Some readers might notice that I don't opine on the trillion-dollar question: Where and WHEN (and how) did this virus first originate ... and then begin to "spread?" I don't know the answer. All I know is that the authorized narrative that says this virus began to spread in late December from Wuhan doesn't pass the logic or common-sense test. The first link in my article is a piece written by Jeffrey Tucker of The Brownstone Institute. Jeffrey presents compelling evidence that the virus was already spreading in Wuhan by September 2019 - several weeks before the start of the World Military Games in mid-October in Wuhan. This would explain why so many athletes at those games got sick while at the games (another story that's apparently off limits to the press). This scenario probably WOULD allow enough time for this virus to be spread to America and other countries by October. However, if the virus was already spreading widely in Wuhan and China in September, it's strange that we had this high-profile "outbreak" in the same city beginning at the end of December. That's more than 3 months after the virus was probably spreading.
Still, the "Wuhan outbreak" of late December 2019 was enough to get the ball rolling. Unanswered though is why this ball wasn't set in motion in September?
I know this: We'll never find the real answer to the origination question if we can't even investigate people who were sick in November or December 2019. And apparently we can't do this.
In my story I mention that I emailed the New York Times via the paper's "news tip" link and suggested that someone with the paper try to contact "Shane" (the possible first known Covid case in the world). I didn't get a reply the two times I did this many months ago. After this story was first published by The Daily Sceptic and The Brownstone Institute, I tried again. This time I provided a link to this story.
Again, crickets.
This is far from the only news organization that has ignored my emails asking someone to contact me and read information or stories I have provided. The Palm Beach Post and Seattle Times did excellent journalism on this topic in early May 2020. I thought for sure these reporters and editors would be interested in my stories that corroborate their own reports, but I was wrong. The impression I get is that someone sent them a memo to drop this line of inquiry.
For months, I thought a reporter for The Wall Street Journal was going to follow up on my story on Tim and Brandie McCain, the Alabama couple who definitely had Covid in December 2019. Brandie McCain has now tested positive for antibodies at least THREE times. Her husband Tim had a very severe case and nearly died (He was in the ICU for 24 days.) This means Tim has copious medical records that show he had all the clinical markers of a severe case (he also tested positive for antibodies). But a WSJ story never appeared and the reporter I corresponded with for so long no longer responds to my emails. (I even sent her hard copies of some of Tim's medical records and she did finally interview Brandie McCain. Both she and Brandie told me the interview went "great.")
What should I make of the disinterest in this story from .... truth-seeking "watch-dog" journalists?
All anecdotes about possible early spread are appreciated. Here's one I copied and pasted from the Comment Section of The Citizen Free Press:
"I had it in November of 2019. My boss at the time was Chinese American. His mother lived in China and was suffering through cancer. He visited her 5 times that year and in October, upon return he was sick as a dog. Several of us in the office got sick as well. After being sick for a week I saw a doctor and they tested me for flu, checked out my chest, I had double pneumonia and not the flu but ‘some new virus that’s going around ‘. It took weeks to recover and months to get my lungs back into 5 mile running shape. I’m pretty sure I was ground zero for my local city, I went to a local Waffle House soon after I felt better. That Waffle House was the spot of the first outbreak announced in our area.
Welcome Citizen Free Press readers! I’d already copied and pasted hundreds of claims (usually from Reader Comment sections) of people who think they had Covid before February 2020. Now that the Citizen Free Press gave my research project this free advertising, I’m receiving scores of new testimonials. My view is that the “first wave” of Covid was completely missed by our alleged “experts.” (FWIW, I am almost certain I had it in early January 2020).
I’m saving these emails and comments all will follow up if necessary.
I hope you will consider subscribing to my new Substack Newsletter (subscriptions are free unless you want to make a donation). I have several other stories I will be publishing on my “early spread” hypothesis. Most of these will cover areas the mainstream press has refused to investigate. Needless to say, I think this is a very big story that’s yet to be told.
In this Comment thread, SK asks a good question: Why doesn't everyone who is a close contact of an infected person get Covid?
