[HN Gopher] Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate ...
___________________________________________________________________
Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus activity
in Fall 2019
Author : abc-xyz
Score : 193 points
Date : 2020-06-08 19:39 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dash.harvard.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (dash.harvard.edu)
| knolax wrote:
| > While queries of the respiratory symptom "cough" show seasonal
| fluctuations coinciding with yearly influenza seasons, "diarrhea"
| is a more COVID-19 specific symptom and only shows an association
| with the current epidemic.
|
| Since when is diarrhea a COVID-19 specific symptom? Using Baye's
| the probability of Covid-19 given diarrhea is:
|
| prevalence of covid in general pop (medium low) * probability of
| diarrhea given Covid-19 (very low, given we only recently found
| out this was a symptom at all) / prevalence of diarrhea in
| general pop (the prevalence of diarrhea in general is definitely
| higher than Covid-19).
|
| Which lends to a very small probability. Pre-print publications
| like this based off of shaky data should be taken with a large
| handful of salt.
| joshuawithers wrote:
| It continually blows my mind how Americans think that referencing
| "Fall" means something. Southern Hemisphere human chiming in.
| jessermeyer wrote:
| Well ... it does mean something to most Americans given their
| seasonality. But point taken, it's not universal.
| designdesign wrote:
| It's an article published by an American university and 90% of
| the planet lives in the northern hemisphere, so it doesn't seem
| like much to be in a twist about.
| lol768 wrote:
| I live in the northern hemisphere, there's still no such
| thing as a "fall" in my vernacular!
| jjgreen wrote:
| Not even post-punk manc miserabilism?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_(band)
| kube-system wrote:
| Wuhan is in the northern hemisphere, and always has been.
| asveikau wrote:
| Other than the hemisphere thing, I think some replies are
| missing that outside North America they don't call autumn
| "fall".
| zachguo wrote:
| A few issues with the methodology.
|
| - only 6 small hospitals were included, and far away from the wet
| market
|
| - Baidu Search Index doesn't match what they claim
| https://imgur.com/a/UkcUZou
|
| - No test for statistical significance, really?
|
| Covid-19 was not that hard to detect, the hospital would be
| alerted once doctors and nurses got infected.
| djsumdog wrote:
| You mean SARS-CoV2, that's the virus. How would they be able to
| detect it? Would they even know what they were looking for?
| Would CoV2 trigger the same tests as SARS1 (for non-PCR tests)?
| jialutu wrote:
| Here is the thing, I've been reading more and more about the
| spread of COVID-19 started in Wuhan due to the military games in
| October 2019:
|
| https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/coronavirus...
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327047/More-compet...
|
| If the illness there was COVID-19, with delegates from over 100
| countries at the military games, the origin of the virus then is
| still very much unknown! China being the first country to detect
| the virus and report on it, while being demonised, makes a really
| bad precedence for countries to not be the first country to
| report on a new outbreak in the future.
| pstrateman wrote:
| Absolutely nothing in either of those articles indicates the
| virus originated anywhere but China.
|
| That it was circulating in Wuhan in October widely enough for
| contagion at military games suggests strongly that it's origin
| is in fact China.
| jialutu wrote:
| How does it strongly suggest the origin is in China? The
| disease was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan, where
| many countries (especially European ones) are starting to
| find that their first cases were in December 2019 (if not
| earlier) as well. Once again, this is really stating my point
| that China detected COVID-19 sooner than everyone else, and
| hence demonised by it, setting an incredibly bad precedence
| for future outbreaks!
| jvm_ wrote:
| The Spanish flu is called the Spanish flu because all the other
| countries refused to report on it, so all the news of this new
| disease came from Spain, hence the name.
|
| Sounds like a similar thing might have happened here.
| beefok wrote:
| It's unfortunate that we as a species cannot prioritize the
| health of the whole over preoccupied defensive posturing in
| order to hide all weaknesses. Like a decayed tooth that's just
| a shell of its former self...
| president wrote:
| This is a conspiracy theory that was propagated by PRC state
| media which the CCP ultimately ended up back-tracking on due to
| the absence of basis in facts and research.
