Antibody test results of 2 Snohomish County residents throw into question timeline of coronavirus

[brooklynite]

Source: Seattle Times

Jean is among two Snohomish County residents who have positive serology tests potentially linked to COVID-like illnesses dating back to December, throwing into question whether the coronavirus arrived in Washington, and the United States, earlier than previously known.

Although neither case offers ironclad proof of that – an antibody test can’t pinpoint exactly when someone was exposed to the virus – each patient’s test results, combined with the clinical symptoms in December, appear to meet the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) case definitions for COVID-19.

“They are being considered ‘probable,’” Heather Thomas, a Snohomish Health District spokeswoman, said in an email Thursday. “However, they are not captured in our case counts from Jan. 20 forward.”

Read more: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/antibody-test-results-of-2-snohomish-county-residents-throw-into-question-timeline-of-coronaviruss-u-s-arrival

[FBaggins]

1. Definitely not "ironclad proof"

Given that large proportions of the population are presumed to have been infected but were never symptomatic... they might have caught the virus in early March and now have antibodies.

Hundreds of thousands of people (probably millions) had cold and flu symptoms in November/December/January. I'm sure that many thousands of them have since been exposed to Covid-19 and developed antibodies. The only way to say that someone was infected prior to the period we think the first infections arrived in the US... would be to perform serology tests on blood samples from that earlier period.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. Just a note/mental exercise in my mind...

They have done studies of when groups immigrated long ago into the Americas, out of Africa, etc., and one of the basic premises of a successful migration was that a minimum number of persons was required in order to have a successful migration.

Perhaps the logic involved in these algorithms (on migration theories) would apply to the virus' survival efforts, obviously if the immigrants all died, the virus would too, die out. In short, perhaps they can extrapolate backwards into time as to when the CV truly arrived on US soil.

[pnwmom]

19. No, not proof. However, there was also no "proof" of a January first case date.

And we know it started in Wuhan in November, and that thousands of Chinese people were traveling here every day,

[stopdiggin]

25. well stated. and hits all the important points.

(it's actually alarming the number of people I've come across who are convinced, on the basis of some random winter illness, that they "have had it already." And, of course .. now they have immunity .. and no concerns.)

Show me a blood draw from the December date.

[Drahthaardogs]

31. Exactly. Probably MORE likely they had the flu in December

And an asymptomatic COVID infection later. Unless they have chest x-rays or something similar

[jberryhill]

33. It's unreal how persistent this belief is

Based on nothing at all.

[Drahthaardogs]

34. I am a mathematical person. I think logically.

My career is in STEM. I have always been amazed how people talk themselves into something that is probably NOT true, just because they want it do bad.

[cstanleytech]

3. So could the virus have been here for months and what's causing the deaths

now is a new mutated version and the antibody test cannot tell the difference between the two viruses since they are so alike?

[Lochloosa]

4. I was sick Thanksgiving last year. Tested neg. for the flu, but damn sure felt like it.

I kept telling my wife this just felt weird. Upper respiratory, chills but without the body ache. I went to bed the night before Thanksgiving @ 8 will chills just like the flu feels. Got up the next morning feeling fine and cooked a traditional turkey dinner.

It took me 3 weeks to get over the respiratory part of it.

It's hard to describe, but I've never felt like that before. And I'm in my early 60's.

[Mike 03]

6. See, this is exactly what I mean.

There are tons of anecdotal stories like this. My niece got very sick in January. She even at one point was coughing up bloody stuff, never went to the doctor, recovered. We need to check this out.

[jberryhill]

7. There's always a variety of stuff circulating, though

The deaths weren't there.

[Mike 03]

8. Good point.

Also hospitals weren't overwhelmed that we heard about.

EDIT: I do wonder if this virus was circulating in less-lethal form, though. Could it have become deadly recently?

[jberryhill]

13. "Could it have become deadly recently?"

I am of course not an epidemiologist.

It would seem odd, to my completely ignorant mind, for it to have been in the US before December, but then "turn deadly" in China and Italy before doing so here.

In other words, the relatively high mortality rate of this infection seems to have been established elsewhere before popping up here.

