Some virus-origination news is fit to print; some isn’t
Cricket City at The Old Gray Lady
From the article: “A scientist who has pored over public accounts of early Covid-19 cases in China reported … that an influential World Health Organization inquiry had most likely gotten the early chronology of the pandemic wrong.”
According to Dr. Michael Worobey, a “leading expert in tracing the evolution of viruses,” a Wuhan accountant wasn’t the first “known” Covid patient. Instead “case zero” in the world was a vendor at the Wuhan seafood market. Furthermore, this vendor experienced symptoms on Dec. 11, 2021; the accountant apparently experienced symptoms on Dec. 16th (not December 8th as previously believed).
That is, per the Times’ scoop, the official birth date of the pandemic was off by … three days.
Perhaps more importantly, the article gave the live market, natural-origin theory a much-needed boost.
Where are the rocket scientists? The epidemiology scientists are awful.
Upon reading this article, I’m more convinced than ever the search for Covid’s “Case Zero” qualifies as the greatest example of investigator incompetence in epidemiology history.
For starters, if so many experts really believe the first person to develop Covid developed this disease on Dec. 11, 2019, society needs an Expert Purge posthaste.
Authors got part of one sentence right.
“The search for the origins of the greatest public health catastrophe in a century has fueled geopolitical battles …”
Because this is “the greatest public health catastrophe in a century,” the public deserves to know who is responsible for this catastrophe … but nobody is going to learn these answers if investigators (and journalists) continue to insist “case zero” happened in mid-December.
Apparently, officials will continue to insist this is the case because, per story authors, “ … few new facts (have) emerg(ed) in recent months to resolve the question.”
Which brings me to the question that made me want to kick the cat: Who is looking for “facts” that might “resolve the question?” Certainly not our trusted experts. Nor any journalists for The New York Times.
Not to toot my own horn (okay, I’ll toot my own horn) …
As it turns out, for almost three years I’ve been trying to present facts that might help “resolve the origination question” and the evidence I’ve presented has been … summarily ignored. As best I can tell, “facts” definitely don’t matter.
The iconic NY Times, as well as the “prestigious” journal Science, carry on about two residents from Wuhan who had Covid in December 2019. Meanwhile, in the “new revelations” category, a small-time freelance journalist few people have heard of identified scores of known people who had the same disease in the same month or earlier.
Alas, the inconvenient fact is all these people happened to live in America (and France and Italy and Brazil and the United Kingdom), details which probably explain the authors’ reference to “geopolitical battles.”
Since no other journalist in the world is counting, I’m happy to include the specific breakdown. Per my research and journalism, at least 64 Americans almost certainly had Covid in December and November 2019 (if not earlier).
39 - Americans Identified from California, Oregon and Washington who gave antibody-positive blood to the Red CrossDec. 13-16, 2019. (This figure doesn’t include another 67 Americans from six more states who had antibodies in their blood samples by mid-January, which means most of these citizens were probably infected by December as well).
2 - from Alabama
2 - from Washington
11 - from Florida
1 - from New Jersey
1 - more from California
8 - more Americans from Texas, New York, Nebraska, South Carolina and Florida
The Times article actually mentions 14 Wuhan residents who apparently had Covid before December 30, 2019. This is good information, but, for what it’s worth, my journalism beat the Times’ journalism by 50 likely cases.
Nor has The Times identified anyone by name who had Covid in November or earlier. As it turns out, I’ve identified nine such people, everyone of whom should be considered a possible “case zero.” (Or, actually, none of these people are case zeroes because we don’t know who the unidentified people were who infected those nine people).
If they ever looked at my articles, Times editors and CDC officials would no doubt dismiss the 64 early cases I’ve identified by saying we don’t “know” for a fact these people had Covid. But how would officials “know” they didn’t?
And how do we, in fact, “know” the Wuhan accountant and the seafood market vendor really had Covid? No PCR tests had been developed by December 11th, 2019.
Presumably, these became “known” or “confirmed” cases because a doctor or scientist performed a diagnostic test of some type, a test that had to involve blood draws or tissue samples. Plus, the same medical experts probably took note of how this novel disease presented itself in patients and considered things like clinical symptoms.
But similar analysis could have been done with the 64 Americans, all of whom had blood drawn and tested positive for Covid antibodies, several multiple times and with different assays. They all had definite Covid symptoms and probably the same clinical presentations as the two Wuhan residents.
