If it could be proven the virus that causes COVID-19 was spreading throughout the world by November 2019 (or even earlier), the shift in the Covid narrative might be seismic.
For example, if the virus had already infected large numbers of people, the justification for the lockdowns of mid-March 2020 to ‘slow or stop the spread’ of a newly arrived virus would be shown to be nonsense. Estimates of the number of people who had already developed natural immunity as well as of the infection fatality rate (IFR) might be dramatically different. It would suggest the disease was not nearly as lethal as experts proclaimed. The mass fear in the public – a prerequisite for lockdowns and later for mass vaccinations – might be much lower.
Given these points, it’s odd public health officials and investigative journalists have eschewed serious investigations that might confirm this virus had already spread around the world before January 1st 2020.
A commonsense project to ‘prove’ early spread was occurring would be simply to test tranches of blood that were donated before the birth date of the official outbreak (December 31st 2019).
Surprisingly, however, very few antibody studies of archived blood collected before December 31st 2019 have occurred. Will Jones recently highlighted one such study published by researchers in France as well as a sewage study from Brazil. The first provides antibody evidence and the second RNA evidence the novel coronavirus was spreading by November 2019 in these countries.
To Will’s list, I’d add the only antibody study of archived Red Cross blood conducted by the U.S. CDC to date. This study found 39 antibody-positive serum samples collected December 13th-16th 2019 in California, Washington and Oregon (2% of blood samples collected from these states tested positive for antibodies).
As it takes the human body one to two weeks to produce detectable levels of antibodies, most of these 39 antibody-positive donors had been infected in November 2019 if not earlier.
For some reason, American officials performed only one antibody study of blood collected by blood bank organisations. It’s also strange that results of this study were not published until November 30th 2020 – more than 11 months after the first tranche of archived Red Cross blood had been collected.
In a CDC press briefing held May 29th 2020, CDC officials stated they’d searched for and could find no evidence the novel coronavirus had been “introduced” anywhere in America prior to January 20th 2020.
I believe this statement was false as by the time this press briefing was held, copious evidence of early spread had already been disseminated via published news accounts. For example, I’ve identified at least 17 Americans who were sick with definite Covid symptoms in November and December 2019 and all 17 had antibody evidence of prior infection. Also, all 17 of these reports were published by prominent news organisations at least 13 days before this press conference.
While a source of important evidence, antibody studies are not necessary to prove that early spread almost certainly occurred in America. Close examination of individual case histories also allows one confidently to reach this conclusion. What follows is a summary of three individual histories that lead me to conclude community spread was already occurring in America by November 2019 and probably October 2019. For details on other American cases that date to December 2019, see this Seattle Times story and a feature story I wrote that, for some reason, was completely ignored by the mainstream press and public health officials, a fact I document in this follow-up article.
Case 1: Michael Melham of Belleville, NJ
Michael Melham, the Mayor of Belleville, NJ, was among a large group of New Jersey municipal employees who attended a conference in Atlantic City on November 19th-21st 2019. While at the conference, Melham experienced symptoms common to COVID-19.
“I was definitely feeling sick when I was there, and fought my way through it,” Mayor Melham told NJ Advance Media on April 30th 2020.
“I have never been sicker in my entire life,” the Mayor said. “These symptoms included a 102-degree fever, chills, hallucinations and a sore throat that lasted for three weeks.” In a story published by Fox News, Mayor Melham said the illness made him feel “like a heroin addict going through withdrawals… I didn’t know what was happening to me. I never felt that I could be so sick“.
Mayor Melham felt sick enough to contact his doctor who diagnosed him with the flu. However, this diagnosis was given “over the phone” and Melham never actually received a flu test.
In late April 2020, Melham visited his doctor for his annual physical and brought up his November illness. The doctor administered an antibody test, which came back positive for Covid antibodies.
Melham later told me he actually received two positive antibody tests (previous reports mentioned just one).
“My first antibody test was a rapid test. My second was a blood test that was sent to a lab. Both were positive for the longer antibody,” Mayor Melham wrote in one email.
Mayor Melham has repeatedly made the important (if ignored) point that he tested positive for the ‘long’ (IgG) antibody. He tested negative for the IgM antibody. The presence of IgM antibodies indicate more recent infection and, per studies, these antibodies fade and are only detectable for about a month after infection.
This combination of antibody results would seem to rule out the possibility Mayor Melham experienced an asymptomatic case of Covid in the month before receiving his first antibody test. The only time Melham was sick was November 2020.