In a future article, I'm going to do a major (and original) piece on the saga of The U.S.S. Teddy Roosevelt outbreak (in Mach-April 2020, although - Bill's Big Scoop/Exclusive! - I'm convinced this outbreak had begun when that ship left port on Jan. 17, 2020 - before the first "confirmed" case had been reported in America).
The Navy and the CDC did do a smallish antibody study of crew members (they tested about 400 crew members for antibodies where I would have tested all 4,800). The results were still eye-opening, revealing that 59 percent of those tested had antibody evidence of prior infection. This was a huge jump from the numbers provided by the PCR swab tests. Still, one might have thought that in the confined quarters of a ship that was obviously experiencing a major outbreak that 100 percent of the crew would have been infected.
One crew member died. But this crew member was in his mid-40s and he was the only fatality in a major outbreak. So even in the worst possible spread conditions only 1-in-4,800 died from this disease. Very few were hospitalized.
There's lots of interesting observations I gleaned from the Roosevelt antibody study. This is the type original journalism I hope will encourage a few people to take advantage of the "paid" subscriber option!
Here’s another provocative Reader Comment from The Citizen Free Press:
"I know an Air Force officer who was an athlete at the (World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019) and he brought the virus back to his family. The wife who also is an athlete suffered two strokes as a result. I believe it was swirling around long before 2020.”
I left a comment asking this person to contact me so maybe I could contact this officer. I’ve seen very few interviews in the mainstream press with any of the hundreds of athletes at these Games who apparently got sick. If anyone reading this knows someone who might have been at those Games, please ask them if they might contact me. I’ll of course not publish anything unless they are comfortable with this and I can ensure anonymity.
I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories, but it’s amazing to me how little curiosity there is outside the ‘science’. I expect it of mainstream reporters who never leave their belief bubble, but health care officials should be always curious and questioning. That’s how real science moves.
Maybe the bureaucracy of corporate and government health care and pharmaceutical incentives have killed it at the root.
Thanks for publishing the results of your curiosity.
This is a very important story that could be "seismic" if the masses ever got the full truth. For that reason, I'm pretty confident we never will ... but keep plugging away.
My 25 year old son lives in Kirkland, WA not far from the nursing home that had some of the first west coast Covid cases. He became quite sick in January of 2020. He came home from work and stayed home sleeping for three days (which is a lot for him - he usually never gets sick and recovers quickly). I was worried and made him call me regularly to make sure he was ok. He recovered and we thought nothing of it (Trump hadn't even closed the boarders to China yet). In hindsight his symptoms matched Covid. Although he has not had an antibody test he has remained healthy for the past two years without having contracted any form of Covid or taken any precautions. The interesting point is that his entire office was also out sick around the same time. It is quite possible that a lot of people in the Seattle area had Covid in late 2019 and early 2020.
lots of people have told me of covid-like stuff from 2019 (oct-dec) but nobody of sound mind would admit this officially nor would anyone get involved. other evidence? our local hospital was slammed all december 2019
I hope Bill appreciates that the better part of valor is usually speedy retreat into oblivion.
I live in AL and my friend and I believe we had it in Nov 2019. She was bedridden for a week, me four days. Sick but only took extra Vit C, our usual remedy for viruses. We never caught it again.
Sep 30, 2022·edited Sep 30, 2022Liked by Bill Rice, Jr.
My husband and I both had covid in late November 2019 after a week vacation in Las Vegas. A large portion of Vegas visitors are from China. And on our plane ride back to Milwaukee, there were a lot of people coughing. Neither of us went to the doctor because we just thought it was flu. Covid was not a thing yet. But as the symptoms started to come up I realized I had almost all of them, including the weird ones like pinkeye. I still don’t have 100% of my sense of smell back. I have not been vaccinated and have not been reinfected.
I swear my sister had it May/June of 2019. First off she never gets sick and she was deathly sick with a terrible cough. She finally went to the doctor and it wasn't influenza A or B so they just called it a severe upper respiratory infection and told her to go home and rest up. Another friend ended up in the hospital in October with pneumonia and even her doctor said it was likely covid.