| jialutu wrote:
| I did not know dailymail is PRC state media, thanks for this
| new piece of information!
| simonh wrote:
| Oh for goodness sake. It was promoted by the PRC and
| western news media, including the DM, picked it up from
| them and reported on it.
| jialutu wrote:
| Same with news.com.au? I've read that Italy has been
| suspecting the first being in Italy in November 2019 and
| may have been in Wuhan in October 2019:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
| italy-...
|
| This seems to be in line with the military games no? So
| far, there are no ongoing investigations into any of this,
| besides pinpointing blame on China. Once again, sets an
| incredibly bad precedence.
| president wrote:
| It _originated_ from and was propagated by Chinese state
| media. Unfortunately, western media sources and aggregators
| gobble these stories up without considering that fact.
| jialutu wrote:
| These are from multiple western media and I've only just
| shared some examples. So I am not sure what you are
| implying here, that pretty much all of western media is
| unreliable? Where would you recommend to get your
| reliable source of information from? rt.com?
| dang wrote:
| Please stop. We don't want nationalistic flamewar on HN.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| bdefore wrote:
| ...of 2019
| kube-system wrote:
| I thought that was pretty obvious, fall 2020 hasn't happened
| yet.
| elchief wrote:
| except in the Southern Hemisphere... :)
| chewbacha wrote:
| Wuhan is in the northern hemisphere ;)
| koheripbal wrote:
| I think it's a fair point. You are both correct.
| doubleunplussed wrote:
| Southern hemisphere English dialects call it Autumn. Might
| not be a knockdown argument but it's pretty rare to read
| Americans talking about seasons in the southern hemisphere
| without clarifying, so I had no doubt we were talking about
| northern hemisphere seasons.
| ceedan wrote:
| Link to a prior post of mine:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23074528
|
| China reports infectious disease counts and deaths each month.
| The numbers from December '19 were insane compared to '18
| simonh wrote:
| Except that we already know that the strain of flu around this
| winter was particularly bad, much worse than recent years, so a
| jump in deaths like that is actually not surprising. After all
| the number is about 700k even in a typical year. This could
| also help explain the hospital traffic data.
|
| I just don't buy it. If Covid-19 was in wide circulation,
| affecting hundreds of thousands of people as early as September
| and October, how come it wasn't all over China? Or the rest of
| the world for that matter. What was keeping it in Wuhan?
|
| There's no way it could have grown within the wuhan population,
| to affect that many people that early, without it being
| propagated all over the place. People just travel too much
| these days in China.
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| There's also the "mystery respiratory illness" that was never
| identified in July 2019 which could potentially point to an even
| earlier start. Does anyone know if they've looked into it being
| related?
|
| https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/health-officials-to...
|
| > Three people have also died, but Dr. Benjamin Schwartz of the
| Fairfax County Health Department said Wednesday afternoon that
| those who died were "older" and had complex health problems.
| Officials don't yet know the extent to which the respiratory
| illness contributed to their deaths, he said.
| Munky-Necan wrote:
| Culture negative pneumonia is a relatively common phenomena.
| It's also quite difficult to get adequate sputum cultures, but
| in this case where n=60 I'm skeptical that was the issue. There
| could be a lot of potential causes for this, but COVID is low
| on the differential.
|
| I want to say that spillover events, or a virus jumping from X
| host to humans, happens all the time. COVID became a pandemic
| because human to human transmission was possible from genetic
| mutation. Usually with spillover events humans are a dead end
| host and the person infected will be an n=1.
| [deleted]
| drran wrote:
| It's one of thousands mystery respiratory illnesses caused by a
| virus/bacteria/fungus/chemicals/bad food/bad water/bad air.
| vmception wrote:
| a few weeks ago people would respond to this kind of speculation
| with
|
| "no evidence!!"
|
| "fear mongering!"
|
| "diversion!"
|
| until suddenly there is evidence.
|
| If you were interested in getting evidence for which there is
| none, what is the accepted way to talk about theoretical
| possibilities on this topic which doesn't illicit those
| dismissive and heavy handed responses?
| jasonlotito wrote:
| I'll respond in the hopes that you learn.