He added: “I will also tell you that since the media attention surrounding my claim, many others have come forward. I have emails from those who were actually at the same conference in Atlantic City NJ, who became just as sick as I was.”
Those who wish to gauge the credibility of the Mayor’s claims can view this four-minute YouTube interview with Mayor Melham.
I also asked Mayor Melham a question no other journalist seems to have asked him. “Did any public health official ever contact you to investigate your possible case?”
Melham’s email response: “No, nothing.”
Multiple acquaintances as well as his physician would confirm Melham was sick with symptoms common to Covid victims in November. Since he received two positive antibody tests, if the results were a false positive, he received two false positives.
As noted, Mayor Melham reports receiving emails from “multiple people… who were at the same conference who became just as sick as I was”. This would suggest the presence of community spread – a possibility which might have been confirmed if contact tracers had tested the people who’d been sick at the same conference for antibodies.
We know no public health officials contacted Mayor Melham to investigate his claim. We also know, thanks to nj.com‘s reporting, that state health officials were aware of his claim:
Asked about the Mayor’s statements, the state health department declined comment. A spokesperson for Gov. Phil Murphy did not immediately respond to a message.
The following points should also be emphasised. If his diagnosis had been confirmed by public health officials, Mayor Melham would have been the first known Covid case in the world, and would have been the first confirmed case in America by approximately 61 days (the first official case in America is still recorded as January 20th 2020 – a man from Washington state who had recently returned from Wuhan).
Significantly, Mayor Melham can date the onset of his symptoms. Per numerous studies, it takes two to 14 days after infection for symptoms to manifest. This means Mayor Melham would have been infected some time between November 5th and November 19th 2019.
Since Mayor Melham did not give the virus to himself, logic tells us the chain of transmission that ended with Michael Melham being symptomatic around November 20th 2019 very possibly began before November 1st 2019. This would mean that community spread was possibly occurring in New Jersey as early as October 2019.
Case 2: Uf Tukel of Delray Beach, Florida
As reported by Palm Beach Post on May 16th 2020:
At least 11 people… on two small blocks alone… in a small Delray Beach (Florida) neighborhood tested positive for coronavirus antibodies in April. They felt symptoms as early as November (2019). “It didn’t have a name back then, but I have no doubt now that it was the coronavirus,” one neighbour said.
The article names seven of these individuals and provides details and quotes about their symptoms. These seven people include Uf Tukel who was “first among (residents of the neighborhood) to feel sick in late November (2019)… For weeks, he had body aches, a severe cough and night sweats”.
While “Tukel is reluctant to say he had the coronavirus a month before Chinese officials reported the outbreak to the World Health Organisation, ‘I had all the symptoms though,’ Tukel said.”
The same logic applied to Michael Melham’s possible case would apply to Mr. Tukel’s possible case. That is, whoever first infected Mr. Tukel was infected earlier than Tukel was, suggesting early spread was also happening by some point in November, if not October, in Delray Beach, Florida.
If confirmed, Mr. Tukel’s case would indicate that American cases in November were not isolated to the state of New Jersey.
Several other points included in the Post’s coverage deserve attention.
These possible DelRay Beach cases include two couples, with one spouse presumably infecting the other. One child of one of these couples became infected, providing further evidence of community spread.
According to the story, none of the individuals experienced close contacts with other non-family residents of the same neighbourhood. That is, there seems to be no evidence of neighbour-to-neighbour transmission.
According to the story, “all (11 individuals) recovered and haven’t been sick since”. None of the 11 had travelled to China.
Like Michael Melham, none of these 11 people tested positive for the ‘short’ (IgM) antibodies – thus none had been recently infected.
The Post article also includes this eye-opening information: “Since March (2020) about two-fifths (approximately 200, 40%) of the 500 antibody tests taken by Xera Med (a DelRay Beach private testing lab/medical clinic) have been positive, said CEO Emily Rentz.” The first two confirmed cases in Florida were recorded March 1st.
The following sentence from this article might be even more significant: “The lab shares its data on positive tests with the state health department, (Rentz) added.”
And from the same article: “The state wouldn’t say whether it is collecting antibody data from hospitals or private laboratories.”
The Post article referenced a May 5th article by the same newspaper:
In Florida, health department reports show patients who eventually tested positive for the virus experienced symptoms as early as January. The Florida Department of Health hasn’t explained those potential fault lines in the state’s assertion that the first cases didn’t appear in Florida until March.
