Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus activity in Fall 2019(dash.harvard.edu)
dash.harvard.edu
Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus activity in Fall 2019
https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42669767
304 comments
There's also the "mystery respiratory illness" that was never identified in July 2019 which could potentially point to an even earlier start. Does anyone know if they've looked into it being related?
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/health-officials-to...
> Three people have also died, but Dr. Benjamin Schwartz of the Fairfax County Health Department said Wednesday afternoon that those who died were "older" and had complex health problems. Officials don't yet know the extent to which the respiratory illness contributed to their deaths, he said.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/health-officials-to...
> Three people have also died, but Dr. Benjamin Schwartz of the Fairfax County Health Department said Wednesday afternoon that those who died were "older" and had complex health problems. Officials don't yet know the extent to which the respiratory illness contributed to their deaths, he said.
Its saddening to see the way we are responding to this pandemic. I understand that finding the source of the pandemic is important, however it seems like we are highly politicizing a world wide problem and trying to blame each other for cover ups. If the pandemic started in august and given the rate of transmission we are seeing world wide, we should have had a ridiculous spike in the number of deaths by now. Furthermore, there are many international flights coming out of Wu Han, the rest of the world should have detected the virus earlier then.
The fact is none of us were prepared and we were all too complacent about things. Towards the end of February I made a trip from Singapore to Seattle. At the time the virus was peaking in China. I recall that the flight was extremely empty and already most countries in Asia had begun temperature screening at airports and started conducting quarantines. On the other hand as I walked through the immigration and customs in US there was not even the slightest trace of preparation for the virus. Not once was I asked "did you travel to China?" and for a country with such a large expenditure on defense I cannot see how much it would cost to place thermal cameras at the customs exit.
In all honesty I would love to see a study done on how this virus came to be but this study should be conducted on a purely scientific stand point. In fact it'd be best if we took politics out of the picture and ask
- what was the chain of transmission from its original animal source?
- what type of mutations took place?
- how in future can we come up with a robust international/interspecies virus surveillance program such that we can flag animal viruses which are likely to mutate to infect humans?
As of now all I can see is that both US and China are misbehaving and taking shots at one another. Our global supply chains have come to a halt. There are countries like US and India which overproduced food yet out of fear of lack of food these countries have halted export causing problems for other countries dependent on them for food. Yet, farmers in these countries are having to throw away crop because they cant sell there produce domestically. As a human race can we really stoop any lower?
In all honesty I would love to see a study done on how this virus came to be but this study should be conducted on a purely scientific stand point. In fact it'd be best if we took politics out of the picture and ask
- what was the chain of transmission from its original animal source?
- what type of mutations took place?
- how in future can we come up with a robust international/interspecies virus surveillance program such that we can flag animal viruses which are likely to mutate to infect humans?
As of now all I can see is that both US and China are misbehaving and taking shots at one another. Our global supply chains have come to a halt. There are countries like US and India which overproduced food yet out of fear of lack of food these countries have halted export causing problems for other countries dependent on them for food. Yet, farmers in these countries are having to throw away crop because they cant sell there produce domestically. As a human race can we really stoop any lower?
> While queries of the respiratory symptom “cough” show seasonal fluctuations coinciding with yearly influenza seasons, “diarrhea” is a more COVID-19 specific symptom and only shows an association with the current epidemic.
Since when is diarrhea a COVID-19 specific symptom? Using Baye's the probability of Covid-19 given diarrhea is:
prevalence of covid in general pop (medium low) * probability of diarrhea given Covid-19 (very low, given we only recently found out this was a symptom at all) / prevalence of diarrhea in general pop (the prevalence of diarrhea in general is definitely higher than Covid-19).
Which lends to a very small probability. Pre-print publications like this based off of shaky data should be taken with a large handful of salt.
Since when is diarrhea a COVID-19 specific symptom? Using Baye's the probability of Covid-19 given diarrhea is:
prevalence of covid in general pop (medium low) * probability of diarrhea given Covid-19 (very low, given we only recently found out this was a symptom at all) / prevalence of diarrhea in general pop (the prevalence of diarrhea in general is definitely higher than Covid-19).
Which lends to a very small probability. Pre-print publications like this based off of shaky data should be taken with a large handful of salt.
This is very interesting but the date significantly precedes my (layman's!) understanding of TMRCA estimations of mid November (earliest cases examining the existing genetic evidence and extrapolating backwards through genetic drift calculations).
How do the scientists here account for the disagreement - beyond the fact they are using completely different methods?
