Influenza-Like-Illness probably tells the tale on early spread
The large number of Americans who were SICK with ILI SYMPTOMS in late 2019/early 2020 strongly suggests this virus had already infected tens of millions of Americans by the lockdown date.
I hope to soon publish one of my most-important articles. Today’s article will preview and hit the high points of this coming article.
This article and my future article will attempt to prove that cases of “Influenza Like Illness” (ILI) were both “widespread” and “severe” in almost all U.S. states in the “flu season” of 2019-2020. (The link shows a map of the U.S. from the first week of February 2020. This map shows that ILI “activity levels” were at the highest level in almost all U.S. states).
I believe many of these sick Americans had Covid - months before the novel coronavirus was supposed to be circulating in America. (The CDC stated numerous times that no American was infected before late January 2020).
Much of my supporting evidence comes from contemporaneous ILI weekly reports produced by the CDC and various state public health agencies. These reports show the number of Americans who were “sick” from “something” between November 2019 and March 2020 greatly exceeded the 10-year-norm.
The graph above (note the red line) shows the number of Americans who made visits to healthcare providers for “influenza like illness” symptoms in the latter weeks of 2019 through the lockdown dates of mid-March 2020.
Note how the red line (2019-2020), except for one previous year mentioned below, is far higher than all the other colors representing seven prior flu seasons. The horizontal dash is the national “baseline." This allows us to see how many weeks “ILI visits” in 2019-2020 were above this baseline (far longer than any other flu season shown, and also far above the baseline in most weeks).
Other documents I have found show that, compared to previous flu seasons, far more Americans were getting flu tests beginning in November 2019.
The only flu season where Americans made more visits to the doctor or hospital emergency room for ILI symptoms was the flu season of 2017-2018, which is said to be the worst in 40 years. But even with this flu season, ILI percentages were only higher than 2019-2020 for only a few weeks in January (and not by much).
Why are flu tests significant to Covid discussions?
With my “early spread” research, what particularly interests me is the number of people who felt sick enough to go to a doctor and get a flu test.
The vast majority of people who receive a flu test actually test negative for influenza. In trying to identify possible “early” cases of Covid, I’ve always placed emphasis on people who were sick with Covid symptoms but tested “negative” for influenza. This means influenza could perhaps be ruled out as the cause of these people’s flu-like (Covid-like) symptoms.
(While rarely mentioned, it’s also possible people can have influenza and Covid at the same time. For example, Tim McCain of Sylacauga, Alabama who became critically ill in December 2019 - and later tested positive for Covid antibodies along with his wife - falls into this category. Tim’s wife also got a flu test, but her flu test was negative.)
In searching for evidence that supports the early-spread hypothesis, I’m simply looking for evidence that many people actually experienced Covid-like symptoms months before the virus was supposed to exist in America. If this number was smaller or no different than previous flu seasons, my “early spread” hypothesis would face a significant logical hurdle.
However, it turns out this chart supports my hypothesis by proving many more people than normal had ILI/Covid symptoms in the months before Covid was supposed to exist in America. The much-higher number of flu tests that were administered and ILI surveillance data from numerous state health agencies also support this conclusion.
Put simply, for some reason, far more Americans were going to the doctor and getting flu tests in the flu season of 2019-2020. Could one of those reasons be that Covid had already swept across the country and world? I think so.
School closings were common
Another source of data that strongly suggests far more Americans were getting sick from “something” in the Flu Season of 2019-2020 is the huge number of school closings in the 2019-2020 flu season.
I quickly found more than 30 articles of multiple school closings from at least a dozen U.S. states. I’ve been unable to find similar numbers of stories about “school closings” from other flu seasons of the past five to 10 years. (I’ll publish excerpts and links in my longer upcoming story).
Many of these stories blame these school closings on “the flu,” but other journalists were perhaps more accurate in their reporting and described these outbreaks as flu or “flu-like illness,” meaning many of these sick people (students and staffers) could have had Covid.
As noted, CDC and state health agencies also report ILI cases as a percentage of cases above the expected “baseline” figures. In 2019-2020, ILI percentages were far above the baseline for approximately 22 weeks (from Week 46 of 2019 though week 16 of 2020).
In the 2019-2020 Flu Season, ILI was significantly above baseline levels for far longer than any other flu-season data I’ve examined.
The anecdotes of millions of Americans …
If one gives credence to “anecdotal” testimonies, I’d estimate that many millions of Americans have reported they were sick between November 2019 and early March 2020. I’ve read (and saved) countless testimonies to this effect in Reader Comments from numerous sources.