|
| First, your general assessment is wrong. The news was already
| reporting about US intelligence knowing about this in autumn of
| 2019, as well as China knowing about it [1]. So I doubt a few
| weeks ago people were saying "no evidence" to the suggestion
| that China knew about this in autumn.
|
| That being said, what exactly is "this kind of speculation?"
| This article isn't "speculation." It's far more than that. So
| what do you mean "this kind of speculation?" What articles like
| "this" were posted a few weeks ago that were met with responses
| like the ones indicated?
|
| > until suddenly there is evidence.
|
| That's the difference between speculation and what "this" is.
| This has evidence.
|
| > ...what is the accepted way to talk ... which doesn't illicit
| those dismissive and heavy handed responses?
|
| I don't know what you are referencing a few weeks ago to offer
| up any specific suggestions. What I can say is that your
| comment hints on specific things, so I offer suggestions based
| purely on my assumptions.
|
| 1. Stop with the hyperbole. Be precise in what you are saying.
| Your comment here doesn't do that in the slightest.
|
| 2. Be humble. An active imagination is being equated to a
| researched article with sources.
|
| 3. Don't have an agenda. Your agenda here is questionable at
| best, and it's easy to see with the choice of words.
|
| If you are serious about having these conversations, the best
| approach is start to prove the opposing side first. Look to
| validate the opposing view from your speculation and approach
| it that way. If your speculation is correct, it will come out.
|
| [1] https://thehill.com/policy/national-
| security/intelligence/49...
| vmception wrote:
| Your mistake here is thinking I have a view.
|
| I would be one of the people making the observations that the
| virus may have been around longer than the currently official
| records, which would be met with vitriol
|
| I didn't make that clear because why do you think I have to
| do that?
| numpad0 wrote:
| What could be inferred from this? Does it mean the fatality could
| be lower than believed? Or that it takes longer than previously
| thought to spread? Or Asian countries could have had experienced
| it earlier leading to some level of immunity?
| baybal2 wrote:
| The smoking gun there is the search volume for word SARS has
| reappeared in Chinese search engines in August-September, and
| exploded in November.
|
| I believe the quiet whispers of SARS return in autumn last years
| have been largely validated.
|
| You can even check google.com that is blocked in China. Two
| regions light up: Hubei, and Beijing.
|
| Another artefact is Chongqing/Sichuan, which also had an early
| flare up, and severe lockdown. I hears of an opinion that it may
| have actually started there, and Wuhan only turned to prominence
| because it being a transport hub, and a more rich city in
| general.
|
| https://ibb.co/tcp2ZNx
|
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2019-07-01%202...
|
| So, this also kind of gives more reason to look at rumors of mass
| exodus of officials during the winter months in China.
| xenonite wrote:
| According to google trends, it started only after Dec 29 2019.
| Before that, there seems to be no particular interest, not more
| than usual.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Tinker with the timeframe, it will be the same cluster in
| West-Central China, and Beijing over autumn to winter. Same
| what Baidu, and Tencent data allegedly showed.
| xenonite wrote:
| Sorry, I cant replicate your result even with your link
| above. Is Google Trends showing the same results for you
| and me?
|
| There is actually a recent study that finds deviations in
| the Trends' results depending on the date of request. Some
| German links, please use some translation tool if you need
| to:
|
| https://www.heise.de/news/Stichproben-Zweifel-an-der-
| Zuverla...
|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.33370.98247
| user_50123890 wrote:
| Ehh..
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-07-01%202...
|
| Seems that people only started searching SARS in december by
| which the new coronavirus was already public knowledge or at
| least public rumor
| [deleted]
| owl57 wrote:
| If you zoom in, "December" here mostly means 12/31, the exact
| day the virus appeared in public news: https://trends.google.
| com/trends/explore?date=2019-12-09%202...
| mc32 wrote:
| This Harvard study has quotes around the terms ex: "cough", I
| imagine that means they're looking at the Baidu trends for the
| Chinese words and not their English equivalents... making the
| comparison to google trends of the English equivalents apples
| and oranges...
| zachguo wrote:
| Please stop spreading false information.
|
| Baidu search index for SARS: https://imgur.com/a/3Sca2v8 .