The fact 40% of 500 antibody tests administered by the clinic between March and early May 2020 tested positive for Covid antibodies suggests infections were widespread in this community. And according to the CEO of this lab, these antibody results were being shared with Florida State Department of Health officials.
And apparently these weren’t the only positive antibody results that were being reported by testing labs. As reported in the same article:
The University of Miami, in randomly testing Miami-Dade County residents for antibodies, has found that the rate of infection could be 16 times higher than state data suggests, said Dr. Erin Kobetz, a professor and lead researcher on the project…
Since first publishing her findings, Kobetz has heard from several people who shared experiences similar to the Tropic Isle neighbours… They described being sick in December and later testing positive for antibodies. They asked if what they’d experienced was COVID-19.
Significantly, if we count possible December 2019 cases, these are Americans from five widely-dispersed U.S. states whose stories were featured in published articles. An unknown number of Americans who’ve never been featured in a newspaper article undoubtedly fit the same profile. If one adds this unknown number of never-identified people to the list of known individuals, evidence the novel coronavirus was spreading widely across America in November and December 2019 becomes even more compelling.
Not every infectious disease expert agrees with the CDC’s assessment that widespread transmission did not begin until January 20th 2020.
“It’s possible that the disease spread as early as November,” Dr. Kobetz said.
As in New Jersey, apparently no official with the Florida Department of Health contacted any of the 11 people referenced in the Post’s article. Nor have public health officials apparently followed up with Emily Renz, CEO of Xera Med, who stated approximately 200 other local residents received positive Covid antibody tests at the clinic between March and the end of April.
Ms. Renz noted that information on all of these positive test results had been forwarded to officials at the state’s health agency. Which prompts this question: How many clinics and testing labs in America also forwarded positive antibody test results to state health agencies, agencies which presumably could and would pass this information along to their colleagues at the CDC or NIH?
What the public doesn’t know but should is how many other Americans – those whose lab results were not reported in the press – also tested positive for antibodies between March and early May 2020. Presumably, the CDC and state and local health agencies have these data, which have never been released to the public.
Indeed, I’ve come to believe it’s possible at least some high-ranking officials may have conspired to suppress antibody results which, if published, might have led the public to conclude this virus was spreading widely months before officials said it had been introduced in this country. Such knowledge might have changed the way tens of millions of Americans evaluated their personal Covid risk as well as their support for lockdowns.
Case 3: Shane from Marin County, California
Perhaps the first early case in America (with antibody evidence that would confirm infection) is Shane of Marin County, California. Shane’s possible early case was not featured in a newspaper article, but by Shane himself in the reader comments section that followed a May 7th 2020 New York Times story (the story describes symptoms experienced by Covid patients).
Writes Shane: “I had COVID-19 last fall, far earlier than anyone else I’ve heard of. I suspect I caught it while on an overseas trip to Italy and the Middle East – I’ve taken two antibody tests in the past month, both of which confirmed I was infected.”
As Shane recounts, he was extremely sick with signature Covid symptoms.
For me the worst symptom by far was the dry, unproductive cough. The cough was so intense, so relentless, it left me with bruised ribs and a horrible searing pain in my chest, which also felt as if someone were sitting on it. The fever at one point reach 104.9 upon which I began hallucinating – seeing my dogs talking to me and forgetting how to open a sliding glass door. Horrible chills which led to my teeth chattering so hard my jaw ached were also another noxious gift of Covid.
What I most remember about my experience with Covid is pain, pain from coughing, pain in my body and head, pain everywhere around me, like a smothering red blanket. At times I felt I was going to die during that week and even today I must admit I am surprised I didn’t.
Adding credibility to his claim, Shane’s post cited two labs where he claims to have received his positive antibody tests.
The local health centre in West Marin is where I took the latest one. The other one I took directly at the manufacturer’s location – ARCpoint Labs in Richmond. That one is only 87% accurate and not FDA approved so that’s why I took the more recent one, which was done through Quest Labs I believe.
In the comment thread, one poster suggests it’s unlikely Shane developed Covid as there had been no reported confirmed cases from that time. This poster opines that Shane was sick with some other nasty virus and later developed an asymptomatic case of Covid. However, Shane stuck to his theory and presented reasons for his opinion.
I suppose it’s possible but I tend to think that since what I contracted had the exact same symptoms as COVID-19 – that COVID-19 is what I had. In addition, mid-February through mid-March I was in isolation, caring for my sister who died mid-March from metastatic cervical cancer. When COVID-19 made its first appearance in the U.S. in February we very quickly put in strict isolation protocols as my sister had a compromised immune system due to chemotherapy, further insulating myself from contact and infection as well.