Some readers might notice that I don't opine on the trillion-dollar question: Where and WHEN (and how) did this virus first originate ... and then begin to "spread?" I don't know the answer. All I know is that the authorized narrative that says this virus began to spread in late December from Wuhan doesn't pass the logic or common-sense test. The first link in my article is a piece written by Jeffrey Tucker of The Brownstone Institute. Jeffrey presents compelling evidence that the virus was already spreading in Wuhan by September 2019 - several weeks before the start of the World Military Games in mid-October in Wuhan. This would explain why so many athletes at those games got sick while at the games (another story that's apparently off limits to the press). This scenario probably WOULD allow enough time for this virus to be spread to America and other countries by October. However, if the virus was already spreading widely in Wuhan and China in September, it's strange that we had this high-profile "outbreak" in the same city beginning at the end of December. That's more than 3 months after the virus was probably spreading.
Still, the "Wuhan outbreak" of late December 2019 was enough to get the ball rolling. Unanswered though is why this ball wasn't set in motion in September?
I know this: We'll never find the real answer to the origination question if we can't even investigate people who were sick in November or December 2019. And apparently we can't do this.
In my story I mention that I emailed the New York Times via the paper's "news tip" link and suggested that someone with the paper try to contact "Shane" (the possible first known Covid case in the world). I didn't get a reply the two times I did this many months ago. After this story was first published by The Daily Sceptic and The Brownstone Institute, I tried again. This time I provided a link to this story.
Again, crickets.
This is far from the only news organization that has ignored my emails asking someone to contact me and read information or stories I have provided. The Palm Beach Post and Seattle Times did excellent journalism on this topic in early May 2020. I thought for sure these reporters and editors would be interested in my stories that corroborate their own reports, but I was wrong. The impression I get is that someone sent them a memo to drop this line of inquiry.
For months, I thought a reporter for The Wall Street Journal was going to follow up on my story on Tim and Brandie McCain, the Alabama couple who definitely had Covid in December 2019. Brandie McCain has now tested positive for antibodies at least THREE times. Her husband Tim had a very severe case and nearly died (He was in the ICU for 24 days.) This means Tim has copious medical records that show he had all the clinical markers of a severe case (he also tested positive for antibodies). But a WSJ story never appeared and the reporter I corresponded with for so long no longer responds to my emails. (I even sent her hard copies of some of Tim's medical records and she did finally interview Brandie McCain. Both she and Brandie told me the interview went "great.")
What should I make of the disinterest in this story from .... truth-seeking "watch-dog" journalists?
All anecdotes about possible early spread are appreciated. Here's one I copied and pasted from the Comment Section of The Citizen Free Press:
"I had it in November of 2019. My boss at the time was Chinese American. His mother lived in China and was suffering through cancer. He visited her 5 times that year and in October, upon return he was sick as a dog. Several of us in the office got sick as well. After being sick for a week I saw a doctor and they tested me for flu, checked out my chest, I had double pneumonia and not the flu but ‘some new virus that’s going around ‘. It took weeks to recover and months to get my lungs back into 5 mile running shape. I’m pretty sure I was ground zero for my local city, I went to a local Waffle House soon after I felt better. That Waffle House was the spot of the first outbreak announced in our area.
His mother who had cancer lived in Wuhan."
Welcome Citizen Free Press readers! I’d already copied and pasted hundreds of claims (usually from Reader Comment sections) of people who think they had Covid before February 2020. Now that the Citizen Free Press gave my research project this free advertising, I’m receiving scores of new testimonials. My view is that the “first wave” of Covid was completely missed by our alleged “experts.” (FWIW, I am almost certain I had it in early January 2020).
I’m saving these emails and comments all will follow up if necessary.
I hope you will consider subscribing to my new Substack Newsletter (subscriptions are free unless you want to make a donation). I have several other stories I will be publishing on my “early spread” hypothesis. Most of these will cover areas the mainstream press has refused to investigate. Needless to say, I think this is a very big story that’s yet to be told.
Bill Rice, Jr.
Troy, Alabama
https://billricejr.substack.com
In this Comment thread, SK asks a good question: Why doesn't everyone who is a close contact of an infected person get Covid?
In a future article, I'm going to do a major (and original) piece on the saga of The U.S.S. Teddy Roosevelt outbreak (in Mach-April 2020, although - Bill's Big Scoop/Exclusive! - I'm convinced this outbreak had begun when that ship left port on Jan. 17, 2020 - before the first "confirmed" case had been reported in America).
