I’ve been revisiting the evidence of the early spread of the virus in 2019 and the first confirmed cases and I’ve arrived at what I think is the most likely course of events for how the virus emerged.
To cut a long(ish) story short, it looks like the virus was spreading globally by the second half of November 2019. The bit that was hard to understand was why, if it was in countries all round the world that winter, the explosive outbreaks only began in February and March 2020. Looking again at the reports of the emergence of the virus in close detail, it appears that this is because the virus’s journey from first emergence in autumn 2019 to explosive outbreaks in early 2020 occurred in a slower and more staggered way than we might expect from a simple understanding of viruses. This is not because the virus wasn’t present in countries prior to causing explosive outbreaks there – that’s the simplistic assumption that is contradicted by the data – but because the virus doesn’t always cause explosive outbreaks when it is present.
The novel SARS-like virus seems to have first started infecting humans around the end of October 2019. This was very likely in Wuhan. It might be suggested that if the virus was spreading globally in November 2019 then it could have started anywhere and the fact that it was first detected in Wuhan implies nothing about where it started. However, it does appear that the December outbreak in Wuhan where it was first detected was the largest to that date. In addition, the following month Wuhan was the first place to experience an explosive outbreak that taxed the health services, some weeks before anywhere else. The fact that it was ahead of the curve in these larger outbreaks is a strong indicator that the virus had been there longest and originally emerged there.
Molecular clock studies, which analyse the genetic make-up of early cases to calculate when their most recent common ancestor was around, tend to put the virus’s emergence in late October or early November, which is consistent with global spread towards the end of November.
In China, a leaked Government report on early cases in Wuhan identified nine patients hospitalised in November 2019 with what was later confirmed as COVID-19 (the earliest symptom onset date was November 17th), though these have never been added to the official total. A study also claimed to find no neutralising antibodies in Wuhan blood donors in September to December 2019, though it’s unclear how reliable this is. ‘Baidu’ internet searches in Wuhan for ‘cough’ did not rise until December (see below, top) and likewise there is no spike in influenza-like hospital admissions until December (bottom).
In Brazil, banked wastewater samples turned positive as of November 27th 2019, indicating significant community spread of SARS-CoV-2 at the end of the month. Interestingly, samples from Italy in a separate study didn’t turn positive until December 18th. No wastewater positives have turned up earlier than this anywhere (save for an anomalous positive for Barcelona in March 2019 that is widely believed to be a false positive).
In England, Imperial’s REACT study tested around 150,000 people for antibodies in early 2021 and asked those who tested positive when they recalled having symptoms. This resulted in the following graph.
A notable rise in symptomatic illness can be seen from the end of November 2019 to a steady level that continues through the winter. The explosive outbreak of the first wave in late February 2020 is also clearly visible. This graph neatly illustrates how the virus can circulate for months at a low level (three months in this case), including through the winter flu season, before an explosive outbreak occurs, apparently out of the blue.
We don’t have good data from the United States on early spread as the country has consistently failed to undertake studies on stored samples of wastewater or from individuals, save for one Red Cross antibody study that found antibodies in mid-December 2019 but did not look at earlier samples or confirm with testing for viral RNA. Nonetheless, there has been no shortage of news reports from the U.S. that have told the stories of several individuals who became ill with Covid-like illness in November 2019 and later tested positive for Covid antibodies (when they had not been ill in the interim). These individuals include Michael Melham of New Jersey, who reports being infected along with several others at a conference around November 21st 2019; Uf Tukel, who reports being infected in Florida along with 10 others in late November 2019; Stephen Taylor and his wife, infected in Texas in November 2019; and Jim Rust, infected in Nebraska the same month. Bill Rice, Jr. has collected together the media stories of these early antibody-confirmed U.S. cases. It is notable that none of them claim to have been infected before November.
A chart of influenza-like illness incidence in the U.S. also shows no notable increase in symptomatic disease before November 2019 (see red line below; November is around weeks 44-48).
The evidence of late November spread in China, Brazil, England and America is, I think, highly persuasive; even if one or two of the cases turn out to be mistaken, I do not think it likely that all of them will be. They are also consistent with the estimates of the aforementioned molecular clock studies. This evidence suggests that the virus was not spreading globally much earlier than this. This is based on the negatives in the wastewater studies, the negligible levels in the Imperial study, the lack of Americans reporting illness, and the absence of patients in China. The studies which appear to show earlier global spread than this may be due to cross-reaction of antibodies or contamination of the high-magnification PCR testing.
This allows us to conclude that the virus was spreading at low level around the world by late November 2019, but probably not much earlier than this. What happened next?
