Coronavirus Investigators One Step Closer to Solving Mystery of "Patient Zero"

3,541 Views | 18 Replies | Last: 5 yr ago by benchmark
Rapier108
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Quote:

Investigators looking into the COVID-19 mystery could be one step closer to unmasking "patient zero."

A seafood merchant in Wuhan, China, is believed to be the first person diagnosed as having the coronavirus, which can be linked back to a wet market in China, leaked documents allege.

The Daily Mail reported Thursday that China's The Paper claims Wei Guixian, a 57-year-old woman working in Wuhan is the first person on record to be infected with the coronavirus.

Wei told the media outlet she started feeling sick on December 10. Thinking she might have the flu, she went to a local clinic seeking treatment. She was given some pills and then got back to work, selling live shrimp at the market.

Fast forward a week and Wei was barely conscious and clinging to life in a Chinese hospital bed.

<snip>

On Dec. 16, she checked in at the city's largest hospital, the Wuhan Union Hospital. It was there that doctors told her she had a "ruthless" illness and that several others from the area seemed to also have.

Wei, unlike many people who have gotten the coronavirus, survived.

And though she is not patient zero, she is the first person to test positive for COVID-19 in the Wuhan market thought to be the epicenter of the crisis.

<snip>

The first known coronavirus patient is reported to be a bed-bound man in his 70s with no connection to the seafood market where Wei worked.

However, investigators believe patient zero is not the septuagenarian who had the disease on Nov. 17.

They fear patient zero could have been mingling with the public weeks earlier.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/coronavirus-investigators-one-step-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-patient-zero

So this bugger might go all the way to late October. Of course this is coming out of China, so it must be taken with skepticism, but right now China wants to paint themselves as the world's savior, so finding where and how the virus started would help them on that quest.
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - Sir Winston Churchill
CW Griswold
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It's pretty obvious it made the jump from bat to humans, and I think it's clear it has been around since 1982.

Ranger222
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AG
I know the "person ate a bat" story has been out there, but I think it's much more likely that a person was just around bats, perhaps in a cave and then brought it to the market. Perhaps the handler that was bringing bats to the market. Either "patient 0" visited the market, or someone not far along in the infectivity chain did to really start the spread
BigOil
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Wasn't that in San Antonio nonetheless as well?
itsyourboypookie
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I had this in October
agsquirrel97
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AG
Quote:

Wei, unlike many people who have gotten the coronavirus, survived.
The wording make it sound like a 99% mortality rate, nice journalisming
Ranger222
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Nobody had this in October. The sequencing data we have on the virus and the "molecular clock" they have built from sequencing thousands of viral genomes suggests a single founder in November, just like the article says.
_mpaul
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Des Moines. You're thinking of him peeing on the Alamo.
Not a Bot
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Ranger222 said:

I know the "person ate a bat" story has been out there, but I think it's much more likely that a person was just around bats, perhaps in a cave and then brought it to the market. Perhaps the handler that was bringing bats to the market. Either "patient 0" visited the market, or someone not far along in the infectivity chain did to really start the spread


A more recent study, published I think within the last few days, seems to indicate the virus is a chimera of two different coronaviruses: One that lived in bats, another that lived in a cat-like mammal. It is believed that a bat infected with one coronavirus somehow infected the mammal which had a different type, possibly in a live animal market, and the viruses somehow merged.

I will try to find the article and post the link.
TelcoAg
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BigOil said:

Wasn't that in San Antonio nonetheless as well?


Iowa. He pissed on the Alamo
TXAggie2011
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Quote:

Of course this is coming out of China, so it must be taken with skepticism, but right now China wants to paint themselves as the world's savior, so finding where and how the virus started would help them on that quest.
The CCP has serious domestic reasons to uncover where and how the virus started. While the Chinese government might suck in many ways, The Party hangs its legitimacy on economic growth. This pandemic has and will continue to ravage their economy.

They may leak some things to suggest they're closer to the answer than they really are, and they'll outwardly play it cool, but I guarantee inside their compound, CCP leadership is in severe crisis mode.
EastSideAg2002
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TXAggie2011 said:

Quote:

Of course this is coming out of China, so it must be taken with skepticism, but right now China wants to paint themselves as the world's savior, so finding where and how the virus started would help them on that quest.
The CCP has serious domestic reasons to uncover where and how the virus started. While the Chinese government might suck in many ways, The Party hangs its legitimacy on economic growth. This pandemic has and will continue to ravage their economy.

They may leak some things to suggest they're closer to the answer than they really are, and they'll outwardly play it cool, but I guarantee inside their compound, CCP leadership is in severe crisis mode.
Whatever China tells you, the opposite is happening.
Stat Monitor Repairman
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I got no evidence to back it up, but the dude ate a bat sounds like bull-*****

It sounds like a made up story that was designed to be palatable to westerners.

"Some crazy chinese dude ate some bat soup"

Yuuuup sounds about right, them sonsa*****es crazy, don't surprise me none,"

Sounds plausable enough to where people wont really ask questions.
TXAggie2011
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I spend a lot of my job wading through outputs of the Chinese propaganda machine, and that's a lame caricature.

But like I said, they'll certainly put on a cool face and they'll certainly act like they're closer to the truth than they are.
Enrico Pallazzo
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People are worried about nukes and global warming, but in reality the end of humanity is going to originate from a chinese wet market if they don't get a handle on those things
TXAggie2011
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Quote:

It sounds like a made up story that was designed to be palatable to westerners.
There was this video of a Chinese woman eating bat soup that circulated widely on social media and helped "feed" a lot of that story. The problem is turns out the video was filmed for an online travel show in Palau three years ago.
ThatOneGuy
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You should read "Spillover", a book about zoonotic diseases (carried or spread from animals). They have a chapter on SARS that talks about the wild animal markets. Cages and cages of many numbers of species crammed together all pooping on each other, etc. very easily could see how it would jump animal to animal first in that scenario.
Ranger222
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New this week in virology podcast with Mark Denison, MD at Vanderbilt who is an expert on coronaviruses.

If you go to the 45 minute mark, the question gets posed "where did this come from" and he says it's just a bat virus.

http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-special-denison/
Ag Defense Rules
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I feel bad for the animals in those markets. Having other animals urinate and poop down on them.

I wish the human animals that run these or buy from them had to live a few days in the same conditions.
benchmark
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Whatever. We already know his name .... Manchu Tai Ni Bat.
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