Skeptic 🇺🇦🇵🇸 @antifascistcovid19denial@qoto.org

In this thread, I will show that WHO has been promoting sketchy Chinese data without question since the pandemic started while ignoring human rights abuses.

(I'm not picking on China - my own country is hardly a bastion of freedom - but without Chinese data there's not a shred of evidence that the pandemic originated in China)

I will show that the Chinese Pneumonia of Unknown Etiology (PUE) passive surveillance system is unreliable and that WHO failed to show evidence of an unusual rise in influenza-like-illness in adults in Wuhan during the initial outbreak.

I will show that public health authorities implemented the lockdowns and healthcare slowdowns based on case studies, before a measure of association between the virus and disease was produced.

I will show that once the lockdowns and healthcare slowdowns were implemented, the virus became associated with a multitude of confounding variables that would be expected to increase mortality and morbidity even if the virus isn't unusually virulent, making all subsequent research showing an association between the virus and disease impossible to interpret.

These confounding variables include but aren't limited to: healthcare worker absenteeism, canceled and delayed medical appointments, avoidance of in-person health care due to fear of infection, isolation and quarantine, and reductions in in emergency department utilization during the spring 2020 wave.

Wu, F., Zhao, S., Yu, B. et al. A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China. Nature 579, 265–269 (2020). Reporting Summary
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2008-3

WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2:China Part
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-convened-global-study-of-origins-of-sars-cov-2-china-part
Annex E1 - ILI surveillance supplementary data

Bovbjerg ML. Foundations of Epidemiology. Oregon State University; 2020. https://open.oregonstate.education/epidemiology/chapter/causality-and-causal-thinking-in-epidemiology/

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-daily-per-100k-economist

#COVID19 #COVID #epidemiology #bioinformatics #genomics #medicine #healthcareisahumanright #humanrights #healthcare

@covid19
@auscovid19
@bioinformatics

Lab leak vs natural spill over is a distraction from the lack of evidence that COVID-19 is a viral pandemic originating in China.

In my previous threads I showed that the lockdown in Wuhan was too late.

I showed that all cause mortality was already well above normal and an estimated 7 million people left the city in the weeks leading up to the lockdown, including 300,000 people on the eve of the lockdown.

I showed that the vast majority of international travelers went to other Asian countries.

I showed that studies, including the Seattle Flu Study, finding a lack of early spread of the virus lack plausibility due to the absence of false positives, and I showed that there is a larger body of contradictory evidence.

In this thread, I will show that the excess mortality during the spring 2020 wave was associated with a decline in emergency department utilization, not just for low acuity visits but for high acuity visits as well.

If this is confusing due to media reporting on overwhelmed hospitals, the confusion is coming from the fact that the emergency department and intensive care unit are separate.

I will present data showing that ED utilization went down while ICU utilization went up, suggesting that patients delayed care until it was too late.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-daily-per-100k-economist

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html

#COVID #COVID19 #epidemiology #bioinformatics #healthcareisahumanright

Evidence for Limited Early Spread of COVID-19 Within the United States, January–February 2020

"retrospective SARS-CoV-2 testing of approximately 11,000 respiratory specimens from several U.S. locations beginning January 1 identified no positive results before February 20...

...The findings in this report are subject to at least three limitations. First, the data presented here are retrospective."

In this thread I will show that the lack of false positives makes these findings highly implausible, and I will show that other studies have had contradictory results.

Jorden MA, Rudman SL, et al. Evidence for Limited Early Spread of COVID-19 Within the United States, January–February 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:680–684. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6922e1

#COVID #COVID19 #epidemiology #bioinformatics

"Outside of Wuhan, no evidence was found of any significant increase in overall mortality, suggesting the success of the rapid control of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in addition to appropriate maintenance of healthcare services during the nationwide lockdown."

In this thread I will use travel data to show that the lockdown was too late for this to have been possible.

I will further show that this study uses distorted graphs making the lockdown look like it occurred earlier than it really did.

Liu J, Zhang L, Yan Y, Zhou Y, Yin P, Qi J et al.
Excess mortality in Wuhan city and other parts of China during the three months of the covid-19 outbreak: findings from nationwide mortality registries

BMJ 2021; 372 :n415
doi:10.1136/bmj.n415

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n415

#COVID #COVID19

In the "WHO-convened global study of origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part" WHO claims:

“The documented rapid increase in all-cause mortality and pneumonia-specific deaths in the third week of 2020 indicated that virus transmission was widespread among the population of Wuhan by the first week of 2020.

The steep increase in mortality that occurred one to two weeks later among the population in the Hubei Province outside Wuhan suggested that the epidemic in Wuhan preceded the spread in the rest of Hubei Province."

In this thread I will show that this claim is contradicted by their own data.