Alternatively, I'd be interested in somebody explaining why my understanding of the TMRCA is incorrect - like I said, its not my field.
How do the scientists here account for the disagreement - beyond the fact they are using completely different methods?
Alternatively, I'd be interested in somebody explaining why my understanding of the TMRCA is incorrect - like I said, its not my field.
Regarding the year-over-year comparison of cars in parking lots, have these researchers considered that perhaps car ownership is just growing that fast[1] in China?
A highly contagious disease would hardly be not noticed during a time of free travel. You could also do the reverse math knowing what we know about its R-naught.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311910366_Cities_of...
A highly contagious disease would hardly be not noticed during a time of free travel. You could also do the reverse math knowing what we know about its R-naught.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311910366_Cities_of...
Link to a prior post of mine:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23074528
China reports infectious disease counts and deaths each month. The numbers from December '19 were insane compared to '18
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23074528
China reports infectious disease counts and deaths each month. The numbers from December '19 were insane compared to '18
Wouldn't there be higher genetic diversity of the virus if this were the case?
There doesn't seem to be any real evidence for this theory in the genetic data we have.
There doesn't seem to be any real evidence for this theory in the genetic data we have.
This paper is a trainwreck. Could be a case of scientific fraud.
Gist of this paper:
The authors look for circumstantial evidence of community transmission of COVID-19 within Wuhan for dates substantially prior to the seafood market outbreak. They do this by attempting to triangulate* web search volume data with satellite mapping of Wuhan hospital parking lots.
*suggestively gesture back and forth between
In the parking lots, they're looking for more vehicles than expected based on prior years' imagery.
In the web search trends, they're looking for "disease signals".
Specifically, they're looking at two terms: a symptom of sufficient specificity to be useful for differential diagnosis of COVID-19 vs. influenza ("diarrhea"), and a more generic term representing influenza-like illness ("cough").
Here's the teardown:
1. "We developed a comprehensive list of hospitals in Wuhan (using Google Maps, Wikipedia and PubMed)."
List not provided.
2. Search terms are given in English even though they were actually input in Mandarin.
You can verify this by trying to search the English terms yourself. By process of elimination and the shape of their graphs, the terms had to have been:
"cough" → 咳嗽
"diarrhea" → 腹泻
Live link below. Requires signup. Make sure to select Hubei → Wuhan (湖北 → 武汉).
http://index.baidu.com/v2/main/index.html#/trend/咳嗽?words=咳嗽...
3. "We extracted the relative search volumes of the terms “cough” and “diarrhea” using WebPlotDigitizer, v4.215."
What? The values are provided on tooltip hover. This data is written into the page. You can just pull the real data out of the html.
Based on a cursory glance at WebPlotDigitizer, the vague method quote above appears to be tantamount to saying "we made up the data from screenshots".
4. They're looking at seasonal trends.
This is clearly visible from basic inspection. This is not interesting.
5. Their Relative Search Volume scale doesn't agree with Baidu.
Their numbers are wrong. Just look at Figure 2b's y-axis.
https://files.catbox.moe/v05oss.png
Maxima: It shouldn't go to 600. The actual values peak on Baidu at 711.
Minima: None of their data should be plotting near 0. The minimum volume in their date range is 76.
6. The uptick for "diarrhea" (腹泻) that they claim exists doesn't.
Again, this is Figure 2b. The red line is the problem here.
This appears to be deliberate fabrication. No competent researcher can miss the discrepancy between what this graph depicts and what the source depicts.
咳嗽 ("cough" / blue line on harvard preprint) was following a completely normal-looking seasonal cycle during the period under discussion.
腹泻 ("diarrhea" / red line on harvard preprint) was, again, following a completely normal-looking seasonal cycle, with a slightly elevated baseline.
The red line is mis-plotted to trend up in a sudden surge right where the researchers would need this to occur for their argument to hold any value at all. Then, rather than declining substantially prior to the January 2020 cluster, this plot depicts the trend holding through to 2020.
This information is simply false. That's not what Baidu reports.
Here's a side-by-side of the discrepancy:
https://files.catbox.moe/5s6i7o.png
Here's a superimposed version, for charitable reading of Figure 2b. I've stretched it to fit. Red should overlay green.
https://files.catbox.moe/eubuci.png
7. Screw the sat mapping, frankly.
If you can't be trusted to screenshot a graph without us having to arrive at this point, there's no point even assessing the content of your claims about something orders of magnitude more complex.
