Wait...What?

Pretty wild if true. I remember back in March there were a bunch of folks from Seattle on Twitter saying Nov/Dec last year there was a really bad illness circulating but a few virologist claimed it was impossible Covid was it.

Maybe it's been around awhile and mutated to a more deadly strain (unlikely)?

This is 100% impossible, right?

I've been saying since the day China gave us the "timeline", I thinks it's BS. My kids all had flu like symptoms end of December that had them down and out for about 8 days. They all tested negative for the flu.

That would be my thoughts as well. We didn't see a spike in deaths and hospitalizations in November/December, so if that 14% positive rate in September holds true it wouldn't make sense to me that the spike in Italy didn't happen until this spring.

I'd also find it hard to believe that the hospitalizations and deaths are completely fabricated all around the world. Otherwise we'd hear things about this. Not impossible, but it seems unlikely.

A coworker died of covid in early Feb. she was in such good health, her family pushed for a resolution to cause of death. If not for that effort, no one would have known it was covid. So dreadful.

Also I got the worst fever of my life and three of my employees in their 20s where out for a week and needed to go to Dr.

No one knew anything really. In retrospect, we all watched worried about containment of covid in cruise ships... but it was already making its way thru the Bay Area community

Wouldn't we have seen lots of people with antibodies in Jan/Feb? I had a similar illness in Dec/Jan with a dry cough that wouldn't go away, and tested negative for antibodies in March after a potential exposure.

I have little doubt it was circulating before the popular media picked the story up and it entered into the public awareness. Heck, I have friends who were in Thailand and Wuhan in December and were "super sick" just after getting home to NYC.

Doesn't necessarily mean it was widespread, but the seeds were likely in place for a global event around Christmas, just took it several months to realize. Such is the nature of exponential growth.

BiochemAg97 said:

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amercer said:

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It's possible this is true, but without PCR verification from samples at that time, it's also possible that these antibodies are just cross reactive from other coronavirus and don't indicate any early spread of the pandemic.

And evidence of earlier spread needs to account for all the facts we know about the virus. What we know is that every place with confirmed spread has also had corresponding hospitalization and deaths. So it just seems pretty unlikely that this virus was spreading wildly anywhere without that happening.

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RBD is part of spike protein. We know antibodies to SARS-CoV spike protein bind to SARS-CoV2 spike protein. Not sure what other cross reactivity there is to other things, but RBD is the receptor binding domain. It has to be complementary to the ACE2 receptor, so it is possible that any virus that binds to the ACE2 receptor who be cross reactive.

This paper shows both SARS and NL63 bind ACE2 and postulates it is a hotspot for viruses to bind. NL63 is one of the 4 human coronaviruses that cause the cold. Unless there is some control to show that the experiment was not cross reactive with NL63, it is very possible they just proved a cold virus was present in Italy before COVID.

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This makes sense. And hopefully there's some cross-immunity.

https://globalnews.ca/news/7119856/coronavirus-sewage-barcelona-march-2019/

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Spanish virologists have found traces of the novel coronavirus in a sample of Barcelona waste water collected in March 2019, nine months before the COVID-19 disease was identified in China, the University of Barcelona said on Friday.

The discovery of virus genome presence so early in Spain, if confirmed, would imply the disease may have appeared much earlier than the scientific community thought.

The University of Barcelona team, who had been testing waste water since mid-April this year to identify potential new outbreaks, decided to also run tests on older samples.
They first found the virus was present in Barcelona on Jan. 15, 2020, 41 days before the first case was officially reported there.

Then they ran tests on samples taken between January 2018 and December 2019 and found the presence of the virus genome in one of them, collected on March 12, 2019.

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https://www.news.com.au/world/coronavirus/global/italy-sewage-study-suggests-covid19-was-there-in-december-2019/news-story/2fd865f7b12a33698f3e9ab2f15a35e3

Quote:

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Scientists in Italy have found traces of the new coronavirus in wastewater collected from Milan and Turin in December 2019 suggesting COVID-19 was already circulating in northern Italy before China reported the first cases.

The Italian National Institute of Health looked at 40 sewage samples collected from wastewater treatment plants in northern Italy between October 2019 and February 2020.

An analysis released on Thursday said samples taken in Milan and Turin on December 18 showed the presence of the SARS-Cov-2 virus.

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This is most likely just cross reactivity with antibodies to other common human coronavirus strains, which cause about 30% of common colds worldwide (and previously caused SARS/MERS). It could also be cross reacting to any antibodies directed at other viruses with affinity for ACE receptors.