|
| The uptick started at mid-Dec. There was a tiny bump in early
| October, however, if you hover over it, the bump shows posts
| about comparing economic activity to the 2003 SARS period, not
| related to the disease.
| puppymaster wrote:
| I don't see an abnormal trend if you increase the coverage to 3
| or 5 years.
|
| The number of people searching for related keywords is about
| the same for 2015, 2016 -> 2019 for those regions.
| knolax wrote:
| The popularity of searches for SARS never went above 7 before
| late Dec. when cases of pneumonia were already popping up in
| the news. There was no signficant difference between searches
| from July 2019 to November 2019. If you look at the same data
| exactly one year ago in 2018 you'll find that the prevalence of
| searches for cough and SARs were actually much higher in
| 2018[0] (prevalences in the 70s and 50s in 2018 vs prevalence
| that were less than 10 in 2019). So unless you're suggesting
| Covid-19 actually started in 2018 it seems any correlation
| between search volume and cases of covid-19 fails to disprove
| the null hypothesis.
|
| Plus there's the fact that you're looking at data in English
| for a search engine blocked in China.
|
| [0]
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2018-07-01%202...
| davesque wrote:
| Here are a couple of anecdotal data points:
|
| I was traveling in Japan and Taiwan in October of 2019. I came
| down with a weird flu-like illness that persisted for three or
| four weeks (much longer than a flu would have normally lasted for
| me). And it wasn't just that the symptoms persisted. I really
| felt _sick_ for that long (with fever and sweats). The flu-like
| thing also came after a week or so of diarrhea. Could have just
| been GI issues related to traveling but who knows? Ever since it
| was reported that the pandemic may have begun earlier than had
| previously been thought, I 've been wondering if I didn't in fact
| get this virus very early on.
|
| I also had a colleague with me who was traveling with his wife.
| His wife was also very sick with some kind of super-flu like
| thing. She was saying it was basically the worst flu of her life.
| kube-system wrote:
| I have a similar anecdote, but tested negative for nCoV
| antibodies. I figure my human brain is just prone to
| availability bias. There were and still are lot of viruses out
| there, and many share similar symptoms.
| koheripbal wrote:
| It's also possible the antibody test is inaccurate. TWIV
| (This Week in Virology) reported a big double-digit false
| negative rate.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Sorry, what's TWIV?
| thanatosmin wrote:
| https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/
| doubleunplussed wrote:
| It's This Week in Virology, and a reminder to everyone
| that acronyms are not as well known as you think they
| are, please spell them out unless they're very common or
| have already been defined.
| azinman2 wrote:
| What's the sensitivity of the test you took?
| kube-system wrote:
| 100% ...according to the one limited study that it was the
| subject of.
| JTon wrote:
| A take it or leave it anecdote for you: I was chatting with
| an actuary working in life insurance field who is heavily
| involved in the pandemic industry groups. The actuary told me
| the antibody test is considered unreliable and has as high as
| 50% false negative rate.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Anecdotes aren't worth much in this area. There's no
| conspiracy of silence about problems. We can use actual
| science. They actually test the quality of these tests.
| Some are better than others.
|
| For example, the Abbott test has a surprising accuracy [1]
| "Researchers at the University of Washington School of
| Medicine found Abbott's test had a specificity rate of
| 99.9% and a sensitivity rate of 100%, suggesting very few
| chances of incorrectly diagnosing a healthy person with the
| infection and no false negatives."
|
| 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/08/study-suggests-abbott-
| covid-...
| 9nGQluzmnq3M wrote:
| COVID test accuracy is very similar to condom
| effectiveness: they're both high in theory, but
| surprisingly low in practice, not because of the science
| but user error. I've seen estimates as high as 10-30% for
| false negatives, largely due to poor swabbing practices:
|
| https://www.healthline.com/health-news/false-negatives-
| covid...
| djsumdog wrote:
| Not so anecdotal: There is an Oncology professor in the UK
| who tested his staff of 200 and got ~10% for antibodies. A
| month later he expected 30%, but still got around 10%
| (https://unherd.com/thepost/professor-karol-sikora-fear-is-
| mo...)
