Documenting CDC fibs or truth-stretchers regarding early spread
CDC press conference from May 29, 2020 deserves more attention
Note: All quotes and excerpts included below were taken from an article written by Erika Edwards of NBC News that was published on May 29, 2020.
On May 29, 2020 officials at the CDC held their first press briefing in “more than two months.” The purpose of the press event was to present “new data (providing) the first comprehensive federal analysis of when COVID-19 took hold in the U.S.”
In other words, this was the CDC’s first official statement regarding when the novel coronavirus began to spread in America.
Officials at this press briefing perhaps lied to the American people or intentionally concealed relevant information regarding evidence of early spread, information that almost certainly was known by officials at the time of this press event.
These statements - all false, misleading or dubious - merit far more attention than they’ve received.
Parsing the May 29 2020 CDC press conference …
Headline: “Coronavirus started spreading in the U.S. in January (2020), CDC says.
Sub-headline: “By early February, there was “cryptic circulation” of the virus.
“May 29, 2020 - The coronavirus began quietly spreading in the U.S. as early as late January, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday …”
Comment: Virus spread began in “late January” 2020. This is a definitive statement and the lede information contained in the story. Also, this was the best or most important information the CDC could produce on the topic of virus spread in America as of May 29, 2020 (five months after the Wuhan outbreak).
Several quotes included in the story were also included in a paper produced by the CDC’s “Covid Response Team.”
"Information from these diverse data sources suggests that limited community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the United States occurred between the latter half of January and the beginning of February, following an importation of SARS-CoV-2 from China," the authors wrote.
Comments:
This virus might have been imported from China, but per my research, there’s just as much if not more evidence of “early spread” in America than in China. That is, I don’t think officials should be stating as “fact” that the first cases in America traced to earlier cases in China. Maybe “case zero” was in China, but maybe not.
The diverse data sources used to make conclusions about the absence of virus spread in America until “latter January” were: “syndromic surveillance,” “virus surveillance,” “phylogenetic analysis” (or genetic sequencing), and “retrospectively identified cases.”
Antibody results were NOT considered as evidence …
Significantly, antibody test results (serologic testing) were NOT used in any early spread “investigation.”
The authors provide their explanation for this:
“Results of serologic testing are not presented here, because serology (i.e., testing for antibody to SARS-CoV-2) is likely to be a relatively insensitive means of detecting a newly emergent virus … and because serologic assays generally do not approach 100% specificity unless some form of confirmatory testing is available.”
Comment: As I have written in several articles, the CDC only or primarily “confirms” cases via a positive PCR test. Per my research, the first PCR test in America wasn’t even administered until mid-January and very few tests were even available to test anyone in the month of January.
Furthermore, CDC guidance stated that in looking for possible early cases, hospitals and medical providers should only test people who had recently been to China. Indeed, of the first six “confirmed” cases in America, five had recently returned from China (the other “confirmed” case was an individual who lived with a person who’d recently returned from China).
Basically, the CDC controlled who was tested (and who wasn’t tested), performed all the tests themselves and controlled the definition of “confirmed” case (only those who tested positive via a PCR test, not an antibody test result).
Balderdash. Balderdash. Balderdash.
This statement from the May 29, 2020 NBC News report deserves a strong rebuttal:
“There was no indication the virus had been introduced into the U.S. earlier, in November or December. "We looked for evidence of early widespread transmission and could not confirm it," Dr. Jay Butler, deputy director for infectious diseases at the CDC, said during the media briefing Friday.
Here are five “indications” …
What follows are five “indications” that the virus had been introduced in the U.S. in November and December 2019. All of these people had antibody-confirmed cases of Covid in November or December. Significantly, all of these cases were reported by prominent news organizations weeks before the May 29, 2020 press conference. It’s impossible to imagine a scenario where nobody from the CDC was aware of these likely/possible early cases.
April 30, 2020 - Mayor Michael Melham of Belleville, NJ
May 7, 2020 - Shane of Marin County, California (From Reader Comments following this NY Times story)
https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-symptoms.html#commentsContainer
May 8, 2020 - Tim and Brandie McCain of Sylacauga, Alabama
May 14, 2020 - A retired nurse (Jean) and one unnamed person from Snohomish County, Washington
May 16, 2020 - Eleven people from DelRay Beach, Florida
And the 6th “indication” …
The sixth “indication” providing antibody evidence of early cases comes from the CDC’s own study of archived Red Cross blood.
According to the Red Cross antibody study, at least 106 people from nine U.S. States had developed Covid antibodies by December 2019.
Significantly, this blood was collected Dec. 13-16, 2019 in Washington, California and Oregon and a second tranche of “archived” blood was collected in six other states between Jan. 1-17, 2020.
Since it takes 1 to 3 weeks for detectable levels of antibodies to form, many or most of these donors would have been infected in December and November 2019 (if not earlier).
For some inexplicable and never explained reason, the results of this antibody study were not published by the CDC until November 30, 2020 - almost a year after the first tranche of blood had been donated.
It’s also unknown when these approximately 7,300 units of blood were actually tested for antibodies. Because of this, the American public does not know if CDC officials knew as of May 29, 2020 the results of those antibody tests. However, the assumption would be that 7,300 units of blood (collected in mid-December and by mid-January) could have easily been tested by May 29, 2020.
Common sense says that CDC officials knew they had 7,300 units of archived blood sitting in some refrigerators waiting to be tested. Why hadn’t officials tested this blood by May 29, 2020?
As it turns out, 2.03 percent of the blood from California, Oregon and Washington tested positive for Covid antibodies (1.44 percent from all nine states) … and this is almost certainly an undercount as some percentage of people (1 to 10 percent) never develop detectable levels of antibodies and some infected people might not have developed detectable levels of antibodies by the time they donated blood.
