Theory: Officials Intentionally Concealed Evidence of Early Spread

HOW did they do this? This article lists 28 ways this important result could have been (was) accomplished.

CDC officials, NIH officials and leading scientists and public health officials from around the world have probably conspired to conceal evidence of early spread from the public. In the author’s opinion, the pronouncements of these authorities should not be trusted.

My hypothesis of early spread posits that the novel coronavirus had likely already infected tens of millions of Americans by the date of the lockdowns of mid-March 2020.

Perhaps the most disturbing conclusion flowing from this hypothesis is the possibility at least some public health officials and government authorities knew virus spread was happening and went to great lengths to cover up this knowledge. (See: “Why Early Spread matters.”)

This thought led me to ask the question of HOW officials might have attempted to conceal such potentially explosive and narrative-changing evidence.

Based on more than two years of research and my own original journalism, I have identified at least 28 mechanisms I believe were used to conceal evidence of early spread.

If officials were interested in concealing evidence of early spread, all of these tactics would - and did - advance this goal. 

It should be stressed that these are personal theories. This overview does not provide copious supporting documents or citations. In future articles, I plan to expound on each of these points.

As far as I am aware, no other writer has highlighted the elaborate steps I believe must have been involved in concealing the truth about early spread.

List of mechanisms (perhaps) used to conceal evidence of early spread

Regarding the hypothesis that certain official worked to conceal evidence of early spread, I believe certain officials and authorities did or may have …

1. Intentionally “throttled” or limited public access to early antibody tests. This concealed evidence of early spread. (Antibody tests prove or strongly suggest “prior infection.”)

(2) Most Americans who think they might have had early cases did not begin to receive antibody tests until the last week in April 2020 or the first weeks in May 2020. According to multiple studies, detectable levels of antibodies fade or wane in as little as two or three months in some percentage of people. 

With my early spread investigations, I’m particularly interested in people who may have been infected before February 2020. When people received an antibody test is very important to this research. My theory is that many people who received antibody tests in late April or May 2020 no longer had detectable levels of antibodies after experiencing Covid symptoms in November, December or January - five to seven months before they received their antibody tests.

Intentionally delaying the dates most Americans could receive antibody tests concealed evidence of early spread (that is, the tests would have produced more “positives” if they had been given earlier).

(3) Per my research, antibody tests offered by smaller clinics, labs or in-house antibody tests used by some hospitals seem to have produced higher rates of “positives” than the “authorized” test. Results from these tests/clinics/labs were often discredited as “junk” tests, etc. The effort to impugn these early positive results may have been orchestrated to discredit evidence of early spread. 

(4)  Antibody tests that were being widely used may have been manipulated or set up to produce fewer positive results. I believe it’s possible the cutoff values of the “authorized” antibody tests may have been manipulated, at least early in the pandemic, to produce less evidence of early spread.

Note:  The above possibility would be the opposite effect of how the PCR tests were utilized.   (See below) I believe PCR test results were eventually manipulated to produce more evidence of infections, but only after the lockdowns had gone into effect. 

It could be argued that the PCR tests, almost by themselves, produced evidence that “late spread” was occurring. In the past, respiratory viruses always spiked in the “cold and flu” months of November through early March. This was NOT the case with the alleged wide-spread arrival of Covid … in late March and April 2020.

PCR tests were delayed

(5) Wide-spread administration of PCR tests did not begin until AFTER the lockdowns (around mid-March 2020). Like many Covid students, I’m skeptical of how these tests were used (40 or 45 cycles required to produce a “positive” result). However, if the cycle thresholds are lower, I believe PCR tests can and probably do detect authentic cases. It’s possible PCR tests were intentionally delayed to conceal evidence that early infections were already occurring in large numbers.

(6) Only one antibody study was performed by the CDC on “archived” blood collected in the year 2019 by the Red Cross. The results of this study - which showed that 2.03 percent of blood donors in three western states had already developed antibodies by early December 2019 - were not published until Nov. 30, 2020 - 11 1/2 months after the first tranche of blood had been collected Dec. 13-16, 2019.

Curiously, the CDC’s paper on the Red Cross antibody study does not report when this blood was tested for antibodies. If the public knew by mid-March 2020 that at least 2.03 percent of one random sample of blood donors were already infected by November 2019, it’s possible many more Americans would have questioned the imperative of draconian lockdowns to “slow” or “stop” the spread of this virus.

