Actual study:

https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1785/6012472

The paper's conclusions have more discussion on cross-reactivity from other human coronaviruses and other possibilities.

Article:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/12/01/940395651/coronavirus-was-in-u-s-weeks-earlier-than-previously-known-study-says

Quote:

---

The coronavirus was present in the U.S. weeks earlier than scientists and public health officials previously thought, and before cases in China were publicly identified, according to a new government study published Monday.

The virus and the illness that it causes, COVID-19, was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, but it wasn't until Jan. 19 that the first confirmed COVID-19 case, from a traveler returning from China, was found in the U.S.

However, new findings published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases suggest that the coronavirus, known officially as SARS-CoV-2, had infected people in the U.S. even earlier.

"SARS-CoV-2 infections may have been present in the U.S. in December 2019, earlier than previously recognized," the authors said.

This discovery adds to evidence that the virus was quietly spreading around the world before health officials and the public were aware, disrupting previous thinking of how the illness first emerged and how it has since evolved. It also shows the virus's presence in U.S. communities likely didn't start with the first case identified case in January.

Researchers came to this conclusion after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed blood donations collected by the American Red Cross from residents in nine states. They found evidence of coronavirus antibodies in 106 out of 7,389 blood donations. The CDC analyzed the blood collected between Dec. 13 and Jan. 17.

The presence of antibodies in a person's blood means they were exposed to a virus, in this case the coronavirus, and that their body's immune system triggered a defensive response.

Researchers found coronavirus antibodies in 39 samples from California, Oregon, and Washington as early as Dec. 13 to Dec. 16. They also discovered antibodies in 67 samples from Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin in early January before widespread outbreaks in those states.

---

Now, if antibodies were detected from a mid-December blood donation, when did the infection occur?

"A" coronavirus vs "the" coronavirus seems to be the question.

No crap. Common sense says this is true.

Yeah, but do you remember these? These say that this is impossible. In April and May you'd have been an evil science denier to post such heresy as the OP around here.

Keegan99 said:

---

From the paper:

Quote:

---

One serum, collected on January 10, 2020 in Connecticut, demonstrated a neutralization titer of 320, 6.75 signal to threshold ratio, and 70% inhibition activity by surrogate neutralization activity, but was Ortho S1 non-reactive. These data indicate that this donation was likely from an individual with a past or active SARS-CoV-2 infection.

---

Some of the earlier samples might be more suspect, but the authors mentioning this one in particular is notable.

Presumably, this would have come from a December 2019 infection.

---

A couple of weeks in either direction wouldn't surprise me, but anything months earlier doesn't work with the rest of the available data. And without a positive PCR conformation, it's impossible to fully rule out cross reactive antibodies from other coronavirus infections.

But I'm sure the Chinese will use this study to claim that it started here and we brought it to them

Keegan99 said:

---

Actual study:

https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1785/6012472

The paper's conclusions have more discussion on cross-reactivity from other human coronaviruses and other possibilities.

Article:

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/12/01/940395651/coronavirus-was-in-u-s-weeks-earlier-than-previously-known-study-says

Quote:

---

The coronavirus was present in the U.S. weeks earlier than scientists and public health officials previously thought, and before cases in China were publicly identified, according to a new government study published Monday.

The virus and the illness that it causes, COVID-19, was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, but it wasn't until Jan. 19 that the first confirmed COVID-19 case, from a traveler returning from China, was found in the U.S.

However, new findings published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases suggest that the coronavirus, known officially as SARS-CoV-2, had infected people in the U.S. even earlier.

"SARS-CoV-2 infections may have been present in the U.S. in December 2019, earlier than previously recognized," the authors said.

This discovery adds to evidence that the virus was quietly spreading around the world before health officials and the public were aware, disrupting previous thinking of how the illness first emerged and how it has since evolved. It also shows the virus's presence in U.S. communities likely didn't start with the first case identified case in January.

Researchers came to this conclusion after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed blood donations collected by the American Red Cross from residents in nine states. They found evidence of coronavirus antibodies in 106 out of 7,389 blood donations. The CDC analyzed the blood collected between Dec. 13 and Jan. 17.

The presence of antibodies in a person's blood means they were exposed to a virus, in this case the coronavirus, and that their body's immune system triggered a defensive response.

Researchers found coronavirus antibodies in 39 samples from California, Oregon, and Washington as early as Dec. 13 to Dec. 16. They also discovered antibodies in 67 samples from Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin in early January before widespread outbreaks in those states.

---

Now, if antibodies were detected from a mid-December blood donation, when did the infection occur?

---

Remember when the old pimple popper posted that it had to have been present earlier than January and I was blasted?

normaleagle05 said:

---

Yeah, but do you remember these? These say that this is impossible. In April and May you'd have been an evil science denier to post such heresy as the OP around here.

---

Trevor Bedford has a very good, informed response on this article that all should read:

Transcribed:
I don't think that this study by Basavaraju et al from @CDCgov can be taken as evidence that #COVID19 was circulating in the US in December 2019.

The authors do a careful serological investigation, but it necessarily suffers from testing a large number of samples with an assay that is not perfectly specific.

The ELISA used by the authors has a stated specificity of 99.3% and the authors tested 519 "true negative" blood samples collected from 2016 to 2019 from healthy adults and suspected hanta virus patients and observed 3 false positives (0.6%) matching this specificity.

The authors tested 1912 blood samples collected between Dec 13 and Dec 16 2019 and observed 39 positives (2.0%). A Fisher's Exact Test comparing 3/519 to 39/1912 is narrowly significant with p = 0.02.