Back to the statements …
"We looked for evidence of early widespread transmission and could not confirm it," Dr. Jay Butler … said.
Comment: I argue the CDC’s virus sleuths did not look that hard for evidence of early widespread transmission. If they were looking for such evidence, they would have rushed to interview and test all of the people listed above (none were ever interviewed by CDC officials). Several of these people also had medical records that could be examined and several received multiple positive antibody tests.
When the CDC official says this agency looked for “evidence of widespread transmission,” does this mean they weren’t looking for transmission that perhaps wasn’t “widespread?”
The phrase we looked for transmission and “could not confirm it” strikes me as another example of “CYA” phrasing or obfuscation.
So even if all of these people had definite Covid symptoms and tested positive via reputable antibody tests, these possible early cases still couldn’t be “confirmed” because these people didn’t get a positive PCR test.
But how could these people have gotten a test that would “confirm” their cases? The PCR test didn’t exist when they had Covid symptoms.
The ignored U.S.S Roosevelt antibody study …
The Red Cross antibody study wasn’t the only antibody study that could have produced evidence of early cases.
The CDC and the U.S. Navy actually tested 382 sailors from the U.S.S. Teddy Roosevelt air craft carrier for antibodies after that ship’s heavily-publicized outbreak in late March and April 2020. (It’s unknown why this antibody study didn’t include more crew members of the 4,850 crew).
Blood for those antibody tests was collected April 20-24, 2020 - more than a month before the CDC press conference.
The headline of this serology study was that 60 percent of crew members who were tested for antibodies came back positive. PCR tests of crew members had suggested that 20 to 25 percent of the crew of 4,850 had been infected by the virus, but the percentage, per antibody tests, was actually much higher.
The paper that resulted from this antibody study ignores the “elephant in the room” question: When did crew members start to be infected and, given that all crew members were stuck on a ship together, how did the virus get on the ship and begin to spread?
The study actually offers some tantalizing clues as the 382 study participants were asked to fill out questionnaires and report the dates they experienced Covid-like symptoms.
Twelve of the sailors reported onset of symptoms 40 or more days before they donated blood for their antibody tests, which would be on or before the date the ship made its first port-of-call (in Vietnam in mid-March).
From language and a graph in the study:
“Two sailors who participated in the study reported the onset of symptoms 98 and 99 days prior to their antibody tests.”
Note: 98 to 99 days from April 20- 24 (the dates blood was drawn for antibody tests) = “onset of symptoms” on or around January 17 - the date ship left San Diego.
In other words, at least two sailors very possibly had Covid when the ship pulled out of port in San Diego on January 17 - which is two days before the first “confirmed” case in America.
I also note that only 7.8 percent of the ship’s crew took part in this antibody study. If half the crew (2,400 sailors) had been tested for antibodies, the number of cases pre-dating the Vietnam port-of-call might have been at least 6X higher.
According to my theory, any crew member who tested positive for Covid antibodies on April 20-24 and had Covid symptoms before the first week in March almost certainly was infected by other crew members or was already infected when the ship left America.
In short, The U.S.S. Roosevelt antibody study presents strong evidence of “early spread” and would have provided stronger evidence if more crew members had participated in this study.
Also, just like the 106 people who tested positive in the Red Cross antibody study, officials did not interview any of the ship’s likely/possible early cases.
These antibody results and the possibility the virus came on board this ship on Jan. 17 should have also been known to CDC officials by May 29th. (The paper publishing the results of the study was published on-line on June 9, only 10 days after the CDC press conference, so these results had to be known to officials on May 29th).
Final statement …
“(Dr. Butler) added his team will continue to search for clues of the first cases on U.S. soil.”
My Comment:
“Continue to search for clues?” They never even started.
In a nutshell, the CDC said there was no evidence whatsoever of any cases in America in November and December 2019. This is a massive lie ... and they got away with it. Also, no mainstream press figure ever called them out on this lie. In fact, I'm the only reporter/journalist in the world who has highlighted these likely lies or misleading statements.
I think there's a real purpose for every event. Often the purpose is to frame or control "the narrative."
With this press conference (and the publication of this CDC "paper"), I think the real purpose was to nip in the bud the notion/theory that this virus was spreading around the world much earlier than officials said.
I'd compare this effort to what happened when Fauci et al coordinated the publication of those letters that were published at The Lancet and Nature. Those letters assured everyone that "the lab leak" theory was an impossibility. It worked (for a while). For about a year, it was taboo to put forward the "lab leak" theory. If you did it, you would be cancelled and censored by social media and attacked as a conspiracy kook by the mainstream press and officials.
This CDC press conference seems to have worked in that it made "investigations" into possible early spread in countries besides China a taboo or off-limits topics. My "proof?" Has anyone seen any journalism or official investigations since May 29, 2020 that delved into the evidence of early spread?
You've seen it at my Substack site, but, alas, I don't count since I'm not a "real' journalist who works for an official news organization.
It's also interesting to me that the Seattle Times and Palm Beach Post DID produce important journalism on "early spread" evidence in early May 2020. I cite links to this journalism in my article. But these newspapers completely dropped this topic and haven't done any follow-up stories since their original stories.
I've emailed journalists and editors at these newspapers (many times), asking them why no follow-up? I've never gotten a reply to my queries.
... Check that. Lewis Kamb, a reporter then working for for the Seattle Times (who produced several excellent stories on early cases in Washington), did respond when I sent him details about Tim and Brandie McCains' early cases in Alabama.
His only question:
"Did the McCains travel to China before they became sick?"
"No," I replied. Of course they hadn't.
That was the last I heard from him or anyone at those two newspapers. The topic had become taboo for some reason.