Shane does not report what month he thinks he had Covid – only that it was “last fall… and far earlier than anyone else I’ve heard.” He could have been sick in November, but maybe even in October. Shane (if he really had Covid) contracted the virus from an unknown person who would have been infected earlier than him.
Shane shared his belief he might have contracted the virus in Italy or in the Middle East, which, if true, would provide more evidence of early global spread. However, it’s also possible he contracted the virus in California.
Shane’s claim was posted in the moderated New York Times’ comments section, meaning one or more Times employees were aware of Shane’s startling claim. Any Covid article, including the popular reader comments, published by the New York Times was also I would imagine read by at least some employees of the CDC, NIH etc.
As only paid subscribers can make comments in the New York Times comment section, the newspaper possesses Shane’s subscription information. That is, someone at the newspaper could have easily ascertained Shane’s full name and contact information, including his street and email address. For what it’s worth, I contacted the NY Times via its news tip email address and suggested a reporter follow up on Shane’s eye-opening claim. I did not receive a reply. This leads me to believe the New York Times is not interested in pursuing evidence of early spread in America, even in the case of a person who very well could be the first known Covid case in the world.
Conclusion
At least three Americans (either known, or in Shane’s case, easily identifiable if effort was made) possessed antibody evidence of Covid in November 2019. The infection chain that ultimately produced these symptomatic individuals likely traces to October 2019. Of note, two of these individuals received two positive antibody tests, making a false positive explanation far less likely. These cases occurred not in one state, but three states (New Jersey, Florida and California). Per my research, Americans from at least 12 U.S. states had antibody evidence of infection prior to mid-January 2020.
As far as I know, none of these 123 Americans (17 Americans identified in press reports and 106 in the Red Cross antibody study) had travelled to China. All 123 are either known or could be identified. (For unstated reasons, the CDC did not interview any of the 106 Americans who provided positive blood samples to the Red Cross.) The figure 123 does not include the unknown individuals who infected these Americans, nor does it include the possible cases that never became known to reporters or the public.
This antibody evidence strongly suggests the novel coronavirus was being transmitted person-to-person throughout the United States well before January 1st 2020, and was probably occurring by October 2019. If certain officials concealed this truth or were simply too incompetent to figure it out, any trust placed in such authorities is undermined. The above information also suggests that officials are not interested in conducting serious investigations into early spread of the virus, prompting a sceptic to wonder why this might be the case.
My hope is that journalists with more resources than myself, as well as officials and scientists, will belatedly and seriously investigate the strangely-ignored evidence of early spread.
Bill Rice, Jr. is a freelance journalist in Troy, Alabama. Anyone with information relevant to his ongoing investigation can contact him via email.
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I remember recovering from “the worse flu ever” in November 2019. I worked in the engineering department of s major UK airport at the time! Over half the office were off with it in the weeks before Christmas. Anecdotal I know! But….
Same, I had SOMETHING around Christmas day leading up to new year 2019-2020. Completely flattened me, never felt anything quite like it – extreme fatigue where just laying there it was an herculean effort simply to lift my arms up off the bed. Very weird, perhaps something completely random but fits nonetheless.
Ditto: had a ‘really weird cold’ in November 2019, 2 days of high temp, exploding head, hallucinations and, being a woman of the old fashioned sort, odd menstrual symptoms to boot. You don’t get that with regular bugs. Caught it from either a chap coughing his head off at a conference I attended, who had just returned from Indonesia, or a fellow chorister who had just returned from Hong Kong and coughed over everyone too, decimating attendance the following week.
Me too, November 2019. I had already been sort-of sick with completely weird symptoms (nowadays, I know the name for that is Vertigo, but didn’t at that time) since September.
My wife and son had exactly the same thing in November, 2019 (Toronto, Canada). Both were bedridden for a week with a fever of more than 40 celsius, chills, cold sweats, horrible cough. Somehow I didn’t get anything at all, which perhaps explains why I managed to avoid covid completely until June of this year.
Me too, I was ill 2019-2020 for at least 8 weeks – not a major illness it just seemed like I had an unusual type of virus that wouldn’t go away. I remember saying to somebody I just wanted to be well again, I was so tired of feeling ill. When it finally did go away a couple of weeks later I had a bad normal cold in February 2020 (runny nose, sneezing).
Well, what do you know.? How curious…
In March 2020 Tom Hanks in Australia and NBA basketball player Rudy Gobert in Utah were diagnosed as having this new virus. And there were a few other famous people I can’t remember now too.
