontcg 6y ago
  We can rule out anything other than cryptic spread in the US in 2019: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1249414291297464321.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1249414291297464321.html https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2008646 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2008646 The viruses going around 19/20 winter in WA included all kinds of non-flu viruses. The rapid flu test also suffers from the same 50% false negative rate that the rapid COVID test suffers from.
lamontcg 6y ago
SARS-CoV-2 was almost certainly spreading in Wuhan in October. If your brother was there, and caught a virus, and gave it to you, and you substantially lost your sense of smell, then you should buy a lottery ticket because you were one of a small set of cryptic 2019 infections in the US (or wherever you are). I would normally kind of shit all over anyone outside of China claiming to have caught the virus in 2019, but you tick off the two boxes which are complete and total loss of smell and contact tracing to someone actually back in China. Presumably you didn't pass it on to anyone or it otherwise died out and never found a superspreader (the majority of chains of infections of SARS-CoV-2 actually die out due to the way it transmits mostly by superspreading and it can take 4+ "seeds" on average before epidemic spread kicks off in an area).

Apofis 6y ago

The common cold coronavirus actually kicks COVID-19 out if you get both at around the same time. So not too tinhat-foily of a theory you got there.