[throw2011160736]

Well, what's even worse was that the commission made it out to be pointing fingers at China, even though the origin of COVID-19 is still uncertain. Just yesterday, there's news reports that COVID may be in Italy as early as September 19 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-italy-... along with the (not yet peer reviewed) study that COVID-19 may be in Barcelona as early as March 19 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.13.20129627v...

What's even worse is that this sets an ugly precedence where countries first detect a new disease may not want to announce it to the world due to the stigmatisation.

I've been pointing this out for a while on this board, and every time I've done so, I've been either downvoted, flagged or both. Hence the throwaway.

[kortilla]

It doesn’t make sense that it wouldn’t be contagious in Italy for all of that time until a major outbreak in Wuhan. If it was truly in Italy in September in 4 different people, it would have exponentially exploded long before the first wuhan case.

[throw2011160736]

Look, (I am assuming here) neither you nor I know how a new strain of a flu is detected. Plenty of people get ill without ever going to the doctors and brush it off as a normal flu, and even if they did, the doctor may just brush it off as a normal flu. The term "you don't know what you don't know" really holds true here, so being the first to detect an illness or publish it does not mean that it where it was originated. I mean the 2009 H1N1 flu was first detected in the US, but originated in Mexico, the 1918 swine flu originated from a US army base, but was first published by the Spanish, hence it has been wrongly labelled as the Spanish flu.

I also have no idea why people have this notion to reject that COVID-19 may not have originated from China, especially the fact that most of the spread of COVID-19 came from Europe, so much so that Gov. Cuomo actually called it the Europe virus. https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article...

[nl]

> Look, (I am assuming here) neither you nor I know how a new strain of a flu is detected

I worked on flu surveillance and monitoring projects for 3 years, and have a forecasting paper published in PNAS (although that was for dengue) so I have some idea how it works.

Most countries have flu surveillance networks, where they sample from general practitioners swabs and look for new strains. In most cases this works reasonably well.

In Australia we have ASPREN for influenza-like diseases. There are also compulsory notification diseases, but in the pre-COVID days these were mostly useful for things like detecting outbreaks of whooping cough or measles, and weren't really used as flu tracking or detection.

> I also have no idea why people have this notion to reject that COVID-19 may not have originated from China

Because the first large scale outbreak occurred in Wuhan in December 2019. It seems pretty odd that it should have originated in Europe, somehow avoided any outbreaks, travelled to China, then come back to Europe via people who have been traced where it suddenly caused a huge outbreak.

> especially the fact that most of the spread of COVID-19 came from Europe, so much so that Gov. Cuomo actually called it the Europe virus

I presume you and everyone knows why this was - that China locked down quickly and Europe didn't.

Look - I guess the European origin is possible. But it's a pretty out-there theory and it needs some pretty extraordinary evidence (and antibody studies aren't convincing on their own) as well as explanations for the problems outlined above. And there's huge evidence pointing to the China origin theory to overcome too.

Take the genomics - there's a single original strain, which was detected in China, and the mutations clearly come off that. Again -it could be possible that strain was transported there but no where else or something, but it is lots of coincidences here, whereas the China origin story fits everything about how every coronavirus we've ever studied before behaves.

[throw2011160736]

> Most countries have flu surveillance networks, where they sample from general practitioners swabs and look for new strains. In most cases this works reasonably well.

Yes, I've read about the flu surveillance networks as well. However, these work well in theory, but not always in practice right? The past few years where I've seen the doctor in the UK, they've mostly dismissed anything wrong with me by just giving me some minor medication (this is probably in accordance to meet the waiting target), so things can always be missed out. I mean, there were reports that says the UK and US are best equipped to handle a pandemic, but in reality, we are seeing otherwise.

> Because the first large scale outbreak occurred in Wuhan in December 2019

I would personally say that the outbreak in Wuhan is not really that large scale when you compare it to what's been happening to the rest of the world. The largest scale of it is the media coverage of it since China did a full lockdown of the city. What's even more is that COVID did not seem spread to much of other parts of the country.

> Look - I guess the European origin is possible. But it's a pretty out-there theory and it needs some pretty extraordinary evidence

I had been sceptical about the origin being anywhere outside of China as well initially. But given that more and more news of the possible early detection in COVID in much of Europe before December 2019 (France, UK, Italy and Spain), it does seem to me like there is a greater possibility that COVID could have originated from outside of China. Again, outside of Wuhan COVID was pretty much non-existant in other Chinese cities, even though Wuhan was only locked down late January 2020.

Basically, I'm not saying COVID-19 definitely came from Europe or didn't originate from China, all I've been saying is to have an open mind instead of immediate finger pointing, which as my original comment alluded to, was what the Australian government did.

[nl]

> Yes, I've read about the flu surveillance networks as well. However, these work well in theory, but not always in practice right? The past few years where I've seen the doctor in the UK, they've mostly dismissed anything wrong with me by just giving me some minor medication (this is probably in accordance to meet the waiting target)

I'm not a medical doctor, but the common cold and influenza have very similar symptoms to non doctors but doctors are good at telling them apart.

> Basically, I'm not saying COVID-19 definitely came from Europe or didn't originate from China, all I've been saying is to have an open mind

No you complained that no one is listening to you and you get downvoted.

Open minds are great. But stop sharing this nonsense until there is better evidence because at the moment it seems pretty weak.

[FooBarWidget]

Italy might have had a different strain that doesn't cause as severe symptoms. Even in China, the earliest case was retroactively traced back to October, and nobody noticed anything until December.

[nl]

It's pretty unlikely it was circulating then (why wasn't it detected) and there are much more likely explanations: contamination and the possibility of antibodies being from other related coronaviruses.

[gimboland]

"Spanish flu" didn't start in Spain, after all.