[AntiFascist]

40. Chinese researchers have found there are two strains, one deadlier than the other...

A separate analysis by the team suggests that the L-type was derived from the older S-type. The first strain is likely to have emerged around the time the virus jumped from animals to humans. The second emerged soon after that, says the team. Both are involved in the current global outbreak. The fact that the L-type is more prevalent suggests that it is “more aggressive” than the S-type, the team say.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2236544-coronavirus-are-there-two-strains-and-is-one-more-deadly/#ixzz6Mjf0HzBq

I wouldn't be surprised if the S type had been circulating on the West coast much earlier than thought. Maybe it provided immunity from the L type?

Also, I believe the first documented case is now thought to be mid November in China and the thinking is that it could have been circulating in the Fall, but not spreading as fast as it did later.

[Igel]

14. No.

Not an epidemiologist, but I got 6 hours of sleep last night.


The genomic studies of the mutations of this thing shows that pretty much all the mutations available in Wuhan in January 2020 exist outside of Wuhan.

In additional, there are novel mutations. The distribution of the novel mutations show that they're relatively late. After the "out of Wuhan" date. It's all patch-work on top of layers of different slightly different varieties that comes with population mixing.

"Mutation" just means that there's a different amino acid at a given location in a protein or the RNA. A number of amino acids are pretty much functionally equivalent, so the change is pretty meaningless. It's not that the mutation gives it a new capability, any more than replacing a single nail with a wood screw makes a coffee table into a work bench.

The estimated date for when SARS-CoV-2 acquired its current form is years ago, based not so much on the data from the virus itself but comparing it with other related coronavirus. How long ago depends on what you think happened to get it from there to here. However, dating the time when this virus became unique before last October 2020 that doesn't mean that it had hopped to humans by then. I haven't seen (and haven't looked) to see if anybody's reconstructed the original "ur-virus" based just no SARS-CoV-2 mutations, but if nobody has some grad student should get right on that.

[mr_lebowski]

15. Were those 6 hours at a Holiday Inn Express? If so you're good, obviously (nt)

[pnwmom]

20. How do we know the deaths weren't there? We don't generally do autopsies on

old people who die of natural causes at home or in nursing homes, and there was no test for covid anyway.

[jberryhill]

21. Excess mortality

This question has been asked and answered a zillion times.

People die at very regular, predictable rates, even taking seasonal variation into account.

If something new starts killing people, the excess mortality sticks out like a sore thumb.

Look at this graph for England:



Just looking at that graph, and without any autopsies or anything, when do YOU think covid-19 started killing people in England?

THE. DEATHS. WEREN'T. THERE.

You don't need autopsies. You don't need testing. You don't need to know anything other than "Are people dying at a higher rate than normal?" in order to figure out if a new cause is killing people.

[jberryhill]

23. Try this one

Graphs of deaths in Spain, showing average range in grey, for the last two years:



When do you suppose people started dying of covid-19 in Spain?

Even if we knew nothing about covid-19, and had no idea what viruses are, we'd know exactly when some new cause of death started killing people, just from the numbers of deaths.

It's how we know the actual death toll from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. I'm surprised at how quickly people forget how we know things.

[pnwmom]

24. Why are you showing graphs of Europe instead of the United States?

And none of this proves there weren't small numbers of cases occurring here that no one noticed. Thousands of people were coming each day back and forth between China, and it started there in November.

And we know that by the time the first two cases were positively identified here, epidemiologists who examined the genomes of their viruses say there could have already been up to 1500 undetected cases linking them. And there are reports like this, from early January.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/19-flu-deaths-confirmed-in-washington-state-so-far/

OLYMPIA — At least 21 people in Washington state have died of the flu so far this season, including two children who died, the state Department of Health reports.

The latest update from health officials says flu activity in the state is elevated, with more than 1,800 patients reporting flu-like systems during the last week of December alone — the most recent period for which statewide data is available.

SNIP

Ten outbreaks of flu-like sickness also were reported at long-term-care facilities in the state in the 2019-2020 season, as of Dec. 28.

[jberryhill]

26. Because they were handy

The excess mortality is simply not there.

You asked a question about how you could detect excess deaths due to covid-19 without autopsies and I answered it.

I am not your personal research agency. There was no uptick in excess deaths beyond what would be expected with the seasonal flu in the United States either.

Your bolded sentence does not support this repeated contention that covid-19 was affecting significant numbers of people in the US back in December.

Yes, there certainly were, and are seasonal outbreaks of flu.

If you bothered to LOOK at the Europe graphs, which are representative of how mortality fluctuates through the year, you would understand that.