#COVID #COVID19

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-convened-global-study-of-origins-of-sars-cov-2-china-part

WHO Director-General's statement on IHR Emergency Committee on Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

30 January 2020

"As I have said repeatedly since my return from Beijing, the Chinese government is to be congratulated for the extraordinary measures it has taken to contain the outbreak, despite the severe social and economic impact those measures are having on the Chinese people...

...The speed with which China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome and shared it with WHO and the world are very impressive, and beyond words.

So is China’s commitment to transparency and to supporting other countries...

...As you know, I was in China just a few days ago, where I met with President Xi Jinping.

I left in absolutely no doubt about China’s commitment to transparency, and to protecting the world’s people."

https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-statement-on-ihr-emergency-committee-on-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)

"On April 8, 2020, the Chinese government lifted its lockdown of Wuhan.

It had lasted 76 days — two and a half months during which no one was allowed to leave this industrial city of 11 million people, or even leave their homes.

Until the Chinese government deployed this tactic, a strict batten-down-the-hatches approach had never been used before to combat a pandemic.

Yes, for centuries infected people had been quarantined in their homes, where they would either recover or die.

But that was very different from locking down an entire city; the World Health Organization called it “unprecedented in public health history.”...

...For the next two years, harsh lockdowns remained China’s default response whenever there was an outbreak anywhere in the country.

But by March 2022, when the government decided to lock down much of Shanghai after a rise in cases in that city, there was no more talk of patriotism.

People reacted with fury, screaming from their balconies, writing bitter denunciations on social media, and, in some cases, committing suicide.

When a fire broke out in an apartment building, residents died because the police had locked their doors from the outside."

McLean JN Bethany. COVID Lockdowns Were a Giant Experiment. It Was a Failure. Intelligencer. October 30, 2023. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/covid-lockdowns-big-fail-joe-nocera-bethany-mclean-book-excerpt.html

"China suspends social media accounts criticizing COVID policy...

...Criticism has largely focused on heavy-handed enforcement of regulations, including open-ended travel restrictions that saw people confined to their homes for weeks, sometimes sealed inside without adequate food or medical care.

Anger was also vented over the requirement that anyone who potentially tested positive or had been in contact with such a person be confined for observation in a field hospital, where overcrowding, poor food and hygiene were commonly cited.

The social and economic costs eventually prompted rare street protests in Beijing and other cities, possibly influencing the party’s decision to swiftly ease the strictest measures."

China suspends social media accounts criticizing COVID policy. PBS NewsHour. January 7, 2023. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/china-suspends-social-media-accounts-criticizing-covid-policy

"The outbreak is Xinjiang’s second since China’s initial wave of coronavirus infections was brought under control in March.

Home to 11 million Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority, the region has been subjected to a sweeping security and religious crackdown in recent years.

The US State Department estimates that up to 2 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities could have been detained in internment camps.

During China’s initial outbreak, Xinjiang was subjected to strict lockdown measures on par with those imposed in the city of Wuhan – the original epicenter of the virus, despite having reported only some 70 cases and three deaths."

Gan N. China is testing millions of people in Xinjiang for Covid-19 after one asymptomatic case found. CNN. October 26, 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/26/asia/xinjiang-kashgar-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html

"Chinese police punished frontline doctors for “spreading rumours” for trying to warn the public in late December.

Police are still engaged in a campaign to detain Chinese netizens for spreading so-called “rumours”.

Rumours included reports of potential cases, including people turned away from hospitals or dying without ever being tested and quickly cremated, criticism of the government, the distribution of masks, or the criticism of the discrimination of people from Wuhan or others who may be infected.

Activists have been threatened with jail if they share foreign news articles or post on social media about the coronavirus outbreak.

That the Chinese government can lock millions of people into cities with almost no advance notice should not be considered anything other than terrifying."

Eve F. China’s reaction to the coronavirus outbreak violates human rights. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/02/chinas-reaction-to-the-coronavirus-outbreak-violates-human-rights. February 2, 2020.

"Another aspect of the Wuhan quarantine has been its hasty nature.

Even now, after several days of quarantine, no specific plan has been issued, suggesting no preparations were made at all before the announcement.

What should be done to settle or assist the estimated one million refugees from Wuhan who made it out before the quarantine was implemented?

During the quarantine period, how would food, water and other basic necessities be provided to residents of the city?

How would medical personnel at hospitals and clinics be provided with the medicines and other essentials?

How would the authorities deal with urgent transportation needs, such as medical staff getting to and from work and patients getting to hospitals for medical treatment?

How would law and order be maintained?

The government has so far offered no explanation for how these and many other urgent questions are being dealt with...

...The results of this are already becoming clear.

First, we are seeing a shortage of supplies of essential household goods in Wuhan, and inflation is out of control.

The city was closed off early in the morning on January 23, and by noon the price of vegetables had already skyrocketed, some vegetables priced up to hundreds of yuan per half-kilo.