At that point I remember concluding that the odds of several well known people spread out across the the world having the same respiratory virus, and not tonnes of other people, was basically nil.
That’s why I never really got very energised over the Wuhan lab origins stories. Who the hell knows where it started and when. And the desire for powerful people to make sure it isn’t known means that we’ll never know. The debate will just go on forever – like the Kennedy shooting, for which there are multiple theories and only the most obtuse believe the official story.
The fact is, all respiratory viruses share the same symptoms, albeit different sub-sets depending on viral strain and individual. Unless a test for a specific virus is made, it is called having a Cold or the ‘flu.
Does it matter what causes it? The disease is the same, there is no cure, it can hospitalise and kill whatever – and NO after decades of trying, there is no safe, effective vaccine against Colds and ‘flu.
Covid isn’t a new disease: it’s just a brand name for a generic one, so medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex can make money out of it.
I’d nevertheles call it a new virus. Initially, it was (for flu-type disease) unusually severe and it took an awful lot of time to get used to it (while most of my so-called long COVID rather low-key symptoms have meanwhile subsided, some are still in the process of kissing me good-bye).
Sorry I disagree with you. We have all had colds and flu in the past.this manmade virus is something completely different. It may be based on the corona virus, but it definitely has been manipulated.
I have to say I’ve never had the flu in my well over 60years. Man Flu maybe (bad cold). But my wife has had ‘proper’ flu, three times, and each time she was completely flattened, unable to get out of bed, very high temperature, aching all over, barely able to lift her arms or legs. These 3 infections over a period of approximately 40 years along with the usual winter and or summer colds.
Like so many, she normally hides illness or pain very well and tries to ‘soldier on’, not those times.
Vaccine was on the way before Covid was confirmed
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/paula-jardine-4-vaccine-was-on-the-way-before-covid-was-confirmed/
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There were around 50,100 excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2017-18 – figures from the Office for National Statistics show. The increase is thought to be down to the flu, the ineffectiveness of the flu vaccine in older people. Why did they decide ‘covid’ would be identified as unique from other ‘flu viruses
Leaving the controversies of gain of function research aside, whilst covid 19 was apparently “new” it undoubtedly has very close relatives and as such this could well explain the existence of effective “antibodies” to it in some people prior to the official release date. Sucharit Bhakdi said this over two and a half years ago.
Science cannot fully explain why some “infected ” with virus are never ill whereas others are. What, precisely is the role of said antibodies in such cases? – what other immune mechanisms are involved? Immunology, sadly, is poorly understood – no money in it now you see, due to our great scientists and the WEF thinking they can eliminate disease via genetic engineering. Shudder.
The amount of research into covid is staggering, yet our actual knowledge of how virus actually transmit, affect people differently and how the immune system works is still very poor.
And, that’s without even getting into the controversies re Germ Theory….
So for me at least, the article just adds to the mysteries of virus and the immune system in general.
Exactly so.
“Close relatives” is a reasonable term. A large chunk of “common colds” are thought to be caused by some well established coronaviruses, although there isn’t much time spent on tracking them. However, I think it’s true that antibodies are relatively short-term evidence of previous infection, and that T-cells are used for longer term storage and associated immunity against future attacks by the same, and sometimes similar viruses.
From a personal perspective, I learnt via this site about the possibility of having T-cell tests done to determine if one had been infected specifically by SARS-Cov-2. I did have this done, on the basis that I had an unpleasant one at the start of 2020, and was curious as to whether it could have been a C19 case, or just another one of the rest. I’m not advertising a particular firm, although the lab work was done in Abingdon on a couple of blood samples. This was done in Jan 2022 – too far on to look for antibodies. Anyway, the results were essentially negative, so no evidence of it having been a C19 infection.
I did wonder how the researchers would handle the possibility that the tests weren’t specific enough. The French researchers simply ran the antibody tests on a large number of older samples from 2017-18 and found no signal, suggesting that the test wasn’t picking up random coronaviruses. They also ran the tests more than once on each positive sample, to make sure. The Brazilian RNA samples were checked in two independent laboratories. In the US Red Cross blood research, they took serum samples with antibodies to a range of other known coronaviruses and put them through the same tests, and they failed the tests. None of this is definitive, but it strongly suggests that the results are genuine.
‘… whilst covid 19 was apparently “new” …’
All evolved versions of any organism are ‘new’ by definition. Every Human is ‘new’.
‘Science cannot fully explain why some “infected ” with virus are never ill whereas others are.’