(7) Officials and experts quickly acted to impeach or impugn the findings of articles or studies that did challenge the official narrative regarding the first cases in America. That is, many authority figures and experts dismissed the significance of the findings of the Red Cross antibody study. I believe some of these critics were part of a coordinated effort to conceal evidence of early spread by claiming this “evidence” was dubious or bogus and thus did not warrant any weight or credibility.

(8) Public health officials intentionally chose to not investigate or interview people who likely or possibly had early cases. This might be one of the most important ways officials concealed evidence of early spread. They simply didn’t investigate credible claims.

(9) Per my hypothesis, some never-disclosed number of people no doubt did die from Covid before the lockdowns, and these likely “Covid deaths” have also never been fully investigated. I believe some doctors, nurses or administrators at hospitals (and perhaps medical examiners) must suspect that previous patients died with Covid-like symptoms or clinical markers and have not reported these suspicions to public health authorities or shared this belief with the public.

In recent hearing before a Congressional sub-committee, former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield revealed that “some military death certificates before December 31, 2019 read ‘coronavirus.’ “

Redfield also made (ignored) news by reporting that officials now know of Covid cases dating to September 2019, something he or no CDC official said while he was CDC director.

Shelby County (AL) coroner Lina Evans, interviewed by a Birmingham TV station for a story about an Alabama man who nearly died from a December 2019 case of Covid,  believes Alabamians were already dying from Covid in late 2019.

“We had so many hospice deaths in that last quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020,” she said. “COVID wasn’t mentioned, but we did have a lot of people with respiratory failure. I believe that when the research comes out we are going to see that COVID played a role in multiple deaths that we actually had no idea.”

(10) More than three years after the beginning of the official pandemic, the public still doesn’t know how many labs or medical clinics in America were providing positive antibody results to state health agencies and why this data has never been released to the public. It’s likely  “positive” antibody results reported to state or national public health agencies have been intentionally suppressed or concealed from the American public.

This graph shows that ILI visits were much higher in the flu season of 2019-2020 than in previous flu seasons (the exception - for just a few weeks - the flu season of 2017-2018, said to be the worst in four decades). The ILI visits for 2020 continued to be 6 to 7 percent into early March. Note that the increase above the norm began in Week 45 of 2019 and continued through at least week 14 (not shown in this chart). ILI arrived earlier and stayed at very elevated levels for at least 20 weeks.

ILI was ‘widespread’ and ‘severe’ in much of America 

(11)  Officials ignored evidence of “widespread” and “severe” ILI in America, beginning in November 2019. As I will document ad nauseam in a future article,  this information was revealed in copious numbers of weekly ILI surveillance reports produced by virtually every state health agency and the CDC. 

Also, I will provide data that shows the number of flu tests administered to sick Americans was much higher in the 2019-2020 flu season than previous flu seasons. The fact that more people were experiencing ILI symptoms in the flu season of 2019-2020 (compared to recent previous flu seasons) should have been viewed as possible evidence this virus had already circulated throughout the country.

(12) As I will also document in a future article, officials revised estimates of “flu” or “ILI” cases” for the 2019-2020 season. A flu season previously described as one of the worst in perhaps decades - and a flu season that arrived earlier - is now characterized as a normal or even mild flu season. I believe estimates of the severity of the 2019-2020 flu season were quickly revised by the CDC to conceal evidence of early spread.

Did CDC officials lie at their early spread press conference?

(13) In my opinion, CDC officials were not being truthful to the public (and committed “lies of omission”) when they said in a May 29, 2020 press briefing that there were no “indications” of even “isolated” spread in America before January 19, 2020. As I have documented in several articles, numerous “indications” of early spread existed … and this evidence was or should have been known by the time officials made these comments at this May 29, 2020 press conference. Officials concealed evidence of early spread by explicitly stating that this had not happened, when these same officials had copious “indications” to know otherwise.

(14)The basis of the above conclusion (no early spread) was largely DNA sequencing analysis instead of antibody evidence. In other words, CDC officials seemingly produced the result they wanted by ignoring studies and evidence that did include copious evidence of early spread. They ignored counter evidence (in the form of positive antibody results). This would be another example of officials not investigating that which they did not want to “confirm.” Public health officials concealed evidence of early spread by the manner they chose to frame or express such “evidence.”

Fauci and his team squelch lab-leak theory

… and early spread investigations

(15) Officials, including Anthony Fauci, pushed and clearly wanted the public to believe that the origination event was a Wuhan Wet market that was held in early or mid-December 2019. Key scientists were recruited to support an influential article (on “proximal origins”) in Nature magazine and a letter in The Lancet medical journal, both of which rejected the possibility the virus was created in a lab and somehow later escaped (or was released).