|
| There is a chance antibodies for this simply do not last
| very long, or that many people fight it off before it
| reaches the adaptive immune system and requires antibodies
| (there are many layers that have evolved in our immune
| systems).
|
| There are many other viruses that don't produce long
| lasting immunity as well. Hepatitis B vaccines require 3
| shots within a few months and even then, the take rate for
| it is only around 60%.
| entee wrote:
| There are different tests out there, many are pretty bad.
| Some are pretty good, for example Abbott's clears 90% in
| both specificity and sensitivity. That said, given a low
| prevalence of the disease, this is actually fairly likely
| to give false positives. 93.8% sensitivity suggests the
| false negative rate should be pretty low with that test.
|
| https://www.360dx.com/immunoassays/study-finds-abbott-
| corona...
| pstrateman wrote:
| Influenza this year was also particularly nasty. Most people
| who have anecdotes about feeling terrible October-December in
| western countries simply had the flu.
| kube-system wrote:
| I initially did not think it was the flu, because I get the
| flu shot every year (but yes, I know there are multiple
| strains which it might not protect from)
| pstrateman wrote:
| My understanding is that the flu shot for 2019-2020
| wasn't as effective as in other years (which even then is
| only 40-60%).
| jaboutboul wrote:
| I was positive for COVID and have no antibodies. Don't assume
| you didn't have it if you don't have antibodies.
| briefcomment wrote:
| It is possible to overcome the virus without antibodies. I
| forgot the name for the process, but I'll try to track it
| down.
| gizmo wrote:
| T lymphocytes defend against covid. Immunity can be the
| product of previous flu exposure.
| jaboutboul wrote:
| Interested. Please do.
| koheripbal wrote:
| That happened to me in South America in 2009. These individual
| data points are not meaningful.
|
| Maybe it was covid... but it just doesn't tell us anything
| since there's obviously a reporting bias here.
| mfer wrote:
| There are more than one major flu strands in the wild now and
| depending on which we got first will tell us how we react to
| the other. Or, so I'm told.
|
| Here's a video on the flu from 1918 that killed many. It's a
| few years old and talks about our responses to virus and how
| they trace them. It's enlightening....
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48Klc3DPdtk
|
| In any case, it could have been a bad flu infection. An
| antibody test would really help. I know several people who had
| a bad flu that was detected as influenza.
| bradly wrote:
| After visiting my brother in Las Vegas the first week of
| February I came down with a fever, sweats, and extremely bad
| cough with wheezing in my chest for over a week. I saw a doctor
| two weeks in and she thought I had bronchitis and prescribed me
| an inhaler. The Rx failed to treat the cough or wheezing. I
| emailed the doctor after over a week and she was surprised the
| medication wasn't working. It ran it's course for about a month
| exactly. Now I don't actually think I had COVID-19, but the
| chance is non-zero for sure. I wish it was cheap/easy to get an
| antibody test in the U.S. so I won't need to worry as much in
| the small chance I did actually have it.
| adrr wrote:
| https://patient.labcorp.com/covid-19-antibody-test
|
| It's $10 with insurance with one caveat that your state may
| not allow self testing without seeing a doctor.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| It is free and easy (drive thru) in some parts of the US.
| Check with your local health resources.
| codezero wrote:
| Have you had the opportunity/availability to get an antibody
| test?
|
| Everyone I've heard with such an anecdote has received multiple
| negative antibody tests, anecdata! (Only two people I've known)
| gizmo wrote:
| Recent finding: 80% of people exposed to covid produced only
| a minimal amount of antibodies. Our immune system protects
| against millions of diseases, and we don't require specific
| antibodies for most of them.
|
| https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.092619v2
| codezero wrote:
| Super helpful, thanks, I'll read up some more.
| subsubzero wrote:
| My Brother was in China in November and got pretty sick with
| back to back to back colds/flu like bugs, I also was very
| sick for late Nov. - late December, didn't have a fever but
| had a hard time breathing than normal for a cold/flu, I asked
| my Doctor and a friend at Stanford and both of them said the
| antibody tests they have are not accurate. I really want
| piece of mind if I had covid-19 but am still waiting for a
| decent antibody test.