However, there is ample reason to expect that individuals recently recovered from seasonal coronavirus infection will have more cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 than random healthy adults. In fact this can be seen in this paper by Freeman et al (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7239067/)

Here, ELISA titers are higher in individuals who were recently infected with seasonal coronavirus compared to random healthy adults. This is particularly the case in related betacoronaviruses OC43 and HKU1.


Additionally, we know that seasonal coronaviruses circulate at higher frequencies in the winter. We can see this in
@seattleflustudy data where there is significant seasonal coronavirus circulation in Dec 2019.


It seems highly likely to me that the 39 "positives" from Dec 13 to Dec 16 reported by Basavaraju et al are due to cross-reactivity from recent seasonal coronavirus infection. It would just take a slight decrease of assay specificity to ~98% to explain this outcome.

The authors highlight the study's limitation due to "potential cross reactivity with human common coronavirus infection" in the paper's discussion, but it unfortunately didn't make it into the
@WSJ story (https://wsj.com/articles/covid-19-likely-in-u-s-in-mid-december-2019-cdc-scientists-report-11606782449).

The other angle to consider is that if we're supposed to believe that 2.0% of random blood donors in Dec 2019 are COVID+ this would translate to millions of infections in the population at large, in which case we would have noticed due to people dying in large numbers.

Follow up #1: Also, a reminder that we at the @seattleflustudy PCR tested 3600 samples from individuals with acute respiratory illness collected in January 2020 from Seattle and found zero positives for COVID-19. This is a much more specific assay.

Follow up #2: This doesn't mean that COVID-19 was completely absent from the US in January 2020, just that prevalence at that time was exceptionally low. Finding 0/3600 COVID+ acute respiratory specimens doesn't square with theoretical 2% ELISA positivity in Dec.

HotardAg07 said:

---

normaleagle05 said:

---

Yeah, but do you remember these? These say that this is impossible. In April and May you'd have been an evil science denier to post such heresy as the OP around here.

---

Trevor Bedford has a very good, informed response on this article that all should read:

Transcribed:
I don't think that this study by Basavaraju et al from @CDCgov can be taken as evidence that #COVID19 was circulating in the US in December 2019.

The authors do a careful serological investigation, but it necessarily suffers from testing a large number of samples with an assay that is not perfectly specific.

The ELISA used by the authors has a stated specificity of 99.3% and the authors tested 519 "true negative" blood samples collected from 2016 to 2019 from healthy adults and suspected hanta virus patients and observed 3 false positives (0.6%) matching this specificity.

The authors tested 1912 blood samples collected between Dec 13 and Dec 16 2019 and observed 39 positives (2.0%). A Fisher's Exact Test comparing 3/519 to 39/1912 is narrowly significant with p = 0.02.

However, there is ample reason to expect that individuals recently recovered from seasonal coronavirus infection will have more cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 than random healthy adults. In fact this can be seen in this paper by Freeman et al (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7239067/)

Here, ELISA titers are higher in individuals who were recently infected with seasonal coronavirus compared to random healthy adults. This is particularly the case in related betacoronaviruses OC43 and HKU1.


Additionally, we know that seasonal coronaviruses circulate at higher frequencies in the winter. We can see this in
@seattleflustudy data where there is significant seasonal coronavirus circulation in Dec 2019.


It seems highly likely to me that the 39 "positives" from Dec 13 to Dec 16 reported by Basavaraju et al are due to cross-reactivity from recent seasonal coronavirus infection. It would just take a slight decrease of assay specificity to ~98% to explain this outcome.

The authors highlight the study's limitation due to "potential cross reactivity with human common coronavirus infection" in the paper's discussion, but it unfortunately didn't make it into the
@WSJ story (https://wsj.com/articles/covid-19-likely-in-u-s-in-mid-december-2019-cdc-scientists-report-11606782449).

The other angle to consider is that if we're supposed to believe that 2.0% of random blood donors in Dec 2019 are COVID+ this would translate to millions of infections in the population at large, in which case we would have noticed due to people dying in large numbers.

Follow up #1: Also, a reminder that we at the @seattleflustudy PCR tested 3600 samples from individuals with acute respiratory illness collected in January 2020 from Seattle and found zero positives for COVID-19. This is a much more specific assay.

Follow up #2: This doesn't mean that COVID-19 was completely absent from the US in January 2020, just that prevalence at that time was exceptionally low. Finding 0/3600 COVID+ acute respiratory specimens doesn't square with theoretical 2% ELISA positivity in Dec.

---

Beat me to it.

As has been mentioned every time this topic is brought up, for the claims of spread significantly earlier than previously thought to be true much of what we know would have to be wrong. In fact it would be to the point that it would fundamentally invalidate the field of genetics. As is always the case in such instances, the FAR more likely explanation is confounding.

In many ways such claims are similar to isolated claims in a vacuum that some use to "disprove" evolution, not realizing the profound consequences such a thing would have on physical realities they rely upon every single day. In other words, if X claim about reality that you don't agree with is in fact false, innumerable claims you trust in and rely upon would also be invalidated.

Agree. It is hard to figure out. Sometimes the science does not fit with what we see before our eyes. And sometimes what we think we see is not accurate.

One of the fallacies I have observed is the lack of reviewing historical behavior of respiratory spread viruses. It baffles me how medicine just seemed to abandon fairly consistent models of these viruses and the best way to respond to them.

Another fallacy is group think with the shouting down of dissenting views usually based on perceived "science".

Is anyone dying from the Spanish flu? And if not, why not? Have you even heard anyone asking that question?

I also think every younger generation thinks when something like this happens that is is unique and much worse than anything historically. I used to think the same way and bristled when older folks would talk about things in the past.

There is nothing new under the sun.