The outbreak may have started in September

[curlyrebel]

Anyone read this? www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-outbreak-september-not-wuhan-1498566
Researchers at Cambridge University believe it may have started as early as mid-September and possibly didn't originate in Wuhan.

This to me is very likely as my DH and DD were ill for weeks back in October. DH thought he had pneumonia and complained about not being able to taste anything. They'd caught it after a visit to family in the US. My nephew there had this illness and was treated for pneumonia.

Many people get sick with flu every winter... But apparently they didn’t this winter. It HAD to be Covid-19

I don't think it's been here that long. The first people I knew to have it (and were hospitalised) had been skiing in Italy in Feb. There's no way it wouldn't have spread like wildfire if it was here earlier.

@louloubelx and @arethereanyleftatall
My dd was the same word for word before Christmas. Shes never ill and we were quite worried, she was so hot she was hallucinating.

Ok so on this article from the Metro you can see the three different variants of the virus and spread around the world. metro.co.uk/2020/04/18/coronavirus-may-started-september-scientists-say-12576961/

As my family were infected whilst in the US is it not likely we picked up Type A? There is a suggestion that it has mutated to be even more powerful since then and that's why we are seeing more deaths now. I don't think we can put the illnesses people have reported having over winter as just flu, especially when symptoms are so similar to covid-19.

As my family were infected whilst in the US is it not likely we picked up Type A?

No. The first recorded case of coronavirus in the US was in January in Washington. Although the Oxford model showed that if estimates for R0, mortality rate, asymptomatic cases etc are inaccurate the start date could be earlier, October is just too far back. If you look at the scientific papers for something like estimates of R0 or the models of the epidemic, they usually have a 95% confidence interval ie a range of values that there is only a 5% chance that the correct value is outside that range. The Oxford team modelled lots of different scenarios within those credible ranges and the earliest date they found that fits with current data (what is happening now) is January in the UK.

Strain A isn't the only strain in the US but there are clusters in Washington and the West Coast. If you caught it in October in the US, you wouldn't have been the only UK traveller to the US who would have caught it and you would likely have infected other people in the UK, as would they. It is highly unlikely that there would be no cases of strain A now in the UK if that were the case.

You can't really differentiate between influenza, rhinoviruses or coronaviruses purely on symptoms - COVID-19 has a wide range of different symptoms in different people.

I see what you're saying @goingoverground. It does seem like an interesting study though. It will be good to see where the virus did originate if it wasn't in Wuhan.

I could really get behind this as I was bedridden back in December. But what I struggle with about this view is that the death toll doesn't support the theory. Any explanations for this? I'm thinking maybe we were being infected by a weaker strain then...?

Weren't flu deaths up massively from previous season? What if it was covid and we thought it was flu?

Why are people acting like there are no other bugs in existence 😂

I've had loads of colds that have knocked me ill for a week, a few where it's been 2 weeks, and I've had the flu twice where I thought I was going to die.

Even if tomorrow I got sick with "Covid symptoms" it would be pretty silly to definitely assume I have Covid. It could be that, or it could be the multiple other bugs that all have exactly the same bloody symptoms that are in circulation all the time.

Maybe people did have pneumonia but it's not exactly a new thing to get, is it?

Weren't flu deaths up massively from previous season? What if it was covid and we thought it was flu?

No. I don't think so. I think we were a bit late off the mark getting vaccines out and I think the death rates were up at the beginning of this season but I have been looking at the weekly flu reports since January and everything was down on last year at that point - and that year was already remarkably low.

But what I struggle with about this view is that the death toll doesn't support the theory. Any explanations for this?

Weren't flu deaths up massively from previous season? What if it was covid and we thought it was flu?

@emojisarentwords and @gluteustothemaximus

We can't know what people died of before testing but we do have data from all over the world now. If you look at the daily increase in the number of deaths and positive tests, you can estimate how may people are being infected on average by each infectious person. If the number of deaths has doubled in 24 hours, it is likely the number of people currently infected has doubled. You can extrapolate backwards to find out when the epidemic started.

That is a very oversimplified explanation but if you want to know more, this is a good place to start:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidemiology

We have the genome for the original bat strain and the different strains that have evolved and been identified. If there was a "weaker strain" it would have had to have mutated from the original strain, it wasn't the original strain. Given that the virus seems to mutate slowly, it is likely it would not have appeared for some time (eg late December when strain B appeared).

Also, if there were a weaker strain you would expect to have found it in some of the tests, particularly as so many people think they had it. The only way it could have disappeared would be if it had been outcompeted by a more infectious strain. If lots of people had the "weak strain" and it was widespread, it is unlikely that everywhere it reached has also been reached by the other strains, so you would expect to still find clusters of the "weak strain", in the same way that there are currently areas where there is only strain A, B or C.