The Navy and the CDC did do a smallish antibody study of crew members (they tested about 400 crew members for antibodies where I would have tested all 4,800). The results were still eye-opening, revealing that 59 percent of those tested had antibody evidence of prior infection. This was a huge jump from the numbers provided by the PCR swab tests. Still, one might have thought that in the confined quarters of a ship that was obviously experiencing a major outbreak that 100 percent of the crew would have been infected.
One crew member died. But this crew member was in his mid-40s and he was the only fatality in a major outbreak. So even in the worst possible spread conditions only 1-in-4,800 died from this disease. Very few were hospitalized.
There's lots of interesting observations I gleaned from the Roosevelt antibody study. This is the type original journalism I hope will encourage a few people to take advantage of the "paid" subscriber option!
Here’s another provocative Reader Comment from The Citizen Free Press:
"I know an Air Force officer who was an athlete at the (World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019) and he brought the virus back to his family. The wife who also is an athlete suffered two strokes as a result. I believe it was swirling around long before 2020.”
I left a comment asking this person to contact me so maybe I could contact this officer. I’ve seen very few interviews in the mainstream press with any of the hundreds of athletes at these Games who apparently got sick. If anyone reading this knows someone who might have been at those Games, please ask them if they might contact me. I’ll of course not publish anything unless they are comfortable with this and I can ensure anonymity.
When you are ignored by the likes of the NYT it is verification that you are getting dangerously close to the truth.
I believe the virus swept through prior to 2020. We are fed lie upon lie...why not fuck with the timeline too?
I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories, but it’s amazing to me how little curiosity there is outside the ‘science’. I expect it of mainstream reporters who never leave their belief bubble, but health care officials should be always curious and questioning. That’s how real science moves.
Maybe the bureaucracy of corporate and government health care and pharmaceutical incentives have killed it at the root.
Thanks for publishing the results of your curiosity.
Work for UPS . Lots of us go sick 2019 . Rummers about shipping containers . Remember it as a funky ass flu bug . No jab for me
This is a very important story that could be "seismic" if the masses ever got the full truth. For that reason, I'm pretty confident we never will ... but keep plugging away.
My 25 year old son lives in Kirkland, WA not far from the nursing home that had some of the first west coast Covid cases. He became quite sick in January of 2020. He came home from work and stayed home sleeping for three days (which is a lot for him - he usually never gets sick and recovers quickly). I was worried and made him call me regularly to make sure he was ok. He recovered and we thought nothing of it (Trump hadn't even closed the boarders to China yet). In hindsight his symptoms matched Covid. Although he has not had an antibody test he has remained healthy for the past two years without having contracted any form of Covid or taken any precautions. The interesting point is that his entire office was also out sick around the same time. It is quite possible that a lot of people in the Seattle area had Covid in late 2019 and early 2020.
lots of people have told me of covid-like stuff from 2019 (oct-dec) but nobody of sound mind would admit this officially nor would anyone get involved. other evidence? our local hospital was slammed all december 2019
I hope Bill appreciates that the better part of valor is usually speedy retreat into oblivion.
I live in AL and my friend and I believe we had it in Nov 2019. She was bedridden for a week, me four days. Sick but only took extra Vit C, our usual remedy for viruses. We never caught it again.
My husband and I both had covid in late November 2019 after a week vacation in Las Vegas. A large portion of Vegas visitors are from China. And on our plane ride back to Milwaukee, there were a lot of people coughing. Neither of us went to the doctor because we just thought it was flu. Covid was not a thing yet. But as the symptoms started to come up I realized I had almost all of them, including the weird ones like pinkeye. I still don’t have 100% of my sense of smell back. I have not been vaccinated and have not been reinfected.
I swear my sister had it May/June of 2019. First off she never gets sick and she was deathly sick with a terrible cough. She finally went to the doctor and it wasn't influenza A or B so they just called it a severe upper respiratory infection and told her to go home and rest up. Another friend ended up in the hospital in October with pneumonia and even her doctor said it was likely covid.
Worth noting: Time mag story of "early flu season" in California and an "atypical strain" - published beginning of December, 2019.
https://time.com/5746409/early-flu-season-2019-2020/