| jupp0r wrote:
| For your situation, existing antibody tests are fine. They
| are not accurate enough to do mass testing to find out how
| prevalent SARS2 is in the population. This is because the
| base rate in the population is pretty low. If you are
| reasonably sure that you've had it, a false negative/false
| positive for you is still pretty unlikely (in the 5% order
| of magnitude range for lateral flow antibody tests, better
| for ELISA lab tests).
| gizmo wrote:
| A positive test result for antibodies is a strong
| indicator for having been exposed to covid, but a
| negative test result doesn't say much because 80% of
| people exposed to covid don't produce antibodies, even if
| they get sick and recover. It doesn't matter how good the
| test is if seropositivity is the exception rather than
| the rule.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| > because 80% of people exposed to covid don't produce
| antibodies
|
| Are there any data available to support this claim? That
| would mean that the virus is cleared by the innate immune
| system and not the adaptive, but it is still a pretty
| bold statement.
|
| The last I read (a Nature Genetics study, if I recall)
| was that the antibody quantity was lower in milder cases
| (but with a large inter-person variability).
| gizmo wrote:
| Yes, I linked to a relevant paper in this thread. (And I
| think it's what you would expect for a disease that is
| non-symptomatic for many young/healthy people.)
|
| > That would mean that the virus is cleared by the innate
| immune system and not the adaptive
|
| Not necessarily, because adaptive antibodies produced
| through previous exposure to coronaviruses can also bind
| to covid19.
| SllX wrote:
| I'm waiting on these antibody tests as well. My symptoms
| weren't as bad as yours but I too had an illness around
| that time, and so did a fair number of people around me, I
| remember joking with my drinking buddy that I probably got
| whatever it was from her. I'm still mostly convinced that
| whatever it was, it wasn't COVID-19, but I can't ignore the
| sheer number of stories that I keep hearing from people
| about a strange illness in that time frame. Some medical
| professionals who I've heard on various podcasts addressed
| these anecdotes and say it probably wasn't COVID-19, and
| let's be fair, it most likely wasn't.
|
| I would still like a way to prove or disprove it though,
| and same as you, anyone I've talked to about it says the
| antibody tests just aren't good enough yet to prove
| anything conclusively.
|
| Even the data we do have available sucks. There's a bunch
| of States and counties which still aren't reporting or
| aren't reliably reporting recoveries which is artificially
| inflating the active case count in the United States.
| adventured wrote:
| The US Government already knew the virus originated earlier than
| China admits. During one of the early live briefings on the
| virus, Trump spouted off about the virus coming out of China
| maybe as early as late September. The press mocked him for
| getting the timeline wrong by several months. He wasn't confusing
| the timeline, he was leaking inside information from US spy
| agencies, their estimates on its origin date (which he obviously
| would have seen).
| Johnjonjoan wrote:
| I've noticed he does this often. He leaves it completely open
| ended so there's plenty of criticism and then reaps the
| rewards.
|
| His supporters see him demonised by the establishment only to
| be proven right.
|
| Edit: by does this often I mean leaking inside information
| pnako wrote:
| It works because his opposition is still somehow convinced
| he's just "Trump", some rambling mad man who found his way
| into the white house, and not the POTUS, commander-in-chief,
| with access to intelligence.
| brianbreslin wrote:
| I'm curious, how did they get access to location data and Baidu
| search volumes for just Wuhan?
| tindjinn wrote:
| Well, considering the all-seeing Chinese government practically
| owns Baidu and most other Chinese brands it is not very
| surprising that they're able to track individual users across
| multiple platforms. Location data is merely one tiny point on
| the vast graph of data they have access to.
| Dahoon wrote:
| But this isn't PRC but Harvard.
| beervirus wrote:
| It's a little surprising the PRC would let this unflattering
| data be available.
| cameldrv wrote:
| The official line now is that the virus didn't start in the
| seafood market. The bats that carry the closest viruses to
| SARS-CoV-2 are located 1000 miles south of Wuhan, and were
| in hibernation in November. For the theory that the virus
| was transmitted from a bat to a human in Yunnan to work, it
| needs to have happened earlier in the year.