I also know many had been to the doctor so they had medical records that could be reviewed by experts. (One Alabama man was hospitalized in ICU for 24 days and must have a thousand pages of medical records that no official ever bothered to review.)
Naysayers argue all the antibody results were probably “false positives.” Every test. Or that all 64 individuals became sick with Covid symptoms; got better and, in the weeks before they received their antibody tests, all 64 happened to contract asymptomatic cases of Covid (thus explaining their positive antibody tests).
The probability this set of circumstances would debunk all 64 cases would have to be … 1-in-an-extremely-large number.
Were all the antibody tests that bad? Apparently we can trust antibody tests today, but shouldn’t trust the results of any tests administered in late April 2020.
While the dismissal of every possible case outside of China before January 2020 still leaves me befuddled, the Times’ article actually bolstered my conviction that the early- circulation hypothesis is correct … and that officials are intentionally covering this up.
Did investigators establish a dangerous precedent?
Nobody’s picked up on it, but officials investigating the first possible cases in Wuhan perhaps made a terrible blunder.
“In January (of 2021) researchers chosen by the W.H.O. visited China and interviewed an accountant who had reportedly developed symptoms on Dec. 8. Their influential March 2021 report described him as the first known case.”
That is, researchers wanted to know more about the man who was “the first known case.”
I can’t believe they actually did this. All I can think is that they didn’t realize they might be establishing a precedent. If virologists or epidemiologists interview one possible “Case Zero,” wouldn’t they also interview anyone else if credible evidence was presented this person had Covid before the other person?
EcoAlliance CEO Dr. Peter Daszak was the one American on the W.H.O’s Investigative team.
According to the article, “… Dr. Daszak said, the interview was a dead end: The accountant had no apparent links to an animal market, lab or a mass gathering.
Daszak endorsed the conclusion of Dr. Worobey that the pandemic very possibly started at the Wuhan live market (which, most importantly, suggests it didn’t start at the Wuhan Institute of Virology … or, say, Ft. Detrick, Maryland). He added that he wished W.H.O. team members had known about this lady when they were in Wuhan.
“Had the team identified the seafood vendor as the first known case, Dr. Daszak said, it would have more aggressively pursued questions like what stall she worked in and where her products came from.”
To me, this seems like a tacit admission that identifying other possible “first cases” might be an important task, whether the possible Case Zero lives in Wuhan or Belleville, NJ.
Editors at The New York Times must have thought details provided by these possible first cases were very important as they put the story on the front page.
But has the same paper published any story on any of the 64 Americans who also had Covid at the same time or even much earlier?
Why didn’t the W.H.O. team interview Belleville, NJ Mayor Michael Melham, who had symptoms on November 20th, 2019 (and later got two positive antibody tests)?
Wouldn’t Peter Daszak, who is looking for the truth on virus origination, want to know how this person might have gotten sick and also want talk to the “many” other people Melham said became sick at the same conference?
In my opinion, The New York Times has long known this virus didn’t begin to spread in Wuhan in mid-December. At least several people at the newspaper must know or strongly suspect that a California man had Covid months before these people in Wuhan. They know this because this man said as much in the Reader Comments following a May 2020 Times Covid article.
As I recount in this article, the man’s first name is Shane. He lives in Marin County, California. He became as sick as he’d ever been in his life after returning from a trip to the Mideast and Italy in the “fall” of 2019. Shane described his symptoms in detail and said he received two different positive antibody tests. He even gave the name of the labs where he got his positive antibody tests.
Not only was this narrative-changing claim deemed news not worthy to print, it wasn’t even worthy of a 10-minute investigation. In case every staffer at the newspaper missed Shane’s comments, I emailed the Times “News Tip” address at least three times, sharing all this information. Cricket City at the Old Gray Lady.
In summary, The New York Times writes a big Page-1 article on two people who had Covid in Wuhan in December, 2019 but won’t write one story on one American who probably had Covid in October.
The W.H.O made a point of interviewing one man who was sick in December in Wuhan, but won’t pressure the CDC to interview even one of 64 antibody-positive Americans who were also sick in the same month or earlier.
Surely, I’m not the only person who finds this odd … or disturbing.
Anyway, it took me about about three weeks of “early spread” research to know that “investigations” into the origination of this virus are a sham … Just like all the other Covid non-investigations.
Still, I’m glad we moved up the start date of the pandemic by three days.
As Reagan stated ""The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." It hasn't changed and never will.
Stopped reading at "expert."
If there is one thing I've learned from these past few years is that any and all so-called "experts" are actually full of shit.