[zachguo]

A few issues with the methodology.

- only 6 small hospitals were included, and far away from the wet market

- Baidu Search Index doesn't match what they claim https://imgur.com/a/UkcUZou

- No test for statistical significance, really?

COVID-like mysterious pneumonia was not that hard to detect, the hospital would be alerted once doctors and nurses got infected.

[joshgel]

Can I just add that seasonal influenza varies widely from year to year? [0]

It just so happens that this year was a moderately bad year in the US. I don't know about China. But, they'd have to exclude differences from a bad flu season to have any chance of proving their point rigorously.

It's a very cool analysis though.

0. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/hcp/weekly-sur...

(sorry for the PDF)

[zachguo]

I have done more research about the 6 hospitals, my initial claim of "6 small hospitals" is wrong, they at least include the biggest two, Wuhan Union and Tongji.

The claim "far away from the wet market" still holds, these hospitals are not in the Jiangan District, and 5 of them are on the other side of the Yangtze River.

[djsumdog]

You mean SARS-CoV2, that's the virus. How would they be able to detect it? Would they even know what they were looking for? Would CoV2 trigger the same tests as SARS1 (for non-PCR tests)?

[zachguo]

Hospitals are obligated to report to the CDC once they discover pneumonia caused by an unknown virus that can transmit from human to human. SARS or COVID is just a name scientists gave to the sequenced virus.

[theli0nheart]

This is a nit, but SARS and COVID aren't the names of the respective viral agents; they're the names for the diseases that the viruses cause.

The virus that causes SARS is called SARS-CoV, and the virus that causes COVID-19 is SARS-CoV-2

[objektif]

If you don't know then you don't have to report. I don't think initially they knew that human to human transmission was possible.

[jsf01]

In addition, google trends limited to China doesn’t match their claim.

[owens99]

Most Chinese people don’t use Google. Not sure if you are aware but it is blocked in China.

[three_seagrass]

The only way to access it is with a VPN, right? Which would put your search outside of China.

[autokad]

IT DID. I posted in another comment, dont want to repeat

[yread]

Agreed this paper is trash