This is incredibly helpful. Excellent reporting. Keep digging, Natosha. Understanding what happened in Wuhan in October and November 2019 is critical to understanding the outbreak and entire pandemic. 15 million people are dead from this totally avoidable and unnecessary pandemic. Everyone and future generations will be at far greater risk if we don’t do everything possible to understand what went wrong and fix our biggest shortcomings.
There are two things that would be useful to know. When were the first COVID-19 cases and when did anyone with an ability to do something about it start realizing that they were dealing with a novel disease. COVID-19 looks enough like other respiratory diseases that the epidemic could appear to be just a bad flu season. It's like the epidemic of Kaposi's sarcoma that was actually the AIDS epidemic.
COVID-19 is a stealth disease. It can spread before symptoms appear and it grows exponentially. We've seen how COVID-19 can spread through a population with few cases being detected, then, apparently suddenly clog every ER and ICU in a broad area. It's easy to ignore and brush under the table, especially if you are a bureaucrat trying to make your numbers. In the US, for example, hospitals were refusing to allow health care workers to wear protective gear to avoid scaring patients and the community. I'll bet there were Chinese hospital administrators being told by upper management to treat-em and street-em in the early days of COVID-19.
The value in trying to track down the first cases of COVID-19 would be in figuring out how to detect and react to the next plague. Just as the vaccines developed for SARS but never needed are helping us with COVID-19, figuring out how to detect and deal with son-of-COVID-19 would be amazingly useful.
“Sinterklass, the Christmas holiday, can be any day after December 5th.” Slight correction: Sinterklaas is cannot be any day after Dec 5th; it’s always celebrated on Dec 5th. “A few days after” would be any day between Dec 7 - Dec 9, possibly 10. (Also, mind the minor typo in ‘Sinterklass’, it’s Sinterklaas).
I would like to mention that Sinterklaas is not a Christmas holiday. Sinterklaas is feast that takes place at 5 December. It is not a holiday: children go to school, people are at work, but at the end of the afternoon when it gets dark, Sinterklaas is celebrated with presents and surprises.
Do, Sinterklaas is not any day after 5 December, it ís 5 December.
Ron Fouchier told in a national newspaper Het Algemeen Dagblad the same story as he told in the video documentary VPRO tegenlicht:
He told the interviewer he first heard about pneumonia early December and that in the course (in Dutch: in de loop van December) of December it appeared to be a coronavirus:
"Wanneer had u in de gaten dat er in China iets serieus aan de hand was?
,,Ik was op vakantie toen er in december rumoer ontstond in infectieziektenland. Er waren geruchten dat mensen ziek waren geworden, en dat dat te maken had met een dierenmarkt. In de loop van december werd duidelijk dat het om een coronavirus ging dat via de luchtwegen overdraagbaar zou zijn. Dan gaan bij een viroloog alle alarmbellen rinkelen.”"
Translated in English:
"When did you realize that something serious was going on in China? "I was on holiday when there was an uproar in infectious disease land in December. There were rumors that people had gotten sick, and that that had to do with an animal market. In the course of December, it became clear that it was a coronavirus that would be transmissible through the respiratory tract. Then all the alarm bells will ring with a virologist.""
This interview with Ron Fouchier was published 5 April 2020, not long after VPRO Tegenlicht was broadcasted.
Natasha: This was a fascinating read and I want to start by thanking you for your great reporting, as always. I don't think we'll ever find a definitive cause, and to understand why, we have to consider the political implications.
Think of what happens if the lab-leak theory is proven out. The Chinese government will have no incentive to support it because it will derail their nation's ascent. On the other side, the American President (for example) will face such impossibly high pressure to retaliate that no rational actor would want to face such a choice. Extend that to other world leaders--at least the rational ones that don't want to bring about chaos (war?) will likely cause even more damage than the coronavirus.
This has to be part of the calculation on both sides (the Chinese/non-Chinese leadership) and so
that's why I don't think we'll ever really know where COVID-19 originated.
I am constructing a timeline comparing SARS 2003 and COVID-19. If you start with Nov 16th, 2002 as the First SARS case and Nov 14, 2019 as the First Covid Case, there are many parallels (medical, media info, and political). For instance on the 48th Day of SARS 2003, the newspaper in Heyuan said "There is no epidemic in Heyuan". On day 48 for COVID 19, the national Chinese media said all rumors about an unknown sickness are false" Details to follow (Used the book "China Syndrome" by Karl Taro Greenfield for SARS 2003.