Yes it does. It depends on viral load – how much gets up your nose, the condition of the person’s immune system which is related to general health and age, and prior contact with similar viruses. Therefore response to any pathogen is variable.
‘ What, precisely is the role of said antibodies in such cases?’
Lock and key: an antibody is the ‘key’ that fits the ‘lock’ which is the antigen (on the pathogen) and thereby destroys it. They are systemic. It is T cells at the mucosal surface which destroy those cells invaded by the virus using them to reproduce, and which play the major rôle before antibodies are produced.
‘… yet our actual knowledge of how virus actually transmit, affect people differently and how the immune system works is still very poor.’
Respiratory viruses spread as aerosols (an aerosol being a solid or liquid suspended in a gas) and circulate unaffected by gravity (unlike droplets) and are inhaled into our nasopharynx. They rely on coughs, sneezes to be expelled in large numbers, over long distances and are most effective in enclosed spaces where the airborne load builds up and thus people in these spaces inhale virus which accumulate in their airways according to the density in the atmosphere and time spent breathing it.
First line of defence – the virus is trapped by mucus in our nasopharynx expelled by cough, sneezing, swallowing, nasal discharge. Those virus that are not thus removed invade cells in the lining of the nasopharynx, reproduce using the cells’ chemistry producing up to 100 000 copies per cell, which then cause the cell membrane to rupture and release the copies. Next line of defence is T Cells which destroy invaded cells and stop them being used as factories.
It’s a war of attrition. How fast T Cells can destroy factory cells v how fast the virus can reproduce/how many cells invaded. This determines how long symptoms persist, usually they peak at day 5 post-infection. Antibodies do mop-up, killing virus, systemically and at the mucosal surface. Antibodies and other immune cells are reabsorbed into the body (otherwise would blood would become like porridge) but the body remembers how to make them next time the pathogen is encountered.
If the virus gets the upper hand, symptoms persist, get worse and it takes the immune system longer to overcome the infection, or maybe not at all which proves fatal.
We know quite a lot. It’s just that everything we did know was forgotten in March 2020… replaced by, The Science™️.
The Wuhan Lab taking down the coronavirus database in early September 2019 or whenever it was (about then) is surely a massive smoking gun.
The author here makes the very important point that if the bug had been spreading since the fall of 2019 then all the models and other garbage used to justify and promote lockdowns fall to dust. And they knew this.
Having said this, in a substack of yesterday Joel Smalley makes the case that the virus only got going in the UK in early 2020:
… it would put the viral outbreak somewhere towards the end of January which is consistent with my other analyses.
https://metatron.substack.com/p/when-did-covid-really-first-hit-the?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Can’t say I find his arguments here convincing.
Anyway, the TJN household had it Christmas to New Year 2019, as did many people around us – so there’s proof it was here early … and we live in rural Devon, so if it was here it was everywhere.
another flu bug going around
Maybe. Hard to tell. But the symptoms – and we noted how odd they were at the time – were bang on covid
The ‘smoking gun’ is the Wuhan application to DARPA for the exact gain of function experiments that would lead to the creation of ‘SARS-COV-2. The bid was rejected, but by all accounts, it’s an open secret that labs apply for grant money when research is well on its way, in order to recoup costs, rather than before research starts.
Well, I went down with it on Dec 19th 2019. Can’t prove it but classic symptoms including chills and uncontrollable shaking which I’ve never ever had before. It was certainly something novel’. I’ve mentioned it several times since in medical surroundings, and have gotten the reply “Yes, a lot of people say that”.
And these symptoms you describe differ from symptoms typical of other respiratory viruses how?
As you say ‘classic symptoms’ – common to Colds & ‘flu.
The dry, hacking cough and breathlessness is not a typical symptom and has regularly been stated to be the giveaway that this isn’t a typical cold or flu virus.
Uncontrollable shaking haunted me September/ October 2019.
Same day as my Dad and me!
Fantastic article, thanks.
Two obvious reasons why this is not being investigated:
1) If it turns out that it was spreading much earlier, the public health officials look silly – how could they have missed it?
2) If it was around for months and no-one noticed, it demolishes completely the narrative that it was an exceptional emergency.
I think it’s more (2) than (1).
The husband of a nurse up London way told me his wife’s hospital had abruptly instigated new sanitation measures around August-September 2019, which chimes with spy satellite footage of Wuhan showing increased activity at hospitals at that time…
There was anecdotal evidence of a virus in Leeds October 2019, likely transmitted by Chinese students returning to Leeds University Sept 2019.
