One area I’ve yet to cover in my numerous “early spread” articles is the question of whether Covid is/was really a “novel” virus.
Today, I’d like to expound on the reasons I believe a novel coronavirus – almost certainly produced in a lab – was “spreading” in the world and was, almost certainly, making people sick months before the experts say was possible.
In today’s article, I briefly address the theory – now increasingly common among growing numbers of “Covid Contrarians” – that viruses don’t exist … or, if they do, viruses are not “contagious” and do not cause other people to become sick.
In my opinion, the theory that viruses either don’t exist – or, if they do, they aren’t “contagious – is certainly a fair question for intellectual and scientific inquiry.
For my part, I believe viruses (that can and do produce symptomatic illnesses) have been infecting humans since man first inhabited the earth.
However, I also believe 99.9 percent of humans survive even if they are infected with a respiratory virus. That is, unlike many chroniclers of Covid, I don’t subscribe to the view that posits a novel virus would have to be unusually “deadly.”
These views shared, I do think “mad scientists” manipulating viruses in a lab probably could create a virus that was more “contagious” than naturally-occurring viruses. Per my belief, this is exactly what happened in 2019.
Part 1 of this 2-part in-depth treatment summarizes the evidence that far more Americans were becoming sick in the six-plus months before “official Covid.” To me, this evidence jibes with the theory that “mad scientists” could have indeed created a more-contagious virus.
Today’s dispatch presents compelling statistics showing that far more flu tests were given in the 2019-2020 flu season than any other flu season in history.
I also expound (again) on the significance of the (ignored) fact that an unprecedented number of U.S. schools closed “due to illness” in the months before official Covid, which is not a “trivial” piece of information and probably not just a “coincidence.”
Towards the bottom of this story, I point out that Anthony Fauci and his colleagues went to great lengths to promote the “natural origins” theory. Given that almost everything significant Fauci says is a lie, this, in my opinion, could be construed as further evidence of a lab-made, novel virus.
I also highlight the indispensable and criminal role the PCR test played in convincing people a terrible pandemic was occurring (long after tens of millions of people had experienced Covid symptoms).
As this is another of my “deep-dive” pieces, this article is lengthy. I’ve added sub-headlines and boldfaced text I think is particularly significant for readers who prefer to skim longer articles.
Now on to the reasons I think a contagious novel virus was circulating in the world at least by the fall of 2019 if not even earlier …
Far more people than normal got sick in the fall and winter of 2019-2020
Based on my extensive research, I know far more people than usual become “sick” in the weeks and months before “official Covid” began. In my opinion, this is an undeniable statement of fact.
Weekly Influenza Like Illness (ILI) Surveillance Reports produced by the CDC and state health agencies in at least 49 U.S. states support the view that the “flu season” of 2019-2020 was “severe,” flu activity was “widespread” (and at the highest levels in at least 49 states at different points in the flu season) … began earlier than normal and lasted longer than any other recent flu season. (ILI percentages above the “expected baseline” persisted for approximately 25 consecutive weeks, an “all-time record.”)
Even Anthony Fauci was quoted in early January 2020 as saying this flu season was going to be bad.
“The initial indicators indicate this is not going to be a good season – this is going to be a bad season,” Fauci told a CNN journalist.
I include this quote to highlight a very important point – namely, every public health expert must have been well aware of the copious evidence of potential “early spread.”
Later in this document, I present summaries of evidence of the huge increase in the number of flu tests given and the massive increase in school closings – two more data points that must have been known to all half-way competent public health officials.
In my opinion, the fact this obvious evidence of possible early spread was dismissed, ignored or concealed from the pubic constitutes legitimate grounds to charge certain public health officials with professional malfeasance if not various crimes dealing with fraud and conspiracies.
Headline: ‘The U.S. winter flu season is off to its earliest start in more than 15 years.’
Key excerpts:
“Louisiana was the first state to really get hit hard, with doctors there saying they began seeing large numbers of flu-like illnesses in October.
“Children’s Hospital New Orleans has already seen more flu cases this fall than it saw all of last winter, said Dr. Toni Gross, the hospital’s chief of emergency medicine. Last month was the busiest ever at the hospital’s emergency department. Officials had to set up a triage system and add extra shifts, Gross said.
The same article also noted that “the most intense patient traffic” had been occurring in Louisiana’s six Deep South neighbors spanning from Texas east to Georgia (home of the CDC!)
According to the same article, by the end of November 2019, “flu was widespread in 16 states.”
To me, “early spread” is yet another indicator of a potentially “novel” spreading virus. (
The all-important PCR test …
It’s always struck me as bizarre (as well as “sneaky” or duplicitous) that, with Covid, the key metric for identifying a rapidly-spreading novel coronavirus was based entirely on results produced by a new, instantly-produced and approved PCR test.
While unknown even today, it’s very possible the majority of “Covid cases” were either asymptomatic (citizens who experienced no symptoms) or people who experienced symptoms so mild they did not affect their ability to perform normal daily tasks.
As myself and other skeptics have noted, officials intentionally changed the definition of a “medical case” – a massive departure from how flu or ILI cases had always been identified or “diagnosed.”
Regarding my “Early Spread” hypothesis, I remain gobsmacked that “symptoms identical to Covid” was, apparently, never a metric of interest to public health officials – a metric, one (incorrectly) assumes, might have been of great interest to officials seeking to gauge possible early prevalence of a novel virus.
Instead, the only metric or “case identifier” that mattered to officials was whether someone tested positive on a PCR test.
The CDC and other public health agencies do use symptoms (instead of a highly-dubious PCR test) to determine national and state ILI percentages, figures public health agencies report every week in updated “flu surveillance” reports.
