COVID-19 Early Spread

The cluster debates the timeline of COVID-19's emergence, questioning if it originated or was first detected in Wuhan or had been spreading undetected earlier elsewhere, with references to suppressed reports, early cases in other regions, and official timelines.

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Keywords

US H7N9 nlm.nih WHO PMC7252012 www.cnbc HN COVID RNA malaysiakini.com outbreak wuhan flu virus spreading china coronavirus asymptomatic sars spread

Sample Comments

knzhou May 4, 2020 View on HN

No, because at the time the statement was made, most of the known cases were directly linked to a single wildlife market. (Also keep in mind that this announcement is within 2 weeks of discovering the virus, sequencing its genome, inventing the first ever tests for it, and deploying those tests!) Luckily, enough evidence came in that they were sure a few days later.

tolbish Jun 15, 2021 View on HN

Here is an example of a thread where we all knew for a fact that the virus could not have spread as early as it did:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23459963

throwaway290 Jan 26, 2025 View on HN

If you followed events at the time and the suppressed rumours from doctors in China end of 2019, the new illness began exactly around that area actually (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang etc).There were no similar reports in another place on this planet. (Since 99% of other places do not have full control of media and many have better healthcare so if it happened it would be

mytailorisrich Jan 3, 2022 View on HN

First known outbreak does not mean/imply origin.

m0llusk Jan 3, 2022 View on HN

COVID-19 presents as being similar to the flu and at least at first mostly killed older people with preexisting conditions. It is entirely possible that SARS-CoV2 had been rampaging across the countryside for some time before reaching Wuhan and being detected there. HIV started spreading in West Africa but was only detected years later in LA and NYC after traveling through multiple island locations.

nostrademons Mar 3, 2020 View on HN

Hard to tell if this is sarcasm, given that researchers just announced that coronavirus has been spreading undetected for 6 weeks in the Seattle area:https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/coronavirus-may-have-sprea...

ebg13 Mar 17, 2020 View on HN

Do you mean this one? https://www.caixinglobal.com/2020-02-29/in-depth-how-early-s...

Freestyler_3 Jan 25, 2020 View on HN

I dont know how much is conspiracy theory at this point, but it was said that they had small sars outbreak there before.

roenxi May 3, 2020 View on HN

You'd hope so; the virus was international news in January. I found an old newspaper just yesterday from January with an article titled something like "Mysterious Lung Disease in Wuhan".SARS, MERS, Ebola and others had already been dealt with successfully so presumably the real surprise was the asymptomatic infections. COVID-19 outbreaks don't look so scary until the body bags start to run out and it becomes apparent that the situation is out of control.

Cookingboy Apr 15, 2022 View on HN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_COVID-19_pande...Can you point me toward where they tried to hide the outbreak?