For all intents and purposes, it's an impossibility that this was infecting people in Europe in September of 2019. If it were, it would render many foundational principles of virology, genetics and epidemiology meaningless. It would be like finding the fossil of a rabbit in geologic strata predating the known evolutionary emergence of mammals, it would invalidate a whole field of of foundational science.

Fitch said:

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I have little doubt it was circulating before the popular media picked the story up and it entered into the public awareness. Heck, I have friends who were in Thailand and Wuhan in December and were "super sick" just after getting home to NYC.

Doesn't necessarily mean it was widespread, but the seeds were likely in place for a global event around Christmas, just took it several months to realize. Such is the nature of exponential growth.

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The thing is that we can directly trace the spread of different strains across the globe, in some cases down the exact day. For it to be true that this was not only spreading in China bit elsewhere in September of 2019 would require almost everything we know about virology and viral genetics to be wrong on a foundational level that would render entire fields obsolete and meaningless.

In other words, the more likely scenario is that this is data confounded by cross reactivity.

Infection_Ag11 said:

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Fitch said:

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I have little doubt it was circulating before the popular media picked the story up and it entered into the public awareness. Heck, I have friends who were in Thailand and Wuhan in December and were "super sick" just after getting home to NYC.

Doesn't necessarily mean it was widespread, but the seeds were likely in place for a global event around Christmas, just took it several months to realize. Such is the nature of exponential growth.

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The thing is that we can directly trace the spread of different strains across the globe, in some cases down the exact day. For it to be true that this was not only spreading in China bit elsewhere in September of 2019 would require almost everything we know about virology and viral genetics to be wrong on a foundational level that would render entire fields obsolete and meaningless.

In other words, the more likely scenario is that this is data confounded by cross reactivity.

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Could this be applied to positive asymptomatic test results as well? Could people be testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 because of cross reactivity but are really not infected with SARS-CoV-2?

I think you mistake my rumination - I'm willing to accept there were single- or double-digit cases in unique areas of high travel and cross pollination in December last year but really no further.

Rationale being there is some discrete % of asymptomatic carriers and ineffective transmission, and doubling case growth can be very very quiet until all of a sudden there's a sufficiently large base and it explodes everywhere at once. Given what we know now of the "typical" Covid experience of kids, teenagers and young adults it would not be surprising if low level case transmission was written off or missed entirely. It's a different statistical paradigm than where we are now where it's more or less distributed throughout the global geography and population.

Going back further any further seemingly causes all logic to break down, and hence I agree with your broader point. At one point I was like many others in thinking I may have had it in late a February and have since given that thought up - statistically it wouldn't make any sense. If I had been in Italy or Wuhan Int'l Airport in December/January then that's a different story.

There was someone in north Texas that had not travelled outside the state but had COVID in late January.

Quote:

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About a week later, their calls reached the right person. Leonard Seiple of Lewisville fell ill in late January with symptoms that resembled those of COVID-19. Although he hadn't traveled outside the state, he felt right away that he had caught something nastier than the flu.

During his annual exam at a Denton Veterans Affairs clinic in early April, he told his doctor he believed he'd had COVID-19. "Do you want to find out for sure?" his doctor asked. She told him that Texas Health Dallas was looking for plasma donors. On April 8, Seiple visited the hospital to be screened. He tested negative for COVID-19 but positive for COVID-19 antibodies, indicating that he'd likely had the infection. In addition, his blood type was a match for Michael's.

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https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public-health/2020/04/25/dallas-medical-team-rescues-coronavirus-patient-after-30-days-on-life-support/

Yup, statistically possible despite not being very probable - and yet there it is.

AggieBiker said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Fitch said:

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I have little doubt it was circulating before the popular media picked the story up and it entered into the public awareness. Heck, I have friends who were in Thailand and Wuhan in December and were "super sick" just after getting home to NYC.

Doesn't necessarily mean it was widespread, but the seeds were likely in place for a global event around Christmas, just took it several months to realize. Such is the nature of exponential growth.

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The thing is that we can directly trace the spread of different strains across the globe, in some cases down the exact day. For it to be true that this was not only spreading in China bit elsewhere in September of 2019 would require almost everything we know about virology and viral genetics to be wrong on a foundational level that would render entire fields obsolete and meaningless.

In other words, the more likely scenario is that this is data confounded by cross reactivity.

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Could this be applied to positive asymptomatic test results as well? Could people be testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 because of cross reactivity but are really not infected with SARS-CoV-2?

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The PCR test is very sensitive and specific, so very unlikely. The rapid antigen test is prone to false negatives but less so false positives.

Keegan99 said:

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It would be very, very unlikely that children would be affected intensely and for more than a week by COVID.