"America is saying that covid-19 started earlier than the Chinese say it did"? Maybe the IC is saying that, but the CDC claims the world's first Covid deaths–on Jan 9, 2020. On that day, Lovell “Cookie” Brown became the first known person in the United States to die with COVID-19. Her case was included in the CDC's official record of COVID-19 deaths. China reported the first local death from an illness caused by the virus two days later, on January 11.
figures from "Serologic testing of U.S. blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies: December 2019-January 2020” suggest that 4-6 million Americans had been infected by December, 2019.
The Joint WHO-China Report on Jan.-Feb. China visit: “Researchers reviewed 76,000 clinical records from October to November 2019, in which were 92 possible cases of Covid-19. 67 of those had no signs of infection based on antibody tests done a year later, and all 92 were ultimately ruled out based on the clinical criteria for Covid-19”.
More recently, in the US, "Estimated SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence increased from 1.4% in December, 2019l to 3.5% in July 2020, to 20.2% for infection-induced antibodies and 83.3% for combined infection- and vaccine-induced antibodies in May 2021." JAMA.
Mr Westergard writes that by mid-October of 2019, Wuhan had been struck by “an unusually vicious flu season”. The entire Northern Hemisphere was experiencing “an unusually vicious flu season” and it was worst in Italy, which also recorded much earlier Covid death: Erasmus University lab results confirm that Italian samples from 2019 ‘are very similar to what (Italy's National Cancer Institute) discovered, despite some small differences. The combined results made a convincing case that the coronavirus or a similar virus was circulating in Italy months before the country's first officially recorded case’.
Is there anything you will read, besides the actual WHO report? The WHO report provides an enormous amount of data and details on the possibility of early undetected spread of COVID-19. You might claim their actual scientific data is all all fabricated, but you should at least address or mention it here. This is basic homework that you aren't doing.
It is also hilarious how conspiracy theorists are very interested in the Connor Reed case, *who literally said that he goes to Huanan market all of the time*, and yet are convinced that he might have gotten it elsewhere. Anywhere but the market that a vast majority of early Dec patients were connected to!
This is incredibly helpful. Excellent reporting. Keep digging, Natosha. Understanding what happened in Wuhan in October and November 2019 is critical to understanding the outbreak and entire pandemic. 15 million people are dead from this totally avoidable and unnecessary pandemic. Everyone and future generations will be at far greater risk if we don’t do everything possible to understand what went wrong and fix our biggest shortcomings.
There are two things that would be useful to know. When were the first COVID-19 cases and when did anyone with an ability to do something about it start realizing that they were dealing with a novel disease. COVID-19 looks enough like other respiratory diseases that the epidemic could appear to be just a bad flu season. It's like the epidemic of Kaposi's sarcoma that was actually the AIDS epidemic.
COVID-19 is a stealth disease. It can spread before symptoms appear and it grows exponentially. We've seen how COVID-19 can spread through a population with few cases being detected, then, apparently suddenly clog every ER and ICU in a broad area. It's easy to ignore and brush under the table, especially if you are a bureaucrat trying to make your numbers. In the US, for example, hospitals were refusing to allow health care workers to wear protective gear to avoid scaring patients and the community. I'll bet there were Chinese hospital administrators being told by upper management to treat-em and street-em in the early days of COVID-19.
The value in trying to track down the first cases of COVID-19 would be in figuring out how to detect and react to the next plague. Just as the vaccines developed for SARS but never needed are helping us with COVID-19, figuring out how to detect and deal with son-of-COVID-19 would be amazingly useful.
Great summary of the state of things regarding COVID origins - thank you!
“Sinterklass, the Christmas holiday, can be any day after December 5th.” Slight correction: Sinterklaas is cannot be any day after Dec 5th; it’s always celebrated on Dec 5th. “A few days after” would be any day between Dec 7 - Dec 9, possibly 10. (Also, mind the minor typo in ‘Sinterklass’, it’s Sinterklaas).
Dear Natasha,
Thank you for this interesting article.
I would like to mention that Sinterklaas is not a Christmas holiday. Sinterklaas is feast that takes place at 5 December. It is not a holiday: children go to school, people are at work, but at the end of the afternoon when it gets dark, Sinterklaas is celebrated with presents and surprises.
Do, Sinterklaas is not any day after 5 December, it ís 5 December.
Ron Fouchier told in a national newspaper Het Algemeen Dagblad the same story as he told in the video documentary VPRO tegenlicht:
He told the interviewer he first heard about pneumonia early December and that in the course (in Dutch: in de loop van December) of December it appeared to be a coronavirus:
https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/viroloog-nederland-is-vol-met-gastheren-die-een-virus-over-kunnen-dragen-br~afbc59f5/
The respective paragraph:
"Wanneer had u in de gaten dat er in China iets serieus aan de hand was?
