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2) This also matches early indicator data that already found excess flu illnesses in Hubei province (where Wuhan is) in early December as well. https://t.co/DQ0udB7aFT
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) December 1, 2020
4) that said, some think the study might be picking up cross reactivity with other coronaviruses that are seasonally present. I think we need T cell immunity tests coming online soon like @AdaptiveBiotech to be more sure. https://t.co/V0aTA5bYmT
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) December 1, 2020
6) For full transparency, here is the peer reviewed study in the journal CLINICAL INFECTIOUS DISEASES, published by Oxford University Press, with CDC authors. There is some debate about study. I will post updates. https://t.co/q6d1pkJXpr pic.twitter.com/vSGZSjfxsj
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) December 1, 2020
8) and then there was this report from April 2020 about November 2019. Any other major outlets reported this too. https://t.co/gtZikhNvbf
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) December 1, 2020
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The authors do a careful serological investigation, but it necessarily suffers from testing a large number of samples with an assay that is not perfectly specific. 2/10
— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) December 1, 2020
The authors tested 1912 blood samples collected between Dec 13 and Dec 16 2019 and observed 39 positives (2.0%). A Fisher's Exact Test comparing 3/519 to 39/1912 is narrowly significant with p = 0.02. 4/10
— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) December 1, 2020
Here, ELISA titers are higher in individuals who were recently infected with seasonal coronavirus compared to random healthy adults. This is particularly the case in related betacoronaviruses OC43 and HKU1. 6/10 pic.twitter.com/ljh7UC8qPZ
— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) December 1, 2020
It seems highly likely to me that the 39 "positives" from Dec 13 to Dec 16 reported by Basavaraju et al are due to cross-reactivity from recent seasonal coronavirus infection. It would just take a slight decrease of assay specificity to ~98% to explain this outcome. 8/10
— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) December 1, 2020
The other angle to consider is that if we're supposed to believe that 2.0% of random blood donors in Dec 2019 are COVID+ this would translate to millions of infections in the population at large, in which case we would have noticed due to people dying in large numbers. 10/10
— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) December 1, 2020
Follow up #2: This doesn't mean that COVID-19 was completely absent from the US in January 2020, just that prevalence at that time was exceptionally low. Finding 0/3600 COVID+ acute respiratory specimens doesn't square with theoretical 2% ELISA positivity in Dec.
— Trevor Bedford (@trvrb) December 1, 2020
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Covid-19 may have infected people in the US as early as mid-December 2019, a new study of samples from that time period suggestshttps://t.co/D32Nv2cYIh
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) December 1, 2020
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A great thread by @DrEricDing analyzing the timeline of COVID. The SARS CoV-2 virus likely originated in Wuhan, but had already made its way into the US and Europe in early/mid December 2019, weeks before before the Wuhan outbreak was announced on Dec 31, 2019, and publicized. https://t.co/Peqpal6PKF
— Vincent Rajkumar (@VincentRK) December 1, 2020
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