| dificilis wrote:
| If the virus jumped from bat to some other animal 50
| years ago, then the 1000 miles of distance is not hard to
| explain, and doesn't tell us anything about the time-
| scale of initial human infection.
|
| We need to find the close relative of Covid19 (TMRCA < 1
| year) in a non-human host.
| adventured wrote:
| There are a lot of points of data to scrub in such a large
| system, it's not surprising that they would miss numerous
| of them in the wild. Watch to see if this one disappears or
| not.
| bingdig wrote:
| The Chinese government and Chinese firms are often willing to
| share tons of data with researchers. One of my professors was
| able to get data on cell phone locations, metadata on all text
| messages sent and received, and occupations of cell phone
| holders from the largest telecom co in China for a paper on
| networks and job mobility.
| andrewtbham wrote:
| Search query data Baidu's database (http://index.baidu.com/)
| contains logs of web and mobile search query volume in China.
| User confidentiality is maintained, since only the relative
| term frequency data is available. We obtained daily data for
| symptom-related searches likely associated with COVID-19
| illness in Wuhan from April 2017 to May 2020. We extracted the
| relative search volumes of the terms "cough" and "diarrhea"
| using WebPlotDigitizer, v4.215.
| hef19898 wrote:
| As interesting as this is, but my understanding was that the
| genetic evolution / development of the virus can be used to
| determine when it started spreading. Or jumped from animal to
| human.
|
| Or did I understand that wrong? Not saying this study is
| wrong (no way for me to tell), it just seems a very indirect,
| and thus error prone, way to look at it.
| mellosouls wrote:
| I've asked that question as a separate thread above, I
| think its an important one, at least for lay people like
| me.
|
| There is a suggested reason for the discrepancy (Chinese
| dishonesty about timelines) tho not an answer (yet) from
| the researchers who've commented elsewhere here or others
| with a strictly scientific explanation.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23460742
| dillondoyle wrote:
| wow just searching 'cough' on google trends seems to be
| pretty accurate just birds-eye view
|
| would be cool to read similar research using US data, and the
| implications on policymaking.
|
| https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&ge.
| ..
| mellosouls wrote:
| It's interesting - tho I've just plugged in China and
| various periods down to the last 5 years, and there's not
| an obvious jump beyond the seasonal ones until after
| December this year.
| pstrateman wrote:
| google in china is less than 5% of the search market
| mellosouls wrote:
| yeah, I considered that - but its still presumably a
| large enough sample for the phrases listed in the parent
| comment to stand out.
| starpilot wrote:
| This always goes up during winter, you also have to control
| for all the media attention that COVID-19 is getting.
| People are searching just to be safe even if their symptoms
| are weak. It might not reflect growing infections, just
| growing fear.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| We are separated from the schizos by acknowledging that this is
| just a _theory_ , no matter how bad the circumstances may look.
|
| The schizo will take this theory as hard proof that China knew of
| the virus early. You and I will wait for hard evidence before we
| pass judgment, even if we privately believe that these
| circumstances are conclusive evidence.
| anon84598 wrote:
| "schizo" seems like a pretty rough term here -- makes sense if
| you replace it with "conspiracy theorist"
| dfryer wrote:
| Could you use a term like "conspiracy theorist" instead of
| "schizo" here? There are probably plenty of people who have
| schizophrenia and don't subscribe to conspiracy theories.
| xorfish wrote:
| Wouldn't there be higher genetic diversity of the virus if this
| were the case?
|
| There doesn't seem to be any real evidence for this theory in the
| genetic data we have.
| lbeltrame wrote:
| The current phylogenetic data go as far as October as the
| farthest estimate, as far as I can see.
| woofie11 wrote:
| Not really.
|
| (1) Genetic diversity increases with both time and size of the
| infected population. You'll get a lot more diversity if it's
| mutating in 4 million individuals than in 4000.
|
| (2) For a virus this young especially, genetic diversity is not
| at all precise measures.
| huy-nguyen wrote:
| From https://www.wsj.com/articles/so-where-did-the-virus-come-
| fro...:
|
| > New research has deepened, rather than dispelled, the mystery
| surrounding the origin of the coronavirus responsible for
| Covid-19. Bats, wildlife markets, possibly pangolins and
| perhaps laboratories may all have played some role, but the
| simple story of an animal in a market infected by a bat that
| then infected several human beings no longer looks credible.