These people believe they either did have “early” Covid or very possibly had early cases of Covid. Significantly, many of these citizen correspondents describe symptoms that were unlike previous bouts of flu or another ILI.
These correspondents also report that many people at their workplaces, in their communities, or several people in their families were also sick.
I compare this anecdotal evidence to the voluminous accounts of people who believe a loved one either died or had serious adverse health events after receiving the Covid “vaccines.” Or: the “anecdotes” of people who are convinced they themselves suffered a vaccine injury.
I stipulate that every person who thinks he might have had Covid before March 2020 did NOT have Covid. Perhaps most did not. However, if only 10, 20 or 30 percent of people who thinks this did, in fact, have Covid, this cumulative figure would be immense.
It’s always stuck me as odd that millions of similar anecdotes can be categorically dismissed as insignificant. Basically, we are being told by the experts, “Ignore the strong views of millions of people.” I for one do not ignore or discount this huge body of anecdotal evidence.
The symptom and ILI evidence supports the antibody evidence ….
In previous articles on “early spread,” I’ve presented copious evidence, showing that hundreds of Americans from at least 16 widely-dispersed states had evidence via later positive antibody tests that strongly suggests they did have Covid before this novel virus was even supposed to exist in America.
I’ve also pointed out that very few “early” antibody tests were given (before April 2020) and that no PCR tests were given in America before mid-January 2020 and very few until late March.
In other words, it’s almost impossible to “prove” “early spread” by lab diagnostic tests … simply because these tests weren’t being given or didn’t exist when millions of people may have had this virus.
However, observers can look at the number of Americans who were “sick” from “something” (that resembled Covid) and reach logical conclusions based on these observations (clinical symptoms and disease progression).
If many more people experienced Covid (or ILI)-like symptoms in the fall and winter of 2019-2020, maybe this is “evidence” that some new virus was being transmitted person-to-person across America and the world.
In my opinion, the evidence that more people developed ILI symptoms in 2019-2020 compared to previous flu seasons is almost undeniable.
And then the flu completely vanished …
It is also striking that cases of ILI - according to the CDC’s own data - literally disappeared in a matter of four weeks around late March 2020. Jessica Hockett, among others, writes about this nonsensical puzzler in her latest Substack article.
I’ve also come to believe that CDC “estimates” of flu or ILI cases should be taken with a grain of salt.
I’ve long wondered why the agency, often years later, revises estimates of flu cases and deaths by huge numbers. (For example, for years, the number of deaths attributed to the 2017-2018 flu season was 80,000. Then, in one day, out of the blue, this figure was reduced to 60,000 and today, I believe, the “official” figure is 51,000).
Based on my research, I believe the severity of the flu season of 2019-2020 - and the fact ILI cases were elevated through almost all 50 U.S. states - was likely down-played or covered up by officials to conceal evidence of early spread.
Contemporaneous ILI (and media) reports suggesting this was going to be a historically bad flu season are far more credible to me than later “revised” reports that say this was just a normal flu season. (I’ve also been influenced by the knowledge that myself, my two children and seemingly half of my town was sick in December 2019 and January 2020, many with signature Covid symptoms).
If those reading this can go back in their minds until the winter of 2019-2020, I think many will agree with me that many of their neighbors and family members were “sick” from something in the months before “official’ Covid (probably more than had been sick with similar symptoms in the same calendar months in previous years).
And this would be just “symptomatic” people.
If one believes half or most of the people who contracted the novel coronavirus were actually asymptomatic or experienced only mild symptoms, the number of possible early Covid “cases” would be far higher than the ILI tests and surveillance reports show.
In conclusion, the symptoms large numbers of Americans experienced between November 2019 and mid-March 2020 suggest the novel coronavirus had already infected many millions of Americans by the date of the lockdowns.
Again, to be clear, I am saying that millions of Americans had almost-certainly already been infected with this virus by the end of January 2020. In contrast, the CDC and our trusted experts (and the press) say that no - or only a handful - of Americans had been infected by the end of January.
Seismic implications flow from this observation …
One possibility is that all the public health experts in America somehow “missed” the early spread of Covid, even though the ILI evidence showed a major and sustained spike in sick people (people experiencing symptoms that were a perfect match with Covid).
Another extremely-important point deals with what was not seen: Namely, no conspicuous spike in all-cause deaths was observed or commented on.
My hypothesis posits that tens of millions of Americans were sick with ILIs in the winter of 2019-2020. From this sizable cohort, some (not-small) percentage probably had Covid. That is, this virus made a lot of people sick - some (like Tim McCain) extremely sick - but it rarely killed the victims. Almost every person infected survived.