By afternoon that same day, many supermarkets in the city had been entirely cleaned out."

Staff CMP. The Truth About “Dramatic Action.” China Media Project. January 27, 2020. https://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/

"The documented rapid increase in all-cause mortality and pneumonia-specific deaths in the third week of 2020 indicated that virus transmission was widespread among the population of Wuhan by the first week of 2020.

The steep increase in mortality that occurred one to two weeks later among the population in the Hubei Province outside Wuhan suggested that the epidemic in Wuhan preceded the spread in the rest of Hubei Province."

WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2:China Part
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-convened-global-study-of-origins-of-sars-cov-2-china-part

“From February 29 through May 29, 2016, we conducted active surveillance in two hospitals and found that 13% of all patients admitted with ARI met the PUE case definition.

None of the respiratory specimens tested were positive for avian influenza.

Only one PUE case was reported to the local CDC; however, it was not reported to the national system because the specimen tested negative for avian influenza virus.

Our findings raise questions about the feasibility of using the existing PUE case definition to identify respiratory infections of public health significance.

Extrapolating our results, if clinicians reported all illnesses meeting the PUE case definition from China’s more than 20,000 hospitals, the number of PUE cases identified would be in the hundreds of thousands per year.

Such numbers would overwhelm the public health system’s capacity for laboratory testing and epidemiologic investigations.”

Xiang, N., Song, Y., Wang, Y. et al. Lessons from an active surveillance pilot to assess the pneumonia of unknown etiology surveillance system in China, 2016: the need to increase clinician participation in the detection and reporting of emerging respiratory infectious diseases. BMC Infect Dis 19, 770 (2019).

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-019-4345-0

"The aim of this study is to quantify the effects of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on health services utilization in China using over four years of routine health information system data...

...Tibet and Hubei were excluded from the subnational analysis due to missing data in the pre- and post-outbreak (January and February 2020) period respectively."

Xiao H, Dai X, Wagenaar BH, et al. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health services utilization in China: Time-series analyses for 2016–2020. Lancet Reg Health – West Pac. 2021;9.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanwpc.2021.100122

WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2: China Part:

“Methods of work…

...all site visits, meetings and interviews proposed by international experts were planned and agreed in advance…

...the Chinese team initiated epidemiological, environmental and retrospective studies, the results of which were presented in meetings before and during the visit…

...The final report describes the methods and results as presented by the Chinese team’s researchers.”

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-convened-global-study-of-origins-of-sars-cov-2-china-part

In this thread, I will show that WHO has been promoting sketchy Chinese data without question since the pandemic started while ignoring human rights abuses.

(I'm not picking on China - my own country is hardly a bastion of freedom - but without Chinese data there's not a shred of evidence that the pandemic originated in China)

I will show that the Chinese Pneumonia of Unknown Etiology (PUE) passive surveillance system is unreliable and that WHO failed to show evidence of an unusual rise in influenza-like-illness in adults in Wuhan during the initial outbreak.

I will show that public health authorities implemented the lockdowns and healthcare slowdowns based on case studies, before a measure of association between the virus and disease was produced.

I will show that once the lockdowns and healthcare slowdowns were implemented, the virus became associated with a multitude of confounding variables that would be expected to increase mortality and morbidity even if the virus isn't unusually virulent, making all subsequent research showing an association between the virus and disease impossible to interpret.

These confounding variables include but aren't limited to: healthcare worker absenteeism, canceled and delayed medical appointments, avoidance of in-person health care due to fear of infection, isolation and quarantine, and reductions in in emergency department utilization during the spring 2020 wave.

Wu, F., Zhao, S., Yu, B. et al. A new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China. Nature 579, 265–269 (2020). Reporting Summary
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2008-3

WHO-convened Global Study of Origins of SARS-CoV-2:China Part
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-convened-global-study-of-origins-of-sars-cov-2-china-part
Annex E1 - ILI surveillance supplementary data

Bovbjerg ML. Foundations of Epidemiology. Oregon State University; 2020. https://open.oregonstate.education/epidemiology/chapter/causality-and-causal-thinking-in-epidemiology/

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-daily-per-100k-economist

#COVID19 #COVID #epidemiology #bioinformatics #genomics #medicine #healthcareisahumanright #humanrights #healthcare

@covid19
@auscovid19
@bioinformatics

A common explanation given for the lack of excess mortality in places like Japan is masking; however, there are many places that had low masking rates and low excess mortality rates during the spring 2020 wave.

For example, Denmark, Norway, and Australia all had low masking rates and low excess mortality rates.

Australia is particularly notable as it's a top destination for Chinese travelers.

Singapore was late to adopt masking and is also a top destination of Chinese travelers.

