Was some variant circulating in 2018-19?
anecdotal and circumstantial evidence for your consideration
Yes, this might sound crazy, but I think there is a good chance that I had some variant of the coronavirus in…January 2019. No, that was not a typo! And now that it seems likely this virus originally leaked from a lab in China, where research on these viruses had been going on for years, it does not seem quite so far-fetched that I had it, or something like it, due to an earlier leak, especially as this explanation makes sense of what I personally experienced then, and since.
Let’s start with evidence that there was something odd going around at that time in California, where I lived. Look at the proportion of respiratory outbreaks caused by “Other or unknown” viruses during that time period vs. influenza, in the chart below. Source (which I also have downloaded in full): https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/Annual2018-19.pdf
Let’s compare the same report from the prior season. Source (which again, I have downloaded): https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/Annual2017-18.pdf
What’s interesting in this one, which includes a much smaller proportion of “other or unknown” outbreaks, is that “coronavirus” is listed as one of the “other etiologies” in the footer. Not so with the 2018-2019 season.
Let’s go back one more year, because after all, maybe 2017-18 was a fluke. Source (again, I have downloaded): https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/Annual2016-2017.pdf
Note again the low proportion of “other or unknown” outbreaks, plus the fact that coronavirus is again listed as one of them.
Ok, now on to the anecdotal evidence, corroborated by my social media posts during January 2019. I had regular and frequent contact with the Chinese community in Southern California during that time, which resumed right after the holiday, on the morning of January 2.
On the evening of January 7, I had an appearance on Fox News with Tucker Carlson, and while you cannot tell by watching the segment itself (I am a professional!), I recall already having a tiny bit of nasal symptoms that evening.
By the 11th, I reported having “a cold,” and apparently felt lousy enough that I preferred to communicate in writing:
On the 14th, the virus was still hanging on, which isn’t a typical “cold” in my experience, and I start to bring out the big guns:
On the 15th, I’m glad the weather allows me to “get out & get some fresh air” as I’m still not doing very well.
On the 16th, I took the advice of a friend who recommended this tea from Starbucks as something that might help me eradicate the pesky virus. (Again, this is very unusual for me. Usually several days, tops.)
On the 18th, one of my Chinese friends gives me some of these to try and help me out, as it was still persisting. I recall she had a big bag or box of these things and was giving them out. I imagine they helped. (P.S. Do I get extra points for using the virus emoji before it was cool?)
On January 20, I’m still complaining:
And apparently on January 22, I was visiting the doctor, as this thing was just not going away. At least I was trying to maintain a sense of humor.
Finally, it looks like I was getting some relief on the 23rd, but here’s the clincher, and why I think my hypothesis is not crazy: I had lost my sense of smell. As I recall, I’d lost it for at least two weeks, which had never happened to me before.
…and it looks like my sense of smell returned the very next day :) As I recall, the first thing I smelled that morning was dog food. I had never been so happy to smell dog food. I remember going to smell some coffee beans right after that, and later celebrated with some Starbucks. (BTW, Dr. Barry Sears would tell me this keto stuff I was eating was just keeping me inflamed. Live and learn!)
Continuing to relish in the return of my sense of smell later that day:
And finally, by the 28th, feeling more like myself again:
On February 8 I was back on with Tucker again, and I recall still feeling a little congestion and a bit hoarse, even though I had no fever. I recall bringing some therapeutic tea. Thankfully the makeup artist helped me look presentable.
I was sick off and on throughout 2019. I recall getting unusually dry skin on my face within a couple months, and later that year developed digestive and other issues. At the time I thought it was solely due to some significant mold exposure during the summer (this multi-species mold colony was in my new apartment’s air conditioning intake compartment):
But looking back on it now, I think one reason I suffered so badly from the mold exposure was that I was already suffering from “long COVID.” And I don’t know how else to explain that unusually long bout in January with a “cold virus,” and losing my sense of smell, during a time when I had regular, frequent contact with the Chinese community. Oh, and I haven’t gotten COVID since, even though I moved to Texas in June 2020 and more or less lived my life normally through all the waves.
Who else has had a similar experience? I’m interested to hear about yours in the comments, below. Hopefully those trying to reconstruct exactly what happened in the last few years will find this helpful.
Was some variant circulating in 2018-19?
Wife and I were deathly ill in late nov 2019. Wrecked for three weeks right after spending time in Miami customs. Everything but loss of taste and smell.
The Ethical Skeptic presents a well developed, detailed, graphically supported and logical case that SARS-CoV-2 actually escaped from a Chinese lab in early 2018, spread and mutated more slowly than announced, was kept as a mystery, though Chinese (and other) people were hospitalized a lot in 2018 and 2019. Chinese SARS-CoV-2 cases were actually in a final third-wave peak when "discovered" in Wuhan in late 2019.
Due to natural immunity, China was able to have great success with lockdowns, as it would have had with doing nothing at all.
The rest of the world was misled, but found ways to make political lemonade out of the lockdown-lemon. Regions of Asia and Oceana, like India and Australia, actually had a lot more herd immunity by 2020, which was explained and dealt with in different ways.
The saga of the lost Omicron variant is also investigated in detail. This variant has a last common ancestor with other COVID strains a long time ago, which could (barely) have happened if it derived from an initial lab leak in March 2018, but it may well have been released later, even intentionally, due to its specific engineered characteristics. It is not more deadly, but quite different, and does evade the antibodies to January 2020 spike protein very effectively.
If this virus is actually spread more through (Gross!) aerosolized fecal particles, then a mode of spread to whitetail-deer is readily explained, and also some of the early patterns of mass epidemics in the US. Mapping graphs explain this.
https://theethicalskeptic.com/2021/11/15/chinas-ccp-concealed-sars-cov-2-presence-in-china-as-far-back-as-march-2018/
John Day MD https://www.johndayblog.com/2021/12/reality-flails-narratives.html
Yes, there was also a 3-week-chest-cold going around fall/winter of 2019. I saw lots of people with it and caught it. I later had a COVID antibody test in April 2020, which was negative. I had a patient almost die in the hospital Nov/Dec 2019. All they found was "coronavirus" I learned about it in January 2020. "Coronavirus" was conceptually different by January.