Thanks for this. I've been researching "early spread" for 2 1/2 years and you are the first person who has even mentioned many of the same presumed cases I have. For example, you highlight the cases of Tim and Brandie McCain of Sylaucauga, Alabama. I sent my exclusive feature story on the McCains to about 30 news organizations and none would run it ... until finally Tracy Beanz at uncoverDC.com ran it.
The info on the deers and the case where the birth certificate was later revised were not known to me. Good luck with your research. I don't think many of us think "early spread" is a big deal, but it's actually a huge deal.
FYI, Santa Clara’s Patricia Dowd died Feb 6, 2020 in what CDC at the time classified as the nation’s first community spread case, after she posthumously tested positive for COVID-19 upon autopsy samples being sent to CDC. She worked for a Silicon Valley chip company and had been in China in the fall of 2019. She travelled on an airplane from the US northwest in Jan 2020. Would assume her coworkers were going to China a lot. Apparently her sister worked at a local hospital and reportedly treated covid patients. That was in local press reports. Left out of CDC’s MMWR. Always wondered why.
I posted a link to this article on Twitter, and received a lengthy 15-tweet response from "Ema Nympton" (@EmaNymton90) which I'm sharing here, since this is where it belongs.
[BEGINS]
I fully acknowledge that there were likely infections in the USA in Nov 2019. I also have contacts that report bad sickness in that time, and a +antibody test in early 2020.
However, my issue is linking it to EVALI.
1st- Ground glass opacities were known well before Covid-19.
Lots of things cause them, a series of people with pneumonia and GGOs, is not diagnostic of COVID, but it is certainly a big coincidence worth looking at. The timing, summer of 2019, is suspicious.
Vaping-Related Acute Parenchymal Lung Injury: A Systematic Review - PubMed 2012, but the main body hit summer 2019 - a temporal correlation. However, there's also a temporal correlation with the WIV taking its database down in September 2019 - which is an even stronger correlation, that seems to have a mutually exclusive explanation.
I keep coming back to: why was it first noticed in Wuhan, and not some 3rd party.
Speculation that the ancestral A-B precursor was less pathogenic (as opposed ot less transmissible), is speculative. We see when many viruses first start infecting humans, they are poorly transmissible, but cause very severe infections. MERS, SARS-1, the Mojiang miner sickness, etc
There are a whole lot of coincidences pertaining to Wuhan, but few pertaining to EVALI.
Of course, we could link US researchers to the WIV, but this is already quite similar to my current view of the pandemic as most likely resulting from a lab leak from a joint US-WIV research project. All that changes is the site of spillover. However, it seems the WIV kept its isolates there, and expts were done there because it was easier.
I can't rule out synthesizing a virues from a sequence obtained from China (or Laos).
I also can't rule out a September 2019 spillover in China, and a spread in the USA (and Europe) because of all the contacts with China.
Wuhan, if it was the origin, would presumably have the highest infection rate, given it started there first- the most time for the virus to spread (plus a very high poputation density), and adapt into lineage B.
I note D614G seems to have originated outside China, but the early hardest hit area of Italy was a region with many chinse immigrants that work in sweatshop like conditions (ideal for virus spread), with links to Wuhan as well.
However, coming back to the USA:
The one blood study showed evidence of infection in the earliest samples. It is inexcusable to not look farther back than Dec 2019.
I don't know about the CDC's primers, but while the CDC/FDA can dictate what is used for a diagnostic test for a patient, they can't dictate what a research group uses to analyze samples for a science paper. Also the multiple targets means I don't put much weight in the idea of a virus that was invisible to the early PCR tests in the USA.
I think hiding this would require a massive conspiracy that the USA doesn't have the infrastructure to implement.
I also think there has been an abhorrent lack of effort/resources put into dating the start of the outbreak in the USA.
I can't really explain why there hasn't been a proper retrospective study in the USA. There should be. Maybe its covering for EVALI, maybe its covering for Wuhan and a Sep 2019 incident, maybe it is something else entirely - I don't know.
I whole-heartedly support an effort to investigate the 2019 EVALI cases in the USA, and the start of the outbreak in the USA (or the rest of the world in genereal).
I just want to note that earlier circulation elsewhere does not automatically clear the WIV.
IMO, these results are a bit hard to reconcile with the US blood study, and the first lab-confirmed french patient in December with no travel history, while the Italian studies with nested PCRs and simple IgG reactivity are much weaker. [ENDS]
Thanks for this. I've been researching "early spread" for 2 1/2 years and you are the first person who has even mentioned many of the same presumed cases I have. For example, you highlight the cases of Tim and Brandie McCain of Sylaucauga, Alabama. I sent my exclusive feature story on the McCains to about 30 news organizations and none would run it ... until finally Tracy Beanz at uncoverDC.com ran it.