Be that as it may, there was plenty of evidence by 06 Feb 2020 that lockdowns and other measures would, with the exception of shielding the vulnerable, be utterly pointless.
As a Coronavirus expert in China pointed out on that day:
‘….the 20,000 cases in China is probably only the severe cases; the folks that actually went to the hospital and got tested. The Chinese healthcare system is very overwhelmed with all the tests going through. So my thinking is this is actually not as severe a disease as is being suggested. The fatality rate is probably only 0.8%-1%. There’s a vast underreporting of cases in China.’
‘Basically this is a severe form of the cold.’
‘….right now you also have influenza going around so what you want is to be able to rule out influenza so you can treat the patients correctly for coronavirus.’
‘Historically these models have not been all that accurate.’
‘…in the movie they come out with a vaccine and then three days later it’s all over the world and everybody is saved. In reality this does not happen because for a vaccine you need to go through clinical trials – is it safe and will it work. The last thing you want to do is rush a vaccine too early.’
‘……when you talk about asymptomatic that means you have a good diagnostic test- where you can say they are asymptomatic (which we don’t have with this virus).’
‘Very few kids had very severe disease. We are trying to determine if this is a virus which we call low (unintelligible) kind of inducer or high (unintelligible) kind of inducer. SARS is high [unintelligible] kind of inducer. This means that when it infects the lower part of the lung, the body develops a very severe reaction against it and leads to lots of inflation and scarring. In SARS what we found is that after the first 10 to 15 days it wasn’t the virus killing the patients it was the body’s reaction.’
‘if you have co-morbidity – try and find somebody in the middle east who does not smoke or does not have high blood pressure etc… The data coming out of China seems to indicate that it’s those with the co-morbidity are most at risk. For the seasonal influenza that’s also what we find. It’s the people with the co-morbidity that have the increase mortality rate.’
‘I think this looks more like the seasonal influenza where those who die have to co-morbidity.’
‘….it’s a really bad cold which can cause problems in people. People are talking about the “lethal virus” but seasonal influenza can cause deaths in elderly but we don’t call that “the lethal influenza”
‘with SARS, there were quite a bit of people where the steroid were very beneficial to treat the acute stage and we didn’t know how long the virus would live for so we kept them on the steroids for a long period of time and they came out with all sorts of secondary problems due to the immunosuppression.’
‘In Hubei, the milder cases are not making it to the hospital. Because they are so overwhelmed that milder cases are being sent away. So that’s why it’s important not to look at the mortality rate in Wuhan but to look at the mortality rate in Shanghai or Shenzhen or outside of Wuhan. It’s very important to dissect it out.’
All this in the public domain from a globally acknowledged Coronavirus expert 06 February 2020.
Yes, he didn’t get everything right on the very limited data then available.
Nevertheless the global reaction that then transpired, in terms of stupidity, incompetence, sheer bigotry, egged on by vested interests, beggars belief.
Interesting comments from that expert – I hadn’t seen those before. Thanks.
Professor John Nicholls, University of Hong Kong.
He definitely didn’t get everything right but his credibility and the wide availability of this interview (found after a 5 minute internet search April 2020) does raise a concern as to what our suffocating health bureaucracy were actually spending their time on; nothing useful, clearly!
https://www.accuweather.com/en/health-wellness/coronavirus-expert-says-the-virus-will-burn-itself-out-in-about-6-months/679415
I’m a very fit, healthy female, aged 60 in 2019. Towards the end of the 2nd week of November 2019 I had “a really nasty little virus” which wiped me out for about 3 days, and then I slowly picked up over a few days, but had a persistent cough which took about 3 weeks to shift. I’m convinced it was Covid.
In the area where I live there are several private schools with many foreign pupils and an International School with at least 50% of pupils originating from China.
My illness developed 2 weeks after their extended 2-week late-October half term ie, when the foreign pupils returned to the country.
Again there was something about in Mid Norfolk UK in early October 2019 .I thought it was just a Flu bug at the time but had a lot of the now typical Covid symptoms .Knocked me for six for a good 2 weeks and then another month to be fully back to normal. There was a lot going round in people I know at the time in Dereham,.Never had a test or went to the Docs just self medicated .The only possible source I can think of personally is a close friend who works at the UEA in a department with lots of Chinese students but she was not at all ill at the time .I am normally very healthy and this was the worst”flu” I can remember ever having .
It is certainly the case that the virus was active and spreading in at least the three to four months prior to lockdowns.