,,Ik was op vakantie toen er in december rumoer ontstond in infectieziektenland. Er waren geruchten dat mensen ziek waren geworden, en dat dat te maken had met een dierenmarkt. In de loop van december werd duidelijk dat het om een coronavirus ging dat via de luchtwegen overdraagbaar zou zijn. Dan gaan bij een viroloog alle alarmbellen rinkelen.”"
Translated in English:
"When did you realize that something serious was going on in China? "I was on holiday when there was an uproar in infectious disease land in December. There were rumors that people had gotten sick, and that that had to do with an animal market. In the course of December, it became clear that it was a coronavirus that would be transmissible through the respiratory tract. Then all the alarm bells will ring with a virologist.""
This interview with Ron Fouchier was published 5 April 2020, not long after VPRO Tegenlicht was broadcasted.
Natasha: This was a fascinating read and I want to start by thanking you for your great reporting, as always. I don't think we'll ever find a definitive cause, and to understand why, we have to consider the political implications.
Think of what happens if the lab-leak theory is proven out. The Chinese government will have no incentive to support it because it will derail their nation's ascent. On the other side, the American President (for example) will face such impossibly high pressure to retaliate that no rational actor would want to face such a choice. Extend that to other world leaders--at least the rational ones that don't want to bring about chaos (war?) will likely cause even more damage than the coronavirus.
This has to be part of the calculation on both sides (the Chinese/non-Chinese leadership) and so
that's why I don't think we'll ever really know where COVID-19 originated.
Lost credibility in second sentence. “Try and assemble”. *cringe*
Great article. Any comments or info about the Military Games??
I am constructing a timeline comparing SARS 2003 and COVID-19. If you start with Nov 16th, 2002 as the First SARS case and Nov 14, 2019 as the First Covid Case, there are many parallels (medical, media info, and political). For instance on the 48th Day of SARS 2003, the newspaper in Heyuan said "There is no epidemic in Heyuan". On day 48 for COVID 19, the national Chinese media said all rumors about an unknown sickness are false" Details to follow (Used the book "China Syndrome" by Karl Taro Greenfield for SARS 2003.
"America is saying that covid-19 started earlier than the Chinese say it did"? Maybe the IC is saying that, but the CDC claims the world's first Covid deaths–on Jan 9, 2020. On that day, Lovell “Cookie” Brown became the first known person in the United States to die with COVID-19. Her case was included in the CDC's official record of COVID-19 deaths. China reported the first local death from an illness caused by the virus two days later, on January 11.
figures from "Serologic testing of U.S. blood donations to identify SARS-CoV-2-reactive antibodies: December 2019-January 2020” suggest that 4-6 million Americans had been infected by December, 2019.
The Joint WHO-China Report on Jan.-Feb. China visit: “Researchers reviewed 76,000 clinical records from October to November 2019, in which were 92 possible cases of Covid-19. 67 of those had no signs of infection based on antibody tests done a year later, and all 92 were ultimately ruled out based on the clinical criteria for Covid-19”.
More recently, in the US, "Estimated SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence increased from 1.4% in December, 2019l to 3.5% in July 2020, to 20.2% for infection-induced antibodies and 83.3% for combined infection- and vaccine-induced antibodies in May 2021." JAMA.
Mr Westergard writes that by mid-October of 2019, Wuhan had been struck by “an unusually vicious flu season”. The entire Northern Hemisphere was experiencing “an unusually vicious flu season” and it was worst in Italy, which also recorded much earlier Covid death: Erasmus University lab results confirm that Italian samples from 2019 ‘are very similar to what (Italy's National Cancer Institute) discovered, despite some small differences. The combined results made a convincing case that the coronavirus or a similar virus was circulating in Italy months before the country's first officially recorded case’.
Is there anything you will read, besides the actual WHO report? The WHO report provides an enormous amount of data and details on the possibility of early undetected spread of COVID-19. You might claim their actual scientific data is all all fabricated, but you should at least address or mention it here. This is basic homework that you aren't doing.
It is also hilarious how conspiracy theorists are very interested in the Connor Reed case, *who literally said that he goes to Huanan market all of the time*, and yet are convinced that he might have gotten it elsewhere. Anywhere but the market that a vast majority of early Dec patients were connected to!
- One of those scientists who won't talk to you