The info on the deers and the case where the birth certificate was later revised were not known to me. Good luck with your research. I don't think many of us think "early spread" is a big deal, but it's actually a huge deal.
you missed the best part of the latest deer paper:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36357713/
no immune response!
https://youtu.be/tTsOn-4DLmM?t=2238
Your first date, I think you mean December 2019.
FYI, Santa Clara’s Patricia Dowd died Feb 6, 2020 in what CDC at the time classified as the nation’s first community spread case, after she posthumously tested positive for COVID-19 upon autopsy samples being sent to CDC. She worked for a Silicon Valley chip company and had been in China in the fall of 2019. She travelled on an airplane from the US northwest in Jan 2020. Would assume her coworkers were going to China a lot. Apparently her sister worked at a local hospital and reportedly treated covid patients. That was in local press reports. Left out of CDC’s MMWR. Always wondered why.
Excellent research. Any hope of re-instatement on Twitter. We miss you
Very good.
I posted a link to this article on Twitter, and received a lengthy 15-tweet response from "Ema Nympton" (@EmaNymton90) which I'm sharing here, since this is where it belongs.
[BEGINS]
I fully acknowledge that there were likely infections in the USA in Nov 2019. I also have contacts that report bad sickness in that time, and a +antibody test in early 2020.
However, my issue is linking it to EVALI.
1st- Ground glass opacities were known well before Covid-19.
Lots of things cause them, a series of people with pneumonia and GGOs, is not diagnostic of COVID, but it is certainly a big coincidence worth looking at. The timing, summer of 2019, is suspicious.
According to this, there were earlier cases https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32442559/ as early as
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Vaping-Related Acute Parenchymal Lung Injury: A Systematic Review - PubMed 2012, but the main body hit summer 2019 - a temporal correlation. However, there's also a temporal correlation with the WIV taking its database down in September 2019 - which is an even stronger correlation, that seems to have a mutually exclusive explanation.
I keep coming back to: why was it first noticed in Wuhan, and not some 3rd party.
Speculation that the ancestral A-B precursor was less pathogenic (as opposed ot less transmissible), is speculative. We see when many viruses first start infecting humans, they are poorly transmissible, but cause very severe infections. MERS, SARS-1, the Mojiang miner sickness, etc
There are a whole lot of coincidences pertaining to Wuhan, but few pertaining to EVALI.
Of course, we could link US researchers to the WIV, but this is already quite similar to my current view of the pandemic as most likely resulting from a lab leak from a joint US-WIV research project. All that changes is the site of spillover. However, it seems the WIV kept its isolates there, and expts were done there because it was easier.
I can't rule out synthesizing a virues from a sequence obtained from China (or Laos).
I also can't rule out a September 2019 spillover in China, and a spread in the USA (and Europe) because of all the contacts with China.
Wuhan, if it was the origin, would presumably have the highest infection rate, given it started there first- the most time for the virus to spread (plus a very high poputation density), and adapt into lineage B.
I note D614G seems to have originated outside China, but the early hardest hit area of Italy was a region with many chinse immigrants that work in sweatshop like conditions (ideal for virus spread), with links to Wuhan as well.
However, coming back to the USA:
The one blood study showed evidence of infection in the earliest samples. It is inexcusable to not look farther back than Dec 2019.
I don't know about the CDC's primers, but while the CDC/FDA can dictate what is used for a diagnostic test for a patient, they can't dictate what a research group uses to analyze samples for a science paper. Also the multiple targets means I don't put much weight in the idea of a virus that was invisible to the early PCR tests in the USA.
I think hiding this would require a massive conspiracy that the USA doesn't have the infrastructure to implement.
I also think there has been an abhorrent lack of effort/resources put into dating the start of the outbreak in the USA.
I can't really explain why there hasn't been a proper retrospective study in the USA. There should be. Maybe its covering for EVALI, maybe its covering for Wuhan and a Sep 2019 incident, maybe it is something else entirely - I don't know.
I whole-heartedly support an effort to investigate the 2019 EVALI cases in the USA, and the start of the outbreak in the USA (or the rest of the world in genereal).
I just want to note that earlier circulation elsewhere does not automatically clear the WIV.
Lastly, there are these studies:
https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7365111/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36340052/
https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7988398/
IMO, these results are a bit hard to reconcile with the US blood study, and the first lab-confirmed french patient in December with no travel history, while the Italian studies with nested PCRs and simple IgG reactivity are much weaker. [ENDS]