|
| > A study published in early May by scientists at the Broad
| Institute in Cambridge, Mass., and at the University of British
| Columbia has uncovered an unusual feature of the virus's recent
| development: It has evolved too slowly. The genomes of viruses
| sampled from cases during the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003 showed
| rapid evolutionary change during the early months of the
| epidemic, as the virus adapted to its new host, followed by
| much slower change later. By contrast, samples taken from
| recent cases of the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, have compara-
| tively few genetic substitutions compared with an early case
| from December.
|
| > The authors, Shing Hei Zhan, Benjamin Deverman and Yujia
| Alina Chan, write: "We were surprised to find that SARS-CoV-2
| exhibits low genetic diversity in contrast to SARS-CoV, which
| harbored considerable genetic diversity in its early-to-mid
| epidemic phase." This implies, they argue, that "by the time
| SARS-CoV-2 was first detected in late 2019, it was already pre-
| adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late
| epidemic SARS-CoV." This is potentially very good news: Because
| the virus is relatively stable genetically, a vaccine that
| works against it, if we're able to develop one, will be more
| likely to work against all strains.
|
| > The same study seems to rule out the possibility that
| infected animals at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan
| transmitted the virus to several human beings, as some have
| suggested as a point of origin. The Chinese authorities have
| now confirmed that no animal samples from the market were
| infected. This suggests that a single person brought a virus
| that was already adept at human transmission to the market and
| infected others.
| mellosouls wrote:
| This is very interesting but the date significantly precedes my
| (layman's!) understanding of TMRCA estimations of mid November
| (earliest cases examining the existing genetic evidence and
| extrapolating backwards through genetic drift calculations).
|
| How do the scientists here account for the disagreement - beyond
| the fact they are using completely different methods?
|
| Alternatively, I'd be interested in somebody explaining why my
| understanding of the TMRCA is incorrect - like I said, its not my
| field.
| akaryocyte wrote:
| *TMRCA (Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor)
| mellosouls wrote:
| Thanks, corrected. I must have typed that two different ways
| several times in the last 20 minutes...
| pstrateman wrote:
| TMRCA relies on accurate information about when specific
| strains were identified.
|
| There is ample reason to believe Chinese authorities lied about
| when they observed specific strains.
| th0ma5 wrote:
| I would use _Autumn_ here for clarity for sure
| koheripbal wrote:
| Since they looked primarily at the month of October - I'd just
| say October.
| th0ma5 wrote:
| I guess the point is that Fall doesn't mean Autumn in some
| places, and the way this is phrased it seems to imply
| something about the rate of infection, that is, they are
| falling or something but that isn't what this is about at
| all.
| interestica wrote:
| Agreed. And capitalizing the word 'Fall' (in an attempt to
| clarify) is problematic too - it's not usually a proper
| noun.
| bredren wrote:
| There is another report that suggested mobile data indicated
| the Wuhan lab "was closed from Oct. 7 through Oct. 24, 2019,
| and that there may have been a "hazardous event" sometime
| between Oct. 6 and Oct. 11." [0]
|
| As far as I know, no federal agency has been willing to vouch
| for this conclusion.
|
| I recognize there is skepticism about it coming from the lab,
| though I thought this is related enough due to how the
| indicating data was collected to share.
|
| [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-
| security/report-sa...
| robocat wrote:
| If you want to be clear, use the name of a month or a quarter
| number.
|
| Seasons are opposite in the Southern Hemisphere, and it is
| always confusing to read American or European information that
| references a season (I am in New Zealand).
|
| Please Don't marginalise those of us that are down under (we
| are already marginalised by physics causing long ping times to
| servers in the Northern Hemisphere, which is harder to change).
| watertom wrote:
| I read stories about exchange students from Africa going home and
| talking about a "strange" new flu that was circulating in Wuhan
| back in September of last year.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Source
| Jabbles wrote:
| Stop spreading FUD.
|
| This is a rumour of a rumour of a rumour. Provide a source.
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