The sat mapping doesn't constitute evidence so much as it constitutes having paid for the visuals needed to launder this preprint into mainstream news. The only thing that can currently be done with this information is a data dump for other researchers to use.
8. Proofread your paper. 2019 → 2020 below:
> Both search query terms show a large increase approximately 3 weeks preceding the large spike of confirmed COVID-19 cases in early 2019 (Figure 2, c, purple). There is a large decrease in hospital volume and search query data following the public health lockdown of Wuhan on January 23, 2019 (Figure 2, third annotation).
9. No stats anywhere.
Can't do time series analysis without math. Spinning a yarn / telling a just-so story shouldn't be the level of reporting expected of academics in this context.
10. No attempt to build a keyword list or other reference information of continuing utility.
So the analysis dies with this one paper, essentially. There's nowhere to go from here.
Gist of this paper:
The authors look for circumstantial evidence of community transmission of COVID-19 within Wuhan for dates substantially prior to the seafood market outbreak. They do this by attempting to triangulate* web search volume data with satellite mapping of Wuhan hospital parking lots.
*suggestively gesture back and forth between
In the parking lots, they're looking for more vehicles than expected based on prior years' imagery.
In the web search trends, they're looking for "disease signals".
Specifically, they're looking at two terms: a symptom of sufficient specificity to be useful for differential diagnosis of COVID-19 vs. influenza ("diarrhea"), and a more generic term representing influenza-like illness ("cough").
Here's the teardown:
1. "We developed a comprehensive list of hospitals in Wuhan (using Google Maps, Wikipedia and PubMed)."
List not provided.
2. Search terms are given in English even though they were actually input in Mandarin.
You can verify this by trying to search the English terms yourself. By process of elimination and the shape of their graphs, the terms had to have been:
"cough" → 咳嗽
"diarrhea" → 腹泻
Live link below. Requires signup. Make sure to select Hubei → Wuhan (湖北 → 武汉).
http://index.baidu.com/v2/main/index.html#/trend/咳嗽?words=咳嗽...
3. "We extracted the relative search volumes of the terms “cough” and “diarrhea” using WebPlotDigitizer, v4.215."
What? The values are provided on tooltip hover. This data is written into the page. You can just pull the real data out of the html.
Based on a cursory glance at WebPlotDigitizer, the vague method quote above appears to be tantamount to saying "we made up the data from screenshots".
4. They're looking at seasonal trends.
This is clearly visible from basic inspection. This is not interesting.
5. Their Relative Search Volume scale doesn't agree with Baidu.
Their numbers are wrong. Just look at Figure 2b's y-axis.
https://files.catbox.moe/v05oss.png
Maxima: It shouldn't go to 600. The actual values peak on Baidu at 711.
Minima: None of their data should be plotting near 0. The minimum volume in their date range is 76.
6. The uptick for "diarrhea" (腹泻) that they claim exists doesn't.
Again, this is Figure 2b. The red line is the problem here.
This appears to be deliberate fabrication. No competent researcher can miss the discrepancy between what this graph depicts and what the source depicts.
咳嗽 ("cough" / blue line on harvard preprint) was following a completely normal-looking seasonal cycle during the period under discussion.
腹泻 ("diarrhea" / red line on harvard preprint) was, again, following a completely normal-looking seasonal cycle, with a slightly elevated baseline.
The red line is mis-plotted to trend up in a sudden surge right where the researchers would need this to occur for their argument to hold any value at all. Then, rather than declining substantially prior to the January 2020 cluster, this plot depicts the trend holding through to 2020.
This information is simply false. That's not what Baidu reports.
Here's a side-by-side of the discrepancy:
https://files.catbox.moe/5s6i7o.png
Here's a superimposed version, for charitable reading of Figure 2b. I've stretched it to fit. Red should overlay green.
https://files.catbox.moe/eubuci.png
7. Screw the sat mapping, frankly.
If you can't be trusted to screenshot a graph without us having to arrive at this point, there's no point even assessing the content of your claims about something orders of magnitude more complex.
The sat mapping doesn't constitute evidence so much as it constitutes having paid for the visuals needed to launder this preprint into mainstream news. The only thing that can currently be done with this information is a data dump for other researchers to use.
8. Proofread your paper. 2019 → 2020 below:
> Both search query terms show a large increase approximately 3 weeks preceding the large spike of confirmed COVID-19 cases in early 2019 (Figure 2, c, purple). There is a large decrease in hospital volume and search query data following the public health lockdown of Wuhan on January 23, 2019 (Figure 2, third annotation).