Expressed simply, “more sick patients visiting doctor’s offices” = “a worse flu season.”
Prior to official Covid, the number of Americans who became sick with ILI symptoms was the key metric used to determine the severity of a respiratory virus in a given “flu season.” After Covid (which officials state is a respiratory virus), this traditional criteria was deemed to be insignificant or moot. All that mattered was a positive test on a PCR test.
Not enough people think about this …
The problem with CDC’s reliance on a PCR test to hype a once-in-a-century pandemic is that virtually no American could get a PCR test before March 2020.
As it turned out, the CDC had produced only a tiny number of PCR “test kits” by early March 2020.
It was also the CDC that created the “testing protocols” which mandated that only citizens who’d recently been to China should be given such tests. Furthermore, with perhaps a few exceptions, the tests could be administered or analyzed only by the CDC at its Atlanta labs.
One reason I believe a novel virus (probably created in a lab) was circulating widely in America (and the world) prior to March 2020 is that the CDC and other public health “virus sleuths” clearly made a concerted effort to avoid testing tens of millions of American citizens who likely or possibly could have been infected by a “novel” virus in earlier months.
This “dog-that-didn’t-bark” evidence (things that should have happened but didn’t happen) suggests a conspiracy to conceal evidence of early spread.
For myself, this aversion to identifying possible earlier cases suggests a cover-up.
As I can think of no reason why public health officials might seek to cover-up evidence of a naturally-occurring virus, the counter-theory is that officials were probably trying to cover-up evidence of a novel virus that was made in a lab – perhaps a lab in China, but, also, perhaps a lab in the United States.
Expressed as three equations:
“Lab-created virus” = “Massive scandal.”
“Naturally-occurring virus” = “Nobody’s fault.”
Also, a third equation has always resonated with me:
“No serious or credible early-spread investigation” = “No ‘confirmation’ of early spread.”
Press reports of major flu outbreaks were omnipresent …
I had no problem finding scores or hundreds of contemporaneous news reports from newspapers, magazines, TV stations and Internet sites that document that the winter of 2019-2020 was an unusually severe flu season. Practically every weekly ILI Surveillance Report published by the CDC and state health agencies document the same thing.
To further emphasize a point central to my hypothesis … if far more people than normal became sick in the weeks and months before official Covid, this should not be viewed as a trivial or insignificant epidemiological observation.
While skeptics of my hypothesis might proclaim, “this was simply a coincidence,” such Covid scholars should at least acknowledge it is a very interesting or odd coincidence.
FWIW, I do not think conspicuously-larger numbers of American becoming sick in the weeks and months just before official Covid is/was an irrelevant coincidence. Indeed, I think this is exactly the type of evidence someone who was looking for evidence of early spread of a novel virus would expect to find.
Two other metrics ….
Two other key metrics also support the hypothesis that a very contagious novel virus could have been spreading in America in the weeks and months before the lockdowns. These metrics are “school closings due to illness” and “flu tests given.”
In my opinion, the number of “flu tests administered” in a given year might be the best metric to gauge if the 2019-2020 flu season produced more people with symptoms of Covid or ILI.
Far more flu tests were given in 2019-2020 …
Thanks to the eye-opening research compiled at two citizen-journalist websites (Hail to You and Health Freedom Defense Fund), I found data that compared the number of flu tests given in the same weeks of eight flu seasons. The primary sources are from the “Flu View” Surveillance Network and “CDC Weekly Surveillance Reports.”
Note: Working from three sources, I was able to tally and compare “flu-tests-administered” data from Weeks 5 to 14 of eight consecutive flu seasons and also, from another source, data that compared Weeks 40 through 14 for the three flu seasons before “official Covid.” (Unfortunately, the source document for the longer-period analysis is no longer available. However, I did save this data, which I have used in parts of this section.)
As these summaries show, 34 percent more sick patients were given flu tests in 2019-2020 than the prior year.
Also, the number of flu tests administered in 2019-2020 was at least 13.4 percent higher than the Flu Season of 2017-2018 – which was often described as the worst or most severe flu season in “40 years.”)
Note:
For this analysis, I wasn’t particularly interested in the percentage of flu tests that were “positive” for Influenza A or B in given flu seasons, but the number of flu tests that were administered to sick patients who visited a medical clinic.
(Per my research, the percentages of “positive” flu tests are fairly constant in given flu seasons, ranging from 5 to 30 percent depending on the week reviewed. Significantly, this means 95 to 70 percent of flu tests are negative. Still these “flu-negative” citizens must have been sick from “something” or else they wouldn’t have gone to the doctor and been given a flu test.
Total flu tests administered (Weeks 40 thru 14):
2019-2020: 1,047,958*
2018-2019: 782,412
2017-2018: 924,205
As these numbers reveal, at least 265,546 more flu test (34 percent more tests) were administered in the 2019-2020 flu season compared to the prior flu season of 2018-2019.
*Note: I could not find data for Week 45 of 2019, which means the total for the 2019-2020 season is an undercount of approximately 21,266 (the average of “flu tests given” in Weeks 44 and 46).
Comparisons 2019-2020 vs. 2018-2019
According to several CDC “Flu Burden” articles, the 2018-2019 flu season was the longest flu season where ILI was “elevated” above an expected baseline since the CDC began compiling ILI statistics. However, the 2019-2020 flu season had elevated ILI percentages at least three weeks longer than this “record” season.
Compared to the 2018-2019 season, more flu tests were administered to sick patients for 26 consecutive weeks in the 2019-2020.