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well they've had dozens of "close contact" tracing this year and still have yet to get it...I'm talking they have been in multi-hour car rides with people who actively had COVID, and still haven't gotten it since December...so I think my assumption is highly likely.

AggieBiker said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Fitch said:

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I have little doubt it was circulating before the popular media picked the story up and it entered into the public awareness. Heck, I have friends who were in Thailand and Wuhan in December and were "super sick" just after getting home to NYC.

Doesn't necessarily mean it was widespread, but the seeds were likely in place for a global event around Christmas, just took it several months to realize. Such is the nature of exponential growth.

---

The thing is that we can directly trace the spread of different strains across the globe, in some cases down the exact day. For it to be true that this was not only spreading in China bit elsewhere in September of 2019 would require almost everything we know about virology and viral genetics to be wrong on a foundational level that would render entire fields obsolete and meaningless.

In other words, the more likely scenario is that this is data confounded by cross reactivity.

---

Could this be applied to positive asymptomatic test results as well? Could people be testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 because of cross reactivity but are really not infected with SARS-CoV-2?

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The antibody test could potentially be positive if the person has an antibody from a different coronavirus infection that cross reacts with SARS-CoV2. The important thing to remember is that if this prior antibody also recognizes SARS-CoV2, it would also trigger an immune response to SARS-CoV2. It may not be as strong of an immune response, but may be sufficient to hold the virus in check.

Infection_Ag11 said:

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AggieBiker said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Fitch said:

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I have little doubt it was circulating before the popular media picked the story up and it entered into the public awareness. Heck, I have friends who were in Thailand and Wuhan in December and were "super sick" just after getting home to NYC.

Doesn't necessarily mean it was widespread, but the seeds were likely in place for a global event around Christmas, just took it several months to realize. Such is the nature of exponential growth.

---

The thing is that we can directly trace the spread of different strains across the globe, in some cases down the exact day. For it to be true that this was not only spreading in China bit elsewhere in September of 2019 would require almost everything we know about virology and viral genetics to be wrong on a foundational level that would render entire fields obsolete and meaningless.

In other words, the more likely scenario is that this is data confounded by cross reactivity.

---

Could this be applied to positive asymptomatic test results as well? Could people be testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 because of cross reactivity but are really not infected with SARS-CoV-2?

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The PCR test is very sensitive and specific, so very unlikely. The rapid antigen test is prone to false negatives but less so false positives.

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So are you saying when the link in the OP says, "SARS-CoV-2 RBD-specific antibodies" it does not mean these antibodies necessarily came from Covid 19? Or are you saying the article is probably wrong in making that conclusion from their data source?

AggieBiker said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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AggieBiker said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Fitch said:

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I have little doubt it was circulating before the popular media picked the story up and it entered into the public awareness. Heck, I have friends who were in Thailand and Wuhan in December and were "super sick" just after getting home to NYC.

Doesn't necessarily mean it was widespread, but the seeds were likely in place for a global event around Christmas, just took it several months to realize. Such is the nature of exponential growth.

---

The thing is that we can directly trace the spread of different strains across the globe, in some cases down the exact day. For it to be true that this was not only spreading in China bit elsewhere in September of 2019 would require almost everything we know about virology and viral genetics to be wrong on a foundational level that would render entire fields obsolete and meaningless.

In other words, the more likely scenario is that this is data confounded by cross reactivity.

---

Could this be applied to positive asymptomatic test results as well? Could people be testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 because of cross reactivity but are really not infected with SARS-CoV-2?

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The PCR test is very sensitive and specific, so very unlikely. The rapid antigen test is prone to false negatives but less so false positives.

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So are you saying when the link in the OP says, "SARS-CoV-2 RBD-specific antibodies" it does not mean these antibodies necessarily came from Covid 19? Or are you saying the article is probably wrong in making that conclusion from their data source?

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Specific binding involves a tight fit of complementary shapes... like a key in a lock. Non specific binding is a weak interaction between proteins that can be easily disrupted. The antibodies of the link bind to RBD in a specific way. That does not mean the only bind to SARS-CoV2, especially since any RBD that interacts with ACE2 would potentially have a similar shape because it has to interact with the same ACE2.

PCR looks at the genome and there are many ways to code for even the same identical protein. Additionally, there are parts of the viral proteins that are not under the same selection to maintain a specific shape.

SARS-CoV2 genome is around 80% identical to the SARS-CoV genome, but the proteins are about 95% identical. It is easy to tell the difference with PCR, but would be almost impossible to distinguish the two with an antigen/antibody type test. Plus, since they targeted a part of the protein that is going to have a similar shape regardless, it could be hard to distinguish between other viruses that bind to ACE2.