But, good golly, not every statistical report has a handy .jpg that can be posted on DU, and I believed the graphs showed, quite clearly, WHY we can know people weren't dying from covid-19 to any significant degree in December. How much time am I supposed to spend on research responding to your post?






There is no significant difference in the point, no matter where the graphs are from.

The point is pretty simple to understand - if there is a new cause of death, then it sticks out from the seasonal average. That's why, for example, you can see a heat wave in the graph for Spain.

This is a common technique for figuring out if something is up.

[jberryhill]

27. Here

You know, it takes time to find things that can be readily posted as graphics on DU, and I believed the answer to your question was pretty obvious, no matter where the graphs are from. Because it is the same principle no matter where one looks. Science is like that.

It is beyond obvious when people started dying of covid-19 in the US, in Italy, in the UK, or anywhere else, by looking at the mortality graph.

So, look at the graph, and tell me what YOU think happened in mid-March (with a two-week incubation period) that had not happened previously?

[pnwmom]

28. Your graph proves my point, thanks. There were excess deaths in January

and some of them could have been unreported covid.

It's not like they were testing everybody for covid. They were hardly testing anyone at all.

And that was a Federal chart, which could have obscured even higher amounts of excess deaths in specific locations such as Seattle.

ON UPDATE: What happened in mid-march was that exponential rate of increase was showing its effect.

[jberryhill]

32. What on earth are you talking about?

It was within the average range in January - that grey band. There was nothing unusual going on.

And, no, it doesn't stick around for a few months and THEN somehow launch into exponential growth.

This is a common right-wing talking point to suggest that immunity may be much higher than it probably is.

https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/coronavirus-circulating-california-2019-bunk.html

No, You Did Not Get COVID-19 in the Fall of 2019

The piece has spread widely. An accompanying web story posted to the TV station’s website has been shared more than 58,300 times, and has also been picked up by SFGate. The theory is appealing to some, particularly those who had respiratory illnesses in late 2019 that they now believe could’ve been COVID-19. In their minds, that might mean they have some immunity to the virus—and if a large portion of Americans have some immunity, we can begin our move out of lockdown. But that theory has no scientific basis, and it spreads dangerous misinformation.


https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/03/26/coronavirus-fact-check-could-your-december-cough-have-been-covid-19/2899027001/

Dr. Josh Petrie, assistant research professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, said it's important to remember that multiple existing viruses can cause severe upper respiratory symptoms and circulated late last year. Among them was Influenza B, which grew in intensity around November and December, as well as RSV and Influenza A.

He said it's possible there were "sporadic" travel-related cases earlier than the discovery of the first case but agreed it was likely not widespread as far back as November or December.


"There's a lot of surveillance that goes on for influenza every year, and so if we were seeing a lot of coronavirus activity at that time – even if you couldn't test for it – you would see signals in that influenza surveillance," he said.


----
But, yeah, those scientists are nothing compared to people sharing anecdotes on social media.

[pnwmom]

35. With exponential growth the initial numbers are very small. And then suddenly they aren't.

And the articles you posted are based on the information they had at the time. Now, according to this Seattle Times article, public health officials say an earlier case may have been in December. The Jury's still out.

Jean is among two Snohomish County residents who have positive serology tests potentially linked to COVID-like illnesses dating back to December, throwing into question whether the coronavirus arrived in Washington, and the United States, earlier than previously known.
Although neither case offers ironclad proof of that – an antibody test can’t pinpoint exactly when someone was exposed to the virus – each patient’s test results, combined with the clinical symptoms in December, appear to meet the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) case definitions for COVID-19.

“They are being considered ‘probable,’” Heather Thomas, a Snohomish Health District spokeswoman, said in an email Thursday. “However, they are not captured in our case counts from Jan. 20 forward.”

[jberryhill]

36. Oh boy

Thank you for explaining exponential growth to me. I don’t know how I got through years of graduate level engineering analysis without it.

What it cannot do is to infect everyone on social media who had something in December and January in any significant numbers and yet, through some magic, not bloom into a large number of excess deaths. It does not remain at onesies and twosies for three months, spread to New York City, and then decide to blow up. And the article you are quoting does not contradict that simple fact.

Look at the graph in this study of excess mortality, in which the vertical axis is normalized to average deaths:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6919e5-H.pdf

There is simply no way it was present in December and resulted in that curve. I don’t know what your math background is, but to suggest that represents several months of exponential growth is insane.