The outbreak in the Huanan market appears to have begun around December 1st – this was the earliest symptom onset date in the first cluster of confirmed Covid patients, who began to be admitted to hospital on December 16th (note that a British teacher based in Wuhan who visited the market frequently reported falling ill on November 25th). This outbreak appears to have been significantly larger than other outbreaks up to that point. By January 2nd, 41 patients had been confirmed as admitted to hospital with a positive Covid test along with pneumonia and a characteristic chest CT scan; six of them later died. It was this cluster of hospitalisations that led to the detection of the virus, as at least nine samples from these patients were sent by clinicians for genomic analysis between December 24th and December 31st 2019. The detection of the virus in the wet market outbreak therefore appears to have been a direct consequence of the severity of that outbreak – it caused significantly more hospitalisations than other outbreaks up to then and prompted a number of clinicians independently to send samples for identification. This made it basically inevitable it would be detected during this outbreak.
That said, the outbreak was very small compared to most of the waves we’ve seen since 2020, and indeed compared to what happened in China the following month. Looking at the curve of reported Covid deaths for China in 2020 indicates that the explosive outbreak in the region didn’t really begin until the first days of January (by counting back around 20 days).
This may explain why there was initial uncertainty about whether there was human-to-human transmission, while by January 14th it was becoming increasingly obvious that there was as they were in the middle of an explosive surge for the first time. It was also likely the recognition of this explosive outbreak that prompted the Chinese authorities to impose restrictions on Wuhan from January 23rd.
Oddly, the explosive January outbreak in Hubei province was not replicated in other parts of China, which were largely left untroubled by the virus at this point. Instead, the next place to see an explosive outbreak was South Korea, over a month later in February, and once again it was oddly limited largely to one city, Daegu. It was on a similar scale to the Wuhan outbreak with a similar number of deaths.
Next it was the turn of Italy and Iran to experience explosive outbreaks, beginning in mid-February. The outbreak in Italy was still mainly restricted to one part of the country, though the scale of it was beyond anything yet seen, and the Iranian outbreak was of a similar magnitude. Then followed New York and the north eastern United States, and also England, France and much of Western Europe (though not Eastern Europe or much of the rest of the U.S.). All these outbreaks were much closer to the larger Italian scale than the Chinese and South Korean scale. Other places continued with low level spread until they had their first explosive waves later in 2020, or in some cases in 2021 or even 2022.
What strikes me about this is how the size and scope of the outbreaks increased stepwise between November 2019 and February 2020. Spread in November 2019 was global but low level. In December, the Wuhan wet market outbreak took things up a notch, resulting in a higher number of hospitalisations and thus detection of the virus. Then in January, Wuhan experienced the first explosive Covid outbreak and wave of deaths. And in February the large European and American waves began, ramping up the scale another several notches, where it largely remained. (Omicron, when it came along in late 2021, boosted the size of outbreaks even further but considerably cut the death rate.)
This provides, I believe, a clear picture of how the virus emerged – via a stepwise move towards larger and larger outbreaks from an inauspicious start of low level spread in November. This movement is, I presume, largely a result of genetic changes in the virus, which alter its transmissibility in different populations and contexts – a hypothesis which is echoed by the authors of one major molecular clock study: “It is reasonable to postulate that the variant of SARS-CoV-2 that first emerged was less fit than the variant that spread through China and that evolutionary adaptation was critical to its establishment in humans.”
We can therefore, I think, be reasonably confident the virus first emerged in Wuhan during autumn 2019 and wasn’t just first detected there, as Wuhan was first to experience the larger outbreaks in both December and January, which suggests the virus had been there the longest.
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The article sets a lot of store by the presence of “large outbreaks” but that presupposes relevant authorities were all looking for something or monitoring things to the same level. That seems like a huge assumption to me.
For an event that turned the world upside down in an unprecedented manner, there seems to be little interest and effort coming from governments and other bodies into finding out the truth.
I’m sure they know !
Someone does. Can’t believe the USA doesn’t, probably a few others.
Topics never covered in the MSM:
Event 201
Origins of Covid and Fauci’s deep involvement in the Wuhan Institute of Virology
Conflicts of interest particularly with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funding of WHO, WEF, BBC, Imperial College, Telegraph, Guardian etc
Fatality rate of Covid
Big Pharma all simultaneously presenting their own market ready ‘vaccines’ in breakneck speed, all with equal efficacy.
Where did flu go?