9. No stats anywhere.
Can't do time series analysis without math. Spinning a yarn / telling a just-so story shouldn't be the level of reporting expected of academics in this context.
10. No attempt to build a keyword list or other reference information of continuing utility.
So the analysis dies with this one paper, essentially. There's nowhere to go from here.
I saw this on the national evening news today, and was flabbergasted at its insinuation.
The immediate thing that baffled me was why they thought, a year-over-year count of cars in a hospital parking lot, was an indication of an early coronavirus outbreaks, which again, China was concealing from the world.
The news report only said they analyzed 1 year. Did they do it over several months? Or did they do it over 60 months, which might be a better sampling over time. Who knows. But that evidence is rather circumstantial.
Did they also consider that Wuhan doesn’t have as many local clinics, so when someone gets sick, they all go to the same central hospitals, for everything. This is also what added to the problems in Wuhan with the initial outbreak.
Then, regarding the increases in search queries for diarrhea and cough, two symptoms of the virus. But I’m sure searches for coughs go up annually during flu season anyways. I don’t think internet searches from random people over the internet, is a very good signal for anything, and may just be adding noise to the data anyways.
The immediate thing that baffled me was why they thought, a year-over-year count of cars in a hospital parking lot, was an indication of an early coronavirus outbreaks, which again, China was concealing from the world.
The news report only said they analyzed 1 year. Did they do it over several months? Or did they do it over 60 months, which might be a better sampling over time. Who knows. But that evidence is rather circumstantial.
Did they also consider that Wuhan doesn’t have as many local clinics, so when someone gets sick, they all go to the same central hospitals, for everything. This is also what added to the problems in Wuhan with the initial outbreak.
Then, regarding the increases in search queries for diarrhea and cough, two symptoms of the virus. But I’m sure searches for coughs go up annually during flu season anyways. I don’t think internet searches from random people over the internet, is a very good signal for anything, and may just be adding noise to the data anyways.
They include an arbitrary choice of parameters from very noisy sources over a really short timespan to find "an upward trend".
Looks like a fishing expedition to me.
Looks like a fishing expedition to me.
I'm curious, how did they get access to location data and Baidu search volumes for just Wuhan?
I caught a flu on Dec 23rd. Tested negative for A/B. Continued to have it. Went back in January still with the flu. Tested negative again for A/B and still had effects from it past Jan 20th.
I felt like I was dying and my lungs were full of really bad stuff.
Around the time I would have showed antibodies you could not get a test in the US.
Needless to say, I believe the virus was around before it had been noticed.
That time frame of late Dec is normal flu season. Many people could have been walking around with covid and no one would have noticed.
I felt like I was dying and my lungs were full of really bad stuff.
Around the time I would have showed antibodies you could not get a test in the US.
Needless to say, I believe the virus was around before it had been noticed.
That time frame of late Dec is normal flu season. Many people could have been walking around with covid and no one would have noticed.
There was a sizeable group of folks visiting from Wuhan in CES. Several folks I know fell ill after the event. I've been trying to figure out if CES magnified it, but there is very little information available on this.
Sorry but the methodology just sounds laughably stupid on its face. It would baffle me if this kind of analysis would meet the bar to identify any kind of epidemic, let alone a novel and possibly evolving virus.
Not to accuse the authors of anything, but I think the level of bias and wishful thinking in some public and political realm, when it comes to the origin of this virus, is bordering on hysteria. Does anyone still remember the evidence that Trump and Pompeo were seeing about the lab leak theory? Why is there no update coming from any "intelligence" source?
I think the fact of the matter is, the origin question won't be scientifically and satisfactorily answered until at least a few years from now, and only with teams of international scientists. In any case, it would be impossible to achieve that in such a politically charged environment.
Not to accuse the authors of anything, but I think the level of bias and wishful thinking in some public and political realm, when it comes to the origin of this virus, is bordering on hysteria. Does anyone still remember the evidence that Trump and Pompeo were seeing about the lab leak theory? Why is there no update coming from any "intelligence" source?
I think the fact of the matter is, the origin question won't be scientifically and satisfactorily answered until at least a few years from now, and only with teams of international scientists. In any case, it would be impossible to achieve that in such a politically charged environment.
Without being emotional and having any sources to back me up, I just believe this virus has been around for a little bit longer than we have initial been told. It seems reasonable taking into consideration that a lot of countries has had a slow infection curve.
But no matter how you spin this, IMO, the chineese is the source of this