"For weeks after the first reports of a mysterious new virus in Wuhan, millions of people poured out of the central Chinese city, cramming onto buses, trains and planes as the first wave of China's great Lunar New Year migration broke across the nation....

...Officials finally began to seal the borders on Jan. 23. But it was too late.

Speaking to reporters a few days after the city was put under quarantine, the mayor estimated that 5 million people had already left...

...The top 10 global destinations for travelers from high-risk Chinese cities around Lunar New Year, according to their analysis, were Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, the United States, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Australia."

https://www.voanews.com/a/science-health_coronavirus-outbreak_where-did-they-go-millions-left-wuhan-quarantine/6183964.html

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-p-scores-average-baseline?time=2020-03-31..2020-07-05&country=AUS~DNK~NOR~SGP~USA~ITA~JPN

https://www.coviddatahub.com/engagement-with-recommended-behaviours

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-deaths-daily-per-100k-economist

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html

Additional evidence from New York City showing that patients delayed care during the COVID-19 spring 2020 wave:

COVID-19 doesn't cause severe symptoms on the day of infection - like any other infectious disease, it takes time for the disease to progress.

"The four clinical outcomes considered were as follows:

Dead on arrival (DOA):
if the patient arrived in cardiac arrest with high suspicion of COVID-19 and was unable to be resuscitated.

Died in ED (DED):
the patient did not survive ED resuscitation attempts.

Died as an inpatient/died in hospital (DIH).
Survived to hospital discharge...

...Sub-cohort analysis based on primary patient disposition was also considered...

...We found that within this cohort, male sex, advanced age, a history of coronary artery disease, the non-respiratory findings of lactic acidosis, elevated D-dimer, and CKD/AKI were correlated with death either in the ED or during the patient's hospital course.

Fever, hypotension, and even initial respiratory status (including our analysis of the pre and post Sp02 [the Sp02 delta]) were not strongly correlated with outcomes

(likely because of the fact that all patients were severely hypoxic on arrival)."

D'Amore J, Meigher S, Patterson E, et al. Intubation outcomes and practice trends during the initial New York SARS-COV-19 surge at an academic, level 1 trauma, urban emergency department. JACEP Open. 2021; 2:e12563.

https://doi.org/10.1002/emp2.12563

Sixty-one years before Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species", and Sixty-seven years before Gregor Mendel published "Experiments on Plant Hybridization",

Edward Jenner could have predicted that the cessation of the smallpox vaccination program would enable mpox to become more virulent and spread:

"The deviation of Man from the state in which he was originally placed by Nature seems to have proved to him a prolific source of Diseases.

From the love of splendour, from the indulgences of luxury, and from his fondness for amusement, he has familiarised himself with a great number of animals, which may not originally have been intended for his associates.

The Wolf, disarmed of ferocity, is now pillowed in the lady's lap.

The Cat, the little Tyger of our island, whose natural home is the forest, is equally domesticated and caressed.

The Cow, the Hog, the Sheep, and the Horse, are all, for a variety of purposes, brought under his care and dominion.

There is a disease to which the Horse, from his state of domestication, is frequently subject.

The Farriers have termed it the Grease.

It is an inflammation and swelling in the heel, from which issues matter possessing properties of a very peculiar kind, which seems capable of generating a disease in the Human Body (after it has undergone the modification which I shall presently speak of), which bears so strong a resemblance to the Small Pox, that I think it highly probable it may be the source of that disease...

...May it not, then, be reasonably conjectured, that the source of the Small-pox is morbid matter of a peculiar kind, generated by a disease in the horse, and that accidental circumstances may have again and again arisen, still working new changes upon it, until it has acquired the contagious and malignant form under which we now commonly see it making its devastations amongst us?

And, from a consideration of the change which the infectious matter undergoes from producing a disease on the cow, may we not conceive that many contagious diseases, now prevalent among us, may owe their present appearance not to a simple, but to a compound origin?

For example, is it difficult to imagine that the measles, the scarlet fever, and the ulcerous sore throat with a spotted skin, have all sprung from the same source, assuming some variety in their forms according to the nature of their new combinations?

The same question will apply respecting the origin of many other contagious diseases, which bear a strong analogy to each other."

-Edward Jenner
An inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae: a disease discovered in some of the western counties of England, particularly Gloucestershire, and known by the name of the cow pox

Published in 1798

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/29414/pg29414-images.html

#virology #epidemiology #zoonosis #medicine #biology #science #evolution #genetics

For anyone wondering why there's a portion of the previously posted graph showing more ILI than CLI:

I don't know.

Without detailed information about how the CDC collects and processes this information, I can only speculate, but my first guess is that unclear and/or counter intuitive CLI and ILI definitions might have something to do with it.

#COVID19 #COVID #epidemiology #bioinformatics #datascience #dataviz

@covid19
@auscovid19
@bioinformatics