Now, if they were to detect SARS-CoV2 RNA in the samples using the PCR test, that would be far more compelling data. However, RNA isn't very stable so I would wonder about potential contamination of the waste water sample given they are now over a year old.

TLDR does not mean the antibodies came from COVID, and the article is probably wrong concluding their data shows the presence of SARS CoV2 based on their data source and testing methods.

BiochemAg97 said:

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AggieBiker said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Fitch said:

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I have little doubt it was circulating before the popular media picked the story up and it entered into the public awareness. Heck, I have friends who were in Thailand and Wuhan in December and were "super sick" just after getting home to NYC.

Doesn't necessarily mean it was widespread, but the seeds were likely in place for a global event around Christmas, just took it several months to realize. Such is the nature of exponential growth.

---

The thing is that we can directly trace the spread of different strains across the globe, in some cases down the exact day. For it to be true that this was not only spreading in China bit elsewhere in September of 2019 would require almost everything we know about virology and viral genetics to be wrong on a foundational level that would render entire fields obsolete and meaningless.

In other words, the more likely scenario is that this is data confounded by cross reactivity.

---

Could this be applied to positive asymptomatic test results as well? Could people be testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 because of cross reactivity but are really not infected with SARS-CoV-2?

---

The antibody test could potentially be positive if the person has an antibody from a different coronavirus infection that cross reacts with SARS-CoV2. The important thing to remember is that if this prior antibody also recognizes SARS-CoV2, it would also trigger an immune response to SARS-CoV2. It may not be as strong of an immune response, but may be sufficient to hold the virus in check.

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Correct me if I'm wrong but this should mean that coronavirus with cross reactivity could potentially give cross immunity as well?

AgsMyDude said:

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BiochemAg97 said:

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AggieBiker said:

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Infection_Ag11 said:

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Fitch said:

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I have little doubt it was circulating before the popular media picked the story up and it entered into the public awareness. Heck, I have friends who were in Thailand and Wuhan in December and were "super sick" just after getting home to NYC.

Doesn't necessarily mean it was widespread, but the seeds were likely in place for a global event around Christmas, just took it several months to realize. Such is the nature of exponential growth.

---

The thing is that we can directly trace the spread of different strains across the globe, in some cases down the exact day. For it to be true that this was not only spreading in China bit elsewhere in September of 2019 would require almost everything we know about virology and viral genetics to be wrong on a foundational level that would render entire fields obsolete and meaningless.

In other words, the more likely scenario is that this is data confounded by cross reactivity.

---

Could this be applied to positive asymptomatic test results as well? Could people be testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 because of cross reactivity but are really not infected with SARS-CoV-2?

---

The antibody test could potentially be positive if the person has an antibody from a different coronavirus infection that cross reacts with SARS-CoV2. The important thing to remember is that if this prior antibody also recognizes SARS-CoV2, it would also trigger an immune response to SARS-CoV2. It may not be as strong of an immune response, but may be sufficient to hold the virus in check.

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Correct me if I'm wrong but this should mean that coronavirus with cross reactivity could potentially give cross immunity as well?

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Yes that is correct. But also because of the random nature of immunity (your antibodies to X are not the same as my antibodies to X), a previous infection of virus A may confer immunity to virus B in person 1 but not in person 2. This is because person 1s antibodies may target one part of virus A that is similar in virus B but person 2s antibodies may target another part of virus A that is not similar to virus B. The more closely related the viruses, the more parts are similar, the more likely both people get cross immunity.

Keegan99 said:

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There was someone in north Texas that had not travelled outside the state but had COVID in late January.

Quote:

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About a week later, their calls reached the right person. Leonard Seiple of Lewisville fell ill in late January with symptoms that resembled those of COVID-19. Although he hadn't traveled outside the state, he felt right away that he had caught something nastier than the flu.

During his annual exam at a Denton Veterans Affairs clinic in early April, he told his doctor he believed he'd had COVID-19. "Do you want to find out for sure?" his doctor asked. She told him that Texas Health Dallas was looking for plasma donors. On April 8, Seiple visited the hospital to be screened. He tested negative for COVID-19 but positive for COVID-19 antibodies, indicating that he'd likely had the infection. In addition, his blood type was a match for Michael's.

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https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public-health/2020/04/25/dallas-medical-team-rescues-coronavirus-patient-after-30-days-on-life-support/

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I know people with the same story, only claim illness in October, test positive for antibodies in April without feeling ill. I assume it's possible, but more likely an asymptomatic case fitting our normal timeline and a subsequent antibody positive test. I look for rational explanations and not for outcomes to justify low likelihood theories.