By emphasizing the cluster of cases allegedly tracing to this live market, officials signaled that there was no need to go back further in time to look for other cases that pre-dated this live market. 

Leading public health officials effectively curtailed real investigations into early cases by promoting the narrative that the virus derived from other animals (the “natural origins” theory) and could be traced to one market in one city, with the beginning of virus spread restricted only to the months of December 2019 or perhaps November 2019. These officials concealed evidence of early spread by putting forth the position that there was no need to look for evidence of early spread before November or December 2019.

(16) Censorship was employed to block early spread investigations. For many months, the zoonotic or “natural origin” theory was the only origination theory that could be postulated on the Internet. For example, Zero Hedge  - for a period of time - was banned from Twitter for simply giving credence to the “lab-leak” theory.

As noted, Anthony Fauci was instrumental in producing an influential letter published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. The letter, signed by many scientists with close ties to Fauci (some whose research is dependent on NIH grant money controlled by Fauci), basically stated that the lab-leak theory was impossible and was bogus science. 

The publishing of this letter was clearly another example where officials sought to prevent investigations which might produce evidence people outside of Wuhan were being infected earlier. It’s also clear officials instigated and coordinated an effort to intimidate, silence or malign scientists and other voices who disagreed with these conclusions.

In my opinion, this was yet another intentional effort to block investigations that might reveal that virus spread commenced weeks, months or perhaps even years earlier. Such investigations, if genuinely pursued, would likely identify the individuals and organizations most responsible for this pandemic, as well as the myriad catastrophic (and unnecessary) responses to same.

17) As far as I am aware, no public health agency has ever performed antibody tests on athletes who got sick at the Wuhan Military Games in October 2019. Nor have officials interviewed any of these athletes. (Also, see point No. 25).

Early cases can literally not be ‘confirmed’

(18) Public health officials controlled the definition of a “confirmed” case, which requires a positive PCR test. However, PCR tests were not widely administered until latter March 2020.

Significantly, positive antibody tests (in combination with early symptoms) are not enough to “confirm” an early case. 

Given these protocols, one could argue that there is literally no way to “confirm” an early case of Covid. Officials thus concealed evidence of early spread by ruling out any cases that did not satisfy the definitions of a “case” - definitions they wrote.

(19) Early PCR tests seemed to have been performed primarily or exclusively by the CDC labs in Atlanta, meaning local labs or health care clinics were not performing their own PCR tests in the early weeks and months of the official pandemic. That is, there was no possibility that PCR tests would be performed by any other testing lab in America. In my opinion, if such tests had been performed, they would have produced copious evidence of “early spread.”

(20) Early CDC guidance encouraged medical providers to investigate possible Covid patients, but only those who had recently returned from Wuhan or China. Americans who might have been infected were not investigated and did not receive the few PCR tests being performed by the CDC in Atlanta.

If only people who had recently been to China were being tested, the only “confirmed” early cases would be … people who had recently been to China. This excludes the 99.99 percent of the American population that had not recently been to China. This testing protocol certainly concealed evidence of early spread among Americans who had not travelled to China.

(21) In the early months of the official pandemic, the priority of state and local public health agencies was investigating current cases and stopping current spread. “Contact tracing” efforts were copious in March and April 2020. 

However, no “contact tracing” investigations were commissioned of Americans who may have been infected before latter January 2020. Local public health officials in Washington state admitted in May 2020 that as many as 65 possible early cases had NOT been investigated (allegedly due to a lack of manpower, resources or a focus on only current cases).

(22) Officials ignored the ramifications of antibody studies of “archived” blood in Italy and France as well as sewage test results from certain countries. Little if any known evidence exists that public health officials prioritized the testing of samples taken from waste water treatment plants in America before mid-January 2020. 

The negative IgM result is more significant than most realize

(23) Many or most published antibody studies do not include important information that would allow researchers to date when an infected person did or did not have Covid. A “negative” IgM antibody result in combination with a positive test for the IgG antibody precludes the possibility the person who gave blood was recently infected.

That is, blood donors who had a negative IgM result were infected more than 30 days before they gave blood. If reported, this information would provide more compelling evidence that many antibody-positive donors were infected earlier and did not have a recent asymptomatic case. Not reporting/providing this specific information conceals evidence of early spread.

The ‘conspiracy’ must also involve the ‘watchdog’ press

(24) With the exception of a series of articles published by The Seattle Times and Palm Beach Post in early May 2020, the mainstream press has shown no interest in investigating possible cases of early infections outside of China. This is very odd given the large number of journalists and news organization who could have investigated this topic, but have not. 