Diamond Princess stats re. Mortality, infection rate, age profile
Efficacy of vaccines, masking, other interventions
Economic impact of printing free furlough money whilst simultaneously shuttering the private sector
Educational impact on kids, particularly the least well off
Mental health impact on those frightened by the relentless doom mongering
Harms caused by vaccines
Excess mortality throughout the highly vaccinated west
Midazolam in care homes
The weaponisation of the deep state against those who questioned the narrative
If the mainstream media were prepared to lie so unashamedly about Covid, what are they spinning us a yarn about:
Ukraine
15 minute cities
Central Bank Digital Currency
Digital ID
Epstein’s client list
Hunter Biden laptop
Etc?
Another fascinating article by Will, although I can’t say I’m convinced by its arguments (which is not the same as saying that they are wrong).
The main problem is that we just don’t know or understand why virus spread suddenly takes off from low levels (or why it declines once more). Seasonality? Interaction with other viruses and even bacteria? Moondust falling earth? Passing comets? An alignment of the planets? We just don’t know.
And until we do know this the hypotheses which underpin Will’s analysis here, and similar attempts to understand what was going on, are open to massive question, as therefore are the inferences drawn.
How, for. example, do we explain the late waves in counties like Germany, for example? Data problems, or something happening with the virus?
If the conditions for substantial virus spread did not appear until October/November 2019 then it remains entirely possible that the virus had been around for long before that, lying dormant as it were.
And if this is the case, the arguments here for a Wuhan emergence are not supported.
My feel – not much more – is that the virus was out and about in summer 2019, but that the spread did not begin in earnest until the conditions were right, apparently in autumn.
Happy to be proved wrong in this, or to hear any counterarguments.
Certainly this subject is worthy of intense study, and I hope more people with the appropriate expertise can join Will in probing this.
I started to experience seriously weird symptoms (ie, hitherto unknown to me) in the last week (roughly) of August 2019 which turned into a case of severe vertigo (I didn’t know the name back then) lasting all September and most of October, culminating in the flu from hell in November which severely impacted me for several days and completely floored me for one (I run a single-person household, hence, I always keep going if I physically can and this was the first time I couldn’t). Because of this, I’m convinced that Sars-CoV2 was in England late summer 2019.
That explosive outbreaks of PCR-testing didn’t occur prior to such tests becoming available is entirely unsurprising. And positive PCR- (or later, LFT-)test results are the only reliable COVID metric. Everybody testing positive on hospital admission was declared a COVID case. And initially, even in the UK, everybody who died after a positive test was declared a COVID death. Hence, both hospital admissions and deaths are garbage data. In the UK, the Nightingale hospitals were built despite the people on this project must have known that it wouldn’t be possible to staff them (a) and the NHS rented lots of emergency capacity from the private sector which was never used for anything (b). The obvious conclusion from b is No actual health emergency occured and the obvious concluson from a is No actual health emergency was expected to occur.
Will’s article of 30 December 2022 suggests the virus could have been out and about as far back as July 2019.
One caveat I would put on the above is the molecular clock evidence. Anyone have any idea how robust this might be??
Didn’t Germany already have T-cell immunity to the virus early on, to the tune of 80% in one study? While in California it was 50% and the USA in general it was a mere 30%?
But didn’t they have a much larger wave later on? Implying there wasn’t much latent immunity? Or maybe that later wave was simply the result of ‘testing’?
Trouble is, it’s so hard to get to any bedrock of data – which leaves laudable attempts such as the above by Will always wide open to question.
The willingness of countries to Lockdown their citizens is the scariest aspect from a freedom viewpoint.
Only Sweden acted sensibly in response to the media panic but even their Chief Medical Officer (Tegnell ?) had to bravely face down criticism – including from the Swedish King. I wonder if he has at least received a quiet “It looks like you were right after all” from the Swedish King.
It also became evident worldwide after a few weeks that the majority of victims were very old (over 80) or had already existing serious health issues. But governments and their medical officers relished the power they had grabbed and were reluctant to let go.
A slight curiosity: The 1918 “Spanish Flu” pandemic was unusual in that it killed many healthy 20- to 40-year-olds, including millions of former World War I soldiers who would have still been very fit. It was called the Spanish Flu because it was the Spanish press that reported it most because almost all other countries were still under wartime press censorship.
It also became evident worldwide after a few weeks that the majority of victims were very old (over 80) or had already existing serious health issues. But governments and their medical officers relished the power they had grabbed and were reluctant to let go.
That the majority of people who die are old and frail doesn’t mean they were COVID victims. This was already true before COVID and probably just a convenient source of deaths.
The 1918 “Spanish Flu” pandemic was unusual in that it killed many healthy 20- to 40-year-olds, including millions of former World War I soldiers who would have still been very fit.