[pnwmom]

38. The Northeastern U. modelers believe that by March 1 there were already 28,000 cases

in 5 cities alone -- not including cases in other parts of the country.. But the government was only recognizing 23.

And now the public health department in Seattle has found evidence we could have had cases as early as late December. That's not unrealistic when we know that there were approximately 14,000 travelers to the US from China every day in December, and many of them landed in Seattle, and that the modelers think Seattle had 2300 cases only two months later.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/us/coronavirus-early-outbreaks-cities.html

By the time New York City confirmed its first case of the coronavirus on March 1, thousands of infections were already silently spreading through the city, a hidden explosion of a disease that many still viewed as a remote threat as the city awaited the first signs of spring.

Hidden outbreaks were also spreading almost completely undetected in Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle, long before testing showed that each city had a major problem, according to a model of the spread of the disease by researchers at Northeastern University who shared their results with The New York Times.

Even in early February — while the world focused on China — the virus was not only likely to be spreading in multiple American cities, but also seeding blooms of infection elsewhere in the United States, the researchers found.

In five major U.S. cities, as of March 1 there were only 23 confirmed cases of coronavirus. But according to the Northeastern model, there could have actually been about 28,000 infections in those cities by then.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/06/coronavirus-china-becomes-increasingly-isolated-as-airlines-pull-out.html

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it processed an average of 371,780 people at U.S. airports each day in the last fiscal year, although February travel demand is much lower than in the summer. Some 14,000 people flew into the U.S. from China each day — almost 5 million for that year.

[reACTIONary]

29. You are right, and....

...I'm one who thinks I might have had it in Feb. I had a persistent cough for some number of weeks. My spouse came down with the same symptoms, but she felt worse, had a persistent headache and she lost her sense of taste and smell. At the time there was no information indicating this to be a characteristic symptom.

Of course, I have to laugh at myself, as I smile at those who think they had it.

I certainly do not believe or act as if I am immune.

[cstanleytech]

16. Me, my older brother and his wife all got sick early March but we think it was

a cold but the odd thing is it took them 2 to 3 weeks to get over it but I was fine with in 3 to 4 days.
That's never happened before as usually I am the one that gets hit hardest partly due to my health issues such as my diabetes.

[Mike 03]

5. Not only that. We need to take a hard look at the 2019-20 flu season.

It was a bad year:

As for the flu, visits to healthcare providers for flu-like illnesses fell to 2.2 percent, which is below the national baseline of 2.4 percent for the first time since Nov. 16, 2019, when it was 2.5 percent. At 22 weeks, it was the longest above-baseline flu season in at least 20 years of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) records. Last year was the previous longest at 20 weeks.

A total of 19,932 laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations were reported between Oct. 1, 2019, and April 18, 2020, according to the CDC. That’s the second-highest total – there were 30,453 in 2017-18 – since such figures were first kept during the 2009-10 flu season.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/health-wellness/a-record-setting-flu-seasons-end-doesnt-ease-covid-19-worries/729978

Those are lab-confirmed but I still think we should double-check.

I know it's anecdotal, but so many DUers have been saying things like, "I swear I had this COVID-19 back in November" etc...

[pnwmom]

22. I convinced a young relative to get the flu shot in late December, and a week later she got sick.

She said it felt like a "cold knife" was pressing into her chest, and she was convinced that the flu vaccine I'd wanted her to take had made her sick.

I couldn't convince her that the flu vaccine doesn't do that. And then we learned, months later, about covid. That actually made more sense because in her job she frequently worked with travelers to and from China.

[sandensea]

10. It's quite possible, since Cheeto knew in EARLY NOVEMBER this was coming

His people informed Israel and NATO at the time - but no one else.

As Andy Rooney might say, "why is that?"

[moriah]

39. The Quest antibody test can't distinguish Covid-19 from other coronavirus-based colds.

There are 4 known to be in human circulation that just cause colds. So the Quest test is more "if you're negative, you're still not safe", but a positive doesn't necessarily mean you had Covid-19.

FWIW, a friend who had traveled to Seattle in early February and had an awful "not-flu flu" took the Quest test and came up negative. He's kinda upset, cuz he needs to start flying again in June and hoped that was it.

I'd honestly wait until we had a better antibody test than the one Quest is giving out before making too many assumptions, though it doesn't surprise me that we could have had cases in NY and WA in December. Originally the Nextstrain website showed a potential window that included October as when the virus was first in human beings (which makes sense if it was brought to Wuhan by a rural person visiting the city, for whatever reason), and now they still suggest November as a possible beginning date.

