Maybe some of these stories are coincidental. But it does stir the question of whether people in Wuhan knew something was wrong late last year.
The Wall Street Journal offers an eye-opening update on the investigation into the origins of COVID-19:
New evidence from China is affirming what epidemiologists have long suspected: The coronavirus likely began spreading unnoticed around the Wuhan area in November 2019, before it exploded in multiple different locations throughout the city in December.
Chinese authorities have identified 174 confirmed Covid-19 cases around the city from December 2019, said World Health Organization researchers, enough to suggest there were many more mild, asymptomatic or otherwise undetected cases than previously thought.
Many of the 174 cases had no known connection to the market that was initially considered the source of the outbreak, according to information gathered by WHO investigators during the four-week mission to China to examine the origins of the virus. Chinese authorities declined to give the WHO team raw data on these cases and potential earlier ones, team members said.
In examining 13 genetic sequences of the virus from December, Chinese authorities found similar sequences among those linked to the market, but slight differences in those of people without any link to it, according to the WHO investigators. The two sets likely began to diverge between mid-November and early December, but could possibly indicate infections as far back as September, said Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on the WHO team.
This, and other evidence, suggest the coronavirus might have jumped to humans sometime during or shortly before the second half of November, she said, sickening too few people to attract attention until it led to an explosive outbreak in Wuhan. By December, the virus was spreading much more widely, both among people who had a link to the market, as well as others with no tie.
The sentence, “Many of the 174 cases had no known connection to the market that was initially considered the source of the outbreak, according to information gathered by WHO investigators during the four-week mission to China to examine the origins of the virus” should not be ignored by those who still contend an animal at the Huanan Seafood market must be the original source of the virus. Perhaps some other wet market in the city could be the source, but at least for now, we don’t have a particular origin point for the first cluster of cases.
A November or earlier start to the pandemic wouldn’t completely change our understanding of how this pandemic began. A study of early cases in the medical journal The Lancet declared, “The symptom onset date of the first patient identified was December 1, 2019.” An unnamed source citing Chinese government data told the South China Morning Post that the first documented case was November 17; no other source has verified that.
But this assessment of the genetic sequences aligns with a couple of other pieces of evidence pointing to an earlier start to the pandemic, some suggesting a lab accident, some not.
A fact sheet released by the U.S. State Department on January 15:
The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses. This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was “zero infection” among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.
A private analysis of cellphone location data purports to show that a high-security Wuhan laboratory studying coronaviruses shut down in October, three sources briefed on the matter told NBC News. U.S. spy agencies are reviewing the document, but intelligence analysts examined and couldn’t confirm a similar theory previously, two senior officials say.
The report — obtained by the London-based NBC News Verification Unit — says there was no cellphone activity in a high-security portion of the Wuhan Institute of Virology from Oct. 7 through Oct. 24, 2019, and that there may have been a “hazardous event” sometime between Oct. 6 and Oct. 11.
It offers no direct evidence of a shutdown, or any proof for the theory that the virus emerged accidentally from the lab.
An independent firm reviewed satellite photos of hospitals in Wuhan and contended more cars were parked in the parking lots in the months before the pandemic became international news:
Using techniques similar to those employed by intelligence agencies, the research team behind the study analyzed commercial satellite imagery and “observed a dramatic increase in hospital traffic outside five major Wuhan hospitals beginning late summer and early fall 2019,” according to Dr. John Brownstein, the Harvard Medical professor who led the research.
Brownstein, an ABC News contributor, said the traffic increase also “coincided with” elevated queries on a Chinese internet search for “certain symptoms that would later be determined as closely associated with the novel coronavirus.”
“Something was happening in October,” said Brownstein, the chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and director of the medical center’s Computational Epidemiology Lab. “Clearly, there was some level of social disruption taking place well before what was previously identified as the start of the novel coronavirus pandemic.”
Finally, there was a curious little anecdote from the San Francisco Bay area. Charlie and Margaret Getz, an American couple, had booked a seven-day cruise along the Yangtze River in early November, and their first day was supposed to be in Wuhan on November 1:
Their relaxed overnight stay turned into a brief three-hour visit. Within minutes of getting off the plane, the two were rushed to a Wuhan history museum.
“We were the only ones at the museum, no local folks around,” he said. “Then, they had a brief concert for us.”
The itinerary suddenly changed and the Wuhan city tour was canceled.
“We were told we immediately have to leave that night, not the next day,” said Getz.
There was no warning and no explanation.
“My wife Margaret said, ‘Wait a second, we’re supposed to look at these historic districts. What’s going on here?’ Getz said, pointing out the brochure they showed the tour guide. “They said, ‘No, no, no.’ Then, they said, ‘Oh there’s a lot of traffic on the river.’”
But, Getz remembers seeing very little traffic.
Maybe some of these stories are coincidental. But it does stir the question of whether certain people in Wuhan knew something was wrong or unsafe in the city in November, before most of the world had heard of any of this.