Really this blogpost was meant to be the first
Obfuscaion over origins not the second (II), it is just that yesterday I began with the blog title but then got side-tracked and ended up not posting on the origins of SARS CoV 2 but on the massive failure of the response to the virus.
Back to the opaque origins: A couple of days back
eugyppius posted "Every day there is more evidence that the SARS-2 outbreak began months before the earliest documented Wuhan infections. Why does nobody care?" "But, nobody wants to dig up further evidence on when and where SARS-2 entered humans – perhaps because everybody knows that more chronological clarity would do anything but support the case for natural origins."
eugyppius pointed to a
recent Italian study on pre-pandemic SARS-2 infections in Lombardy. Resulting from the retesting of archival samples of suspected measles cases (a similar symptom for coronavirus and measles is skin rashes). Their analyses produced 13 positive cases for SARS-2 RNA;
"Eleven of these samples were collected before anybody declared a pandemic. Four of the eleven also had anti-SARS-2 antibodies – including the earliest sample, taken from an eight-month-old infant on 12 September 2019. None of these patients had any relevant travel history."
In
a follow-up post yesterday eugyppius writes that "
Since we’re talking about the origins and early history of the SARS-2 outbreak, it’s worth having a look at Jonathan Engler’s intriguing analysis of the all-cause mortality data out of northern Italy in the earliest days of the outbreak." yes it is worth it it and I'd also suggest subscribing to eugyppius's Substack*: a plague chronicle worth following.
"Both the lack of excess deaths overall and the lack of clusters of excess deaths are in fact totally unexpected in light of the evidence — now supported by papers studying antibodies and PCR testing data AND symptoms — of significant presence of Sars-Cov-2 in February (and earlier, in fact). "
How could an apparently highly contagious and lethal virus have spread throughout the region so much that case growth was apparently actually slowing in most areas by the end of February, without leaving any signal of increased deaths in its wake?
"On the assumption that healthcare is organised by province, the conclusion can only be that it was the manner in which healthcare was delivered which was relevant to the death rate, not the spread of a virus, which would of course have no respect for provincial boundaries."The fact that assumptions derived from the data from Lombardy — including estimates of the case and infection fatality rates — formed the basis of policies implemented first in the UK, and thereafter rippling across the world, makes this a question which should be addressed with some urgency.
This is especially the case since these policies are now being recognised as having caused catastrophic long-lasting harm to much of the world’s population with little or no discernible benefit.
I'll leave you with eugyppius's eye-opening and worrying conclusion, chiming with what many have thought for the whole COVID era, that political actions led directly to thousands of deaths:
"Lockdowns were accompanied by a rapid collapse in influenza infections in many countries, followed almost immediately by a rise in SARS-2 mortality. It’s worth asking whether the flu and other common respiratory viruses are actually protective against novel pathogens because of interference effects, and whether our panic measures didn’t, in most cases, simply reduce the competition SARS-2 faced from other viruses. I also cling to my theory that, before Omicron, SARS-2 was an attendant-borne pathogen, which thrived particularly in healthcare environments. Emergency measures, including mass testing, had the effect of hoovering up as many SARS-2 patients as possible and putting them in environments where attendants could mediate transmission – precisely where SARS-2 does most of its killing."
* I subscribe to several allowing access across the platform.