This observation might be the most important of all. IMO what we had was a widely-spreading virus that was causing ILI symptoms in many people …. but it was a virus people were surviving. If it had been a lethal virus, the spike in excess all-cause deaths between November 2019 and March 2020 could not have been missed.
A noticeable or conspicuous spike in excess deaths did NOT happen. Instead, this massive spike in “Covid deaths” happened in … April 2020 - outside the normal cold and flu season and weeks after the lockdowns of March 15, lockdowns mandated to slow or stop virus spread. (So deaths spiked weeks after the lockdowns mandated to prevent cases … and thus future deaths.)
Many more skeptics are now reaching the same conclusion as myself: The novel coronavirus does NOT explain the sudden surge in deaths around the world, deaths all occurring at the same time, typically in a relatively few big cities and in hospitals that primarily serve the poor.
If this virus had been infecting millions of people for many months, a spike in deaths should not have occurred all at once in the Spring … in some cities but not in many other cities and states. Common-sense says the deaths would have begun to occur earlier and had been spread across the world.
The horrific conclusion flowing from this simple observation is that something else was killing the overwhelming percentage of these alleged Covid victims. Almost all of these deaths must have been iatrogenic deaths - deaths caused by faulty treatments, protocols and unnecessary panic and fear.
These deaths - which should not have been attributed solely to Covid - then formed the basis for more rounds of fear and panic, producing longer lockdowns and leading to the consensus that the only thing that would end this pandemic was a rushed “vaccine” that had not had any real safety trials. This “vaccine” then ended up killing far more people than genuine Covid.
I argue that if one wants to know how many people the novel coronavirus really kills (the true Infection Fatality Rate), we should closely look at the all-cause mortality data from November 2019 through mid-March 2020, when the virus was actually spreading throughout the population (per my belief). This virus no doubt killed some people (deaths which were missed or covered-up), but certainly not people in large numbers.
My main Take-away: It was the government and the alleged experts who killed most global citizens, not this new virus, which had probably already peaked by the end of January 2020. It also requires little imagination to see that a scandal of these epic dimensions is not going to be told or exposed by the people who perpetrated said scandal.
More supporting data to come soon.
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I should note that many Covid writers and experts say that the absence of any “excess” all-cause deaths before mid-March 2020 “proves” there was no “early spread.”
However, I flip this narrative and say these people should check their assumptions. The main one being that widespread Covid leads to wide-spread death. I argue that the evidence of early spread shows that this virus was/is NOT a significant killer for the vast majority of the global population.
I’ll throw in one more piece of evidence from a study that is NOT anecdotal that I think supports my hypothesis. The Navy and CDC did an antibody study of crew members who were on the USS Teddy Roosevelt aircraft carrier, which left port in San Diego on January 17, 2020. As most will remember, this ship experienced a major outbreak.
From extrapolations, the antibody study results revealed that 60 percent of the crew of 4,850 sailors had been infected. That’s almost 3,000 crew members.
What’s noteworthy to me is that only one of these crew members died “from Covid,” and he was 41, one of the oldest people on the ship. In other words, the IFR for people under the age of 41 was 0.0000 percent. I also think evidence from this study strongly suggests this virus came on board that ship on January 17, 2020 - which would be before the first “confirmed” case in America.
Re: Anecdotal personal evidence …
I guess I can cite myself here. As noted in my article, in January 2020 I got very “sick” from “something.” I was bedridden for at least six days and was sick enough to go to the doctor which I rarely do. I got a flu test, which was “negative.”
An administrator friend who works at this medical clinic that serves 11 southeast Alabama counties later told me that my case was not atypical. The clinic was over-run by sick people in this time period and almost everyone was testing “negative” for the flu. The administrator told me, “We thought there must be something wrong with the flu tests.”
My symptoms were also not exactly like other cases of “flu” I had experienced in my life. For example, the cough was far more painful and intense. I’ve never experienced the “shortness of breath” I experienced in that week. Nor did I have the volume of phlegm I usually have with a bad cold or flu. I had terrible fatigue and my cough lingered for probably months. I also experienced an altered sense of taste, although I acknowledge this is common for many bugs.
Perhaps most convincing to me is that I never had Covid-like symptoms or tested positive with a PCR test after this January 2020 sickness. This suggests to me that I developed natural immunity to Covid.
Full disclosure, I should mention that I did later get an antibody test - four months after I was sick … and this test was “negative” for Covid antibodies. But as I have documented in other articles, I’m not sure I trust the results of the “authorized” antibody tests. I also know that in many people detectable levels of Covid antibodies can fade in two or three months. So even though I tested negative for antibodies, I still think I probably had Covid.