I can confirm that journalists at prominent news organizations (such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, al.com and nj.com) have been made aware of the copious evidence of early spread and still refuse to publish stories or commission investigations. It’s perhaps possible government officials or other powerful figures pressured news organizations to refrain from performing any investigations that might further develop evidence of early spread.

World Military Games evidence of early spread 

(25) The apparent fact that large numbers of athletes from numerous nations became ill from a virus while in Wuhan for the World Military Games could also be potentially significant. Here the assumption would be if many athletes did become sick, whatever virus caused this rash of illness must have already been spreading in this city … at least by September 2019. 

I have also read accounts of people who noted that streets in Wuhan were “nearly empty” during the Games. This might suggest Chinese officials knew an outbreak of some virus had already occurred in this city. 

David Asher, a former “Covid 19 investigator for the U.S. State Department,” told Australian journalist and author Sharri Markson,  “We do see some indications in our own data … that there was Covid circulating in the United States as early as early December, possibly earlier than that,” as reported by the UK’s Daily Mail in September 2021. 

This quote also seems to contradict the CDC’s definitive statements from May 29, 2020 that there were “no indications” of virus spread in America before late January 2020.

Furthermore, satellite images of several Wuhan hospitals show parking lots at these hospitals were overflowing in September 2019, with far more cars than had been present the same month in previous years. This possible evidence of virus spread has largely been ignored in the context of seeking to identify when virus spread may have commenced in China and Wuhan.

Little focus on Ft. Detrick 

(26) Little if any “mainstream” investigative attention has been devoted to the possibility the virus may have leaked, escaped or been released at other labs throughout the world, including Ft. Detrick in Maryland. This facility was shut down by order of CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield in July 2019 due to concerns over safety protocols. Scientific research did not fully commence again for four to six months.

Other alternative media journalists have asked questions about “vaping” illnesses and a deadly outbreak at a Virginian nursing home in the summer/early fall of 2019.

Laura Mueller, a new Substacker who is assisting me with my research, points out that a flash flood in May 2018 caused damaged at the Ft. Detrick research facility, damage that may have compromised the facility’s safety systems. 

These theories also deserve more rigorous investigation than they’ve received to date. The fact serious investigations of other possible origination points have not occurred also suggests a possible effort to conceal evidence of early spread. 

U.S.S. Roosevelt probably had early cases too

(27) In previous dispatches, I have also highlighted information from a CDC/Navy antibody study of sailors who were part of the U.S.S. Teddy Roosevelt crew between January 17 and late April 2020. A major outbreak on this aircraft carrier generated much media attention for a few weeks in early spring 2020. 

I believe details of this study strongly suggest at least two crew members may have already been infected by this virus when this ship left port from San Diego on January 17, 2020. This would be before the first confirmed case in America. I believe officials must have known details provided in this study strongly suggest “early spread” was occurring in America and have (intentionally) never publicized this possibility. 

I also note that this antibody study included only 382 of the ship’s 4,850 crew members. If the entire crew - or even half the crew - had been tested for antibodies, I believe evidence of early spread among these sailors would be even more convincing. A future story will provide the reasons I’ve reached this conclusion.

(28) - Officials ignore or discount the testimonials of millions of people who think they had or might have had “early Covid.”

I’d be surprised if any other journalist has saved as many testimonials as I have (“Reader Comments”) from people who share details of their presumed/possible early cases. In an article published Feb. 15, 2024, I simply posted hundreds of these testimonials. I also did the same thing with a previous article where I published testimonials of 104 Americans who think they had early Covid.

Approximately 12 of these testimonials were written by people who claim to have later received positive antibody tests to support their belief.

***

In Conclusion …

At this point, I’m not sure I would argue that any of these 28 items qualify as “smoking gun” evidence that certain officials may have intentionally concealed evidence of early spread (no official has come forward and said, “yes we did this” … nor do I expect this to ever occur.)

However, taken in their entirety, these points do strongly suggest that a coordinated and intentional effort was made to conceal evidence that the novel coronavirus was spreading months before officials have acknowledged. 

That is, if concealing such evidence was important to certain people and organizations, these measures would have been important or necessary to achieve the intended result.

If such an effort was made … it worked. Today, no public health officials and no mainstream news organizations are seriously considering the possibility that millions of world citizens had already been infected with this virus by the end of the calendar year 2019. The evidence of early spread has largely been concealed from the public.

Finally - for the record - I do NOT trust the pronouncements of public health officials regarding the dates this virus began to spread … nor any of their other major statements of “settled science.”