For such a ‘fast-spreading’ virus it should have raced through the vast bulk of populations – that is after all what pandemic means – and very quickly become endemic and lost in the background of all the other mild, endemic viruses. Instead it certainly was a slow coach with increasing numbers allegedly being infected many months afterwards and even now – and despite the magic mRNA jungle-juice.
Given that Omicron, symptoms of a very mild Cold, spread quickly and became dominant thereby achieving that endemic character, why is it so important to stop it spreading?
Big £harma.
I’ve probably had flu once in my life but lots of colds, working in the ed bizz. Some bad some mild. We’ve not shut down the world in the thousands of years we’ve had the cold. All ask yourselves WHY did we do it in 2020.
Answer: “Because we could” (“Professor” Ferguson)
This is why I never believed one word of it. I lost count of the number of friends who, between November 2019 and early March 2020, told me they had never been so ill with flu, had the worst cough, took weeks to recover and felt weak for several weeks after that.
Johnson’s revolting American style presentation mid March telling us the world was coming to an end convinced me that it was nothing but a marketing campaign for a racket
On board a Viking cruise July 2019, No Atlantic. Caught a cough from man sitting across from me at dinner, who coughed his way through the dinner. I ended up coughing for three weeks, felt very unwell, visited ship doc. Zpak, cough syrup, antihistamines. Lungs noisy, fatigue, spent next two weeks in cabin. Came back to Uk still coughing, lungs noisy went to practice nurse asked for an X-ray, asked what I had. Her response “we are seeing a lot of weird viruses lately”. Heard back from MANY on twitter with same exact complaints. Never took the covid vaxxes, never been unwell since July 2019. I believe it was covid, I believe I have immunity. Started Zelenko protocol as soon as I read about it. Quercetin, zinc, Vit c and d daily. Still wish I could purchase ivermectin, but this gov’t continues to ban it for covid. Why?
“we are seeing a lot of weird viruses lately”
How funny! That’s exactly what the nurse who told my Dad they’d been inundated with calls about a strange illness over New Year 2019/20 said. I’d forgotten that until you mentioned it!
One of the bigger questions perhaps is: ‘Is SARS-COV-2 the only virus these labs have been leaking?’ At the end of the day, we know in our hearts that labs doing gain of function experiments to develop ‘vaccines’ are really bioweapons facilities skirting international laws by claiming to look for cures. SARS-COV-2 was an obvious one that showed up. Looking back, it makes you wonder about viruses such as HIV suddenly appearing and the early ‘incompetence’ at tracing its origins.
My family all had it at Christmas 2019. I was knocked out for three weeks, starting December 19. I couldn’t taste my Christmas lunch (which I normally cook for us all, but was too ill) and I went to bed at 5pm on Christmas Day, shivering uncontrollably, still dry coughing. It was several more weeks before the coughing really abated and I felt that I could properly fill my lungs with air. My 82-year-old Dad never really shook it off and developed pneumonia a few weeks later, for which he spent a week in hospital. My Mum had mild symptoms for a couple of days.
When my Dad talked to the nurse at the doctor’s surgery in early January, she said they’d been ‘inundated’ with calls from people with the symptoms and the staff at the surgery had all had it too. In the first week of lockdown, the GP practice receptionist called to cancel a blood test I had booked and said she was convinced she’d had it at New Year, along with the other staff. The first person I know to have the symptoms had it at the end of November 2019. She came back from an international conference and was wiped out until New Year.
When the Chinese coronavirus was announced and the symptoms listed, I sat up and basically said ‘Hello! What’s this?’ I had had those exact symptoms. I said at the time that this was unlike any cold or flu I had ever known.
The subsequent building of COVID-19 units in hospitals in January all felt rehearsed. Someone, somewhere had already decided lockdowns and mRNA jabs were going to happen, regardless, as far as I’m concerned, and our Government was too wrapped up in post-election glory-hogging to realise how they were being played. The WEF’s plant in the UK Government, Matt Hancock, and the the Bill and Melinda Gate’s Foundation’s ‘Global Health Security Team’, planted at the Daily Telegraph, swiftly sprang into action. This was a coup by elitist multinationals. The ‘most powerful man on the Earth’ is no longer the President of the USA: it’s Larry Fink at BlackRock.
Governments insist on denying COVID-19 had been in circulation for a long time, because it undermines their actions of the last two years, the excuse for deliberate demolition of the global economy and transfer of the majority of ordinary people’s wealth to super-rich oligarchs, investment banks and Big Pharma firms. I’m not convinced national governments even have the power to say anything else now.