[SunSeeker]

41. He should get the Abbott antibody test. It is apparently 99.9% accurate.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2020/05/08/abbott-labs-coronavirus-antibody-test-achieves-high-performance-in-study/

It is administered by LabCorp here in California.

[bucolic_frolic]

9. I think the Dinosaurs had this

near the end.

[beachbumbob]

11. the only question is by those who aren;t looking for the answers in the first place

[matt819]

12. This is why testing is critical

For the disease and for antibodies. Data. Data. Data.

I know two people who were very sick in late January/early February. Flu, but not flu. Exhaustion, body feels heavy. Fever. In one of those cases, the person traveled to Florida and back to the northeast by air. There was talk of the virus then, but it was in the background. Granted, we don't seem to know whether having antibodies means not catching the disease. But it could provide useful information to scientists. Maybe it's pointless at this stage, with almost 1.5 million cases and 90,000 deaths, but I would think this information could be useful, as I'm sure there are thousands of people who believe they may have had the disease, and survived, before it became COVID-19 24X7.

As for general testing for the disease, I have repeatedly said this was critical. Sure, there may be lots of negatives, and that's fine. In fact, it may actually be good. But what about asymptomatic people? They feel fine but may be unwittingly spreading the disease far and wide, even with following precautions. And given that this is a disease with a fatality rate possibly up to 50x higher than the typical seasonal blue, one would think this would be valuable information. And I hope that a Joe Biden administration would put this into action on day 1. Or maybe day 2.

[Nay]

17. Yeah, the FL trip from the NE and back, that's me. Flew back Jan. 31, got sick 2 days

later with "the weirdest cold I ever had" -- which is what I told my husband. Very painful sore throat, constant unpleasant headache, fatigue for 3 days, then a cough for about a week. I also felt . . . well, strange. That's the only way to describe it. It was a very odd illness, not anything like a regular cold or touch of the flu. I got well quickly and did not think about it.

When the coronavirus news hit, I did wonder if I had had it, but none of the symptoms fit except the cough. (I never took my temp.) So I dismissed it.

Then, 6 weeks later, the CDC added to its symptoms list -- sore throat, bad headache, fatigue. Boom. I am now again wondering if I had it. There is a place nearby where I could get antibody testing, but who knows which tests are reliable?

[Cognitive_Resonance]

18. It will take months and years for science to understand how the virus in all its forms

came to be. I'm keeping an open mind, and letting the facts fall where they may. That said, I am among those with an anecdotal story...contracted something very unusual in November that was flu-like in many respects, but at the time I strongly suspected it was novel. I had a flu shot a few weeks before realizing first symptoms. It's the only time in my life I've contracted a virus and felt like I was probably going to require hospitalization. I barely avoided the hospital, but it took me weeks to become functional again. I can accept it was just a virulent strain of flu that wasn't effectively targeted by last year's vaccine, but I also won't be surprised to learn I had some form of COVID-19.

[roamer65]

30. I had some bug in early January.

Bad dry cough, breathing difficulty, sore throat, etc

I received my SARS-CoV antibody test results today....negative.

God only knows what it was but it wasn’t a fun virus.

I now call it the Son of SARS virus.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

37. Was coronavirus here in December? Health officer has doubts

EVERETT — The first COVID-19 cases in Snohomish County might have occurred in December, a month before the country’s first known infection was confirmed in Everett, antibody test results show.

Two county residents who tested positive for coronavirus antibodies — meaning they were previously infected with the virus — both told the Snohomish Health District that they experienced COVID-19 symptoms in December, predating the county’s and the country’s first documented case, in late January. But district Health Officer Dr. Chris Spitters cast doubt on that theory during a Friday briefing with reporters.

“The symptoms that those individuals reported overlap greatly with other respiratory-tract infections,” he said. “There was no testing of those infections that occurred at the time, so it’s possible, and frankly, I think more likely, that they had a non-COVID respiratory, viral illness, then subsequently had an asymptomatic COVID infection. We can’t say that with 100% certainty — I just think that’s the more likely scenario.”

As of Thursday, 35 county residents had tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies. The health district hasn’t completed interviews with all of them yet, Spitters said.

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/virus-may-have-been-in-snohomish-county-as-early-as-december/