A forgotten social media post may hold key clues to Covid-19's origin

bbookofjoe about 3 hours ago 15 commentsRead Article on science.org

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layer8•about 2 hours ago

https://archive.ph/6KeRV

CalRobert•about 1 hour ago

"SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, had arrived in the country on frozen lobsters from Maine that were sold at the Wuhan market"

..... I know, strongly, that this is purely an anecdote.

But this was kind of crazy to see. In Dec 2019 my family and I traveled from Europe to visit family in Maine. We returned around new year's and all got what was by _far_ the worst flu any of us had every had in our lives. And weirdest - it was consistent with covid symptoms.

My youngest was 2 months old (we flew back with her to meet family) and she was quite ill - we still suspect long covid affects her.

Now, entirely possible this is confirmation bias, and airports would have been full of travellers from all over, not just Maine, but still...

gausswho•about 1 hour ago

The Dec 2019 bug also hit me (living in NYC). I wasn't mentally myself for three weeks. I'm not even sure I fully recuperated. It was intense, and worse than when I eventually did experience COVID a couple years later.

From what I read at the time, there was a non-COVID flu at this time throughout the east coast. Tests months later did not show I had COVID antibodies. It remains to me a remarkable sickness unlike anything else I've experienced.

y-c-o-m-b•about 1 hour ago

My child and mother both got super sick like this in March 2019 also, so naturally my wife and mother both think it was early covid. What makes me doubt this is the fact that when Italy and NYC got hit in 2020, there was a HUGE jump in deaths. They couldn't keep up with the bodies. If this thing was circulating earlier than 2020, we surely would've seen the Italy/NYC pattern very quickly. I think the 2019 flu virus or RSV strains were perhaps a very harsh one and that's what people are mistakenly believing was "early covid".

g-b-r•33 minutes ago

To my recollection Italy had an unusually high amount of strong pneumonia at the end 2019, apparently not covid.

The deaths sure spiked later though.

I wonder if it was an earlier variant of Covid, but I guess they would have detected that.

halfnormalform•37 minutes ago

Perhaps the virus evolved to be more deadly after the initial wave of “flu”?

bombcar•44 minutes ago

Could it be worth reaching out to a researcher? If you've NOT had Covid since, you may have evidence in your own bodies that would be useful.

palmotea•24 minutes ago

> If you've NOT had Covid since, you may have evidence in your own bodies that would be useful.

Unlikely. By this point, hasn't pretty much everyone had COVID? My understanding is recent variants often don't even lead to very severe symptoms and may not be recognized as COVID.

bookofjoe•37 minutes ago

>The lobster maps

https://pandemonium.hypotheses.org/898

ilamont•about 1 hour ago

Van Kerkhove says Débarre’s analysis is “interesting,” but cautions that the provenance of the data is unclear. “The way in which the information is identified is highly suspect,” she says.

This has all the hallmarks of a CCP disinformation campaign to shift blame to foreign sources. This started almost as soon as the quarantines began, such as the baseless accusation that the US Army was responsible (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/coronavirus-chinese-offic...).

They then started erasing sampling data from the Wuhan outbreak and cracked down on anyone memorializing Dr. Li Wenliang while planting "evidence" that they knew conspiracy theorists would pick up and spread.

customguy•about 1 hour ago

To me it's kinda like 9/11 in that ultimately I don't really care about the cause, I saw what was done with it. That was very fucked up regardless of the origin being synthetic or not, in both cases.

SirFatty•about 2 hours ago

And I still think the lab leak is the most likely source.

RickJWagner•11 minutes ago

I think so, too.

An exotic disease breaks out right on top of a lab where disease cultivation occurs. Then government coverups begin.

Future generations will be amazed that anyone dismissed this very, very strong possibility.

Also— in a few years, when the politicization has faded, we need a comprehensive study on which countries took the right steps at the time. ( How much shutdown was beneficial. )

n4r9•35 minutes ago

What would persuade you otherwise?

palmotea•about 1 hour ago

> But a new analysis suggests the post may hold clues to the pandemic’s origin—and further evidence that China is withholding vital data on the contentious issue.

> Evolutionary biologist Florence Débarre of CNRS, France’s national research agency, who firmly believes SARS-CoV-2 jumped into people from live animals at the market, calls the WeChat post “extremely elaborate disinformation.” But when she recently translated the post and compared the detailed maps of the market it contains with other, official ones, Débarre found surprises. The maps identify specific stalls as having live animals infected with SARS-CoV-2 and vendors with antibodies to the virus—data China has never shared.

tl;dr: a post pushing a bogus conspiracy theory contained real (and undisclosed) information as background.