No, You Did Not Get COVID-19 in the Fall of 2019

[womanofthehills]

On Tuesday, KSBW, a news station in Monterey, California, aired a story about California’s potential “herd immunity” to the novel coronavirus. The piece opens by discussing a new study from Stanford Medicine in which researchers are conducting blood tests that detect antibodies, which can show whether an individual has or previously had COVID-19. The reporter then goes on to cite Victor Davis Hanson, a Stanford-affiliated source who advances the theory that COVID-19 might have actually begun spreading in California in fall 2019. “[Stanford’s] data could help to prove COVID-19 arrived undetected in California much earlier than previously thought,” KSBW reported.

The piece has spread widely. An accompanying web story posted to the TV station’s website has been shared more than 58,300 times, and has also been picked up by SFGate. The theory is appealing to some, particularly those who had respiratory illnesses in late 2019 that they now believe could’ve been COVID-19. In their minds, that might mean they have some immunity to the virus—and if a large portion of Americans have some immunity, we can begin our move out of lockdown. But that theory has no scientific basis, and it spreads dangerous misinformation.
Let’s start with the facts. I reached out to Stanford Medicine to try to understand the goals of its antibody test, and how it relates to Hanson’s fall 2019 theory. The short answer on the latter is that it doesn’t. “Our research does not suggest that the virus was here that early,” says Lisa Kim of Stanford’s media relations team.

Neither does anyone else’s, it appears. “There is zero probability [SARS-CoV-2] was circulating in fall 2019,” tweeted Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who has been tracking SARS-CoV-2’s genetic code as it has spread. Allison Black, a genomic epidemiologist working in Bedford’s lab, says this is apparent from researchers’ data. As the virus spreads, it also mutates, much like the way words change in a game of Telephone. By sequencing the virus’s genome from different individual samples, researchers can track strains of the coronavirus back to its origins. They have been continually updating their findings on Nextstrain. (In case you’re wondering, the strains have nothing to do with severity of illness. They’re simply a way to track the virus’s mutations over time.)

Check out the source of the California story:

So what’s really behind this theory? It might be worth considering the source. KSBW’s piece begins by mentioning Stanford Medicine’s research, then quotes Victor Davis Hanson, a Stanford-affiliated source; the piece reads as if Hanson is one of these aforementioned Stanford Medicine researchers. But Hanson is a military historian, not a doctor or scientist; he is affiliated with Stanford’s Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank.* (I reached out to Hanson for comment, but he has not responded; we will update this article if he does.) The piece makes no effort to clarify what the Hoover Institution is, and it delves into Hanson’s “theory” as a prelude to a brief explanation of Stanford Medicine’s study. Hanson’s recent work, published in National Review, suggests he is eager to reopen the American economy. It would be quite convenient, then, to claim that the virus has already torn through the U.S. and granted us immunity. (In that article, Hanson also claims that “much of the virus modeling is nearly worthless” and refers to it as “science,” in scare quotes.)

https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/coronavirus-circulating-california-2019-bunk.html

A great person to follow on Twitter for this ongoing info is Trevor Bedford

[Wounded Bear]

1. K & R...for visibility...nt

[womanofthehills]

2. Interesting - the source of the story was a military historian

from a conservative think tank. Everyone I know who had the flu last year truly believes they had Covid-19. Most just can't wait to take an antibody test.

[Wounded Bear]

3. I know a few posters on another board spouting the same story...

apparently there was something going around last fall that was pretty bad. I don't know, I didn't get it. Always seems to be RW Trump humpers spewing that tale. Sounds like another lame attempt to shift blame for Trump's incompetence somewhere else.

[Mariana]

6. There was something going around last fall that was pretty bad

but apparently, it wasn't bad enough to land a whole bunch of people in the hospital on ventilators, with an unusual and deadly form of viral pneumonia.

Remember how quickly the public health authorities picked up on the vaping illness when that happened? They were sounding the alarm on that when there were only a handful of cases, and before anyone died from it. They are really on the ball, yet we're supposed to believe they totally missed a widespread epidemic of a brand-new deadly viral disease. I just doesn't make sense.

[babylonsister]

4. That's what I am hearing, too. nt

[frazzled]

5. True, but that was one heck of a respiratory thing

My spouse and I got it in mid-December, and the symptoms were not at all like COVID-19. Started as a head cold, went briefly to the nose and then straight to the chest. No fever ever, but the worst damn cough I’d ever had. More than a month of constant, uncontrollable wet coughing, chucking up gobs of sputum (sorry for that image, folks). But never felt “sick).

Tons of people had it. And then it just went away. But I’m sure it had zero to do with corona virus.

[smirkymonkey]

7. Same here. I had it for the entire month of December and the first half of January, and it

still even lingered a bit after that in a milder form. I would just get so exhausted from coughing so hard and sometimes I would just choke on it and get sick because I couldn't get anything up out of my lungs. It just wiped me out.

And I had a flu shot. I'm not sure what this was.

[Hoyt]

8. Local Facebook idiots in February were spreading BS that NBA teams that played

games in China in October 2019 brought it back. Misinformation will be our undoing.