As I’ve already posted here several times: The official German history of world war one (Der Weltkrieg 1914 – 1918) mentions what would come to be known as Spanish flu as flu epidemic of the western German field army which usually didn’t require hospitalization and whose victims were usually again fit for duty after 4 – 6 days, also noting that it took some time before affected soldiers had fully recovered. By that time, this field army was over four million malnourished and chronically overtaxed soldiers living in cramped and unhygienic accomodations. A very deadly infectious disease would have had a field day under such conditions. But no very deadly infectious disease manifested itself.
Of course, the 1918 flu didn’t start out so terrible. But the lockdown-like conditions in the trenches ultimately selected for much nastier strains that would otherwise have been too “hot” to become widespread, as those kinds of strains leave their victims bedridden or worse, rather than out and about. And after concentrating and incubating those strains for many months in a row, those strains spread worldwide when Johnny came marching home.
Then after a few really bad weeks (or a few really bad months, depending on how they “flattened the curve”), the really nasty strains got outcompeted once again by more contagious but less deadly strains, and Farr’s Law ultimately prevailed as well. By spring 1919, it was basically over in terms of excess deaths, though H1N1’s descendants still exist today.
Indeed, Tegnell was a true heroic model of courage in a cowardly world.
Indeed, the 1918 flu should really be called the Kansas Flu or the Fort Riley Flu, because that’s where it originated.
I have come to the view that looking for answers in transmission is the wrong approach. The answer is in the response we made as a society to the panic created and the clinical decisions that were made. If we just look at Italy, as this is where the panic started in the West, we know retrospectively from seroprevalence surveys that there were many cases prior to the panic and actually by the time it happened case rates were falling. What changed was saturation media coverage coupled with disasterous clinical practices that started killing people in large numbers, many of whom would have ordinarily just got better by themselves. The nocebo effect, I am sure, will have accounted for many deaths too. Imagine, you are an elderly person who is told there is a deadly pandemic killing people just like you and there’s no cure. You get sick and panic. You are taken to hospital where you are surrounded by people in space suits and can’t see your family or friends. Of course you can’t breathe! The doctors and nurses don’t want to catch it so you are carted off to ICU and put on a vent. Game over.
This is not to say there wasn’t a disease. It seems to me the evidence is clear that there was. But it would have been a severe flu season without the panic.
It would seem that Wuhan was where covid started its journey (there are several big clues suggesting that) but surely the most important question is actually how covid 19 came to be?
This article by Igor Chudov seems pretty definitive proof that it was “man made”. : –
https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/sars-cov-2-was-lab-made-under-project
There are similar articles by Eugyppius, and Robert F. Kennedy JR.’s book – The Real Anthony Fauci – lays the blame squarely at the door of the unholy alliance between Fauci and bioweapon research courtesy of the USA military Defence conglomerate.
Quite why every bloody genetic/viral enhancement lab. hasn’t been burnt to the ground yet (some may say with those responsible preferably inside) is totally beyond me. I mean it’s only brought about Clown World, caused God knows how many millions to die and heaped untold misery on more millions.
But not so. Quite the opposite in fact. More and more research is being done into how to make virus more deadly and spreadable, aka gain of function research.
Carry on the good work but make a better one next time…
I think we can be fairly confident that Billy has the next batch already brewed and ready to go.
Apparently the virus can either slow burn for months at a time and fly under the radar, or it can explode like crazy out of the blue, depending on the situation, for arcane reasons that only the virus itself knows for sure. So what triggers the explosive outbreaks out of the blue? Is it Hope-Simpson seasonal stimulus? Does it wake up from dormancy?
Each successive outbreak (prior to Omicron) seemed to be not only larger, but also deadlier than the ones that preceded it. That is, the places that got hit later got it worse when they did, and those that got it early on seemed to fare better later on, at least cumulatively. Those whose first big outbreak was in later 2020 or early to mid 2021 fared the worst of all, it seems. It’s like the lockdowns and such actually selected for nastier AND more contagious strains. Thus, adopting the flu strategy and “letting it rip” in the very beginning (and yes, *especially* before the jabs) would probably have been the least worst choice of all.
The Molecular Clock Study referenced in Will’s article is a bit heavy going, but it clearly points to the origin being in China late October, spreading around the world soon after.
Still looks like the EcoHealth Alliance proposal to DARPA to me. Work to be done in China and the US. Genetic engineering to be done by Ralph Baric at UNC
The US appears to have become aware of the outbreak first, and in which country to monitor it i.e. China.
Initial low level outbreaks mostly going under the radar is an interesting idea. That could explain why a friend of mine swears he had it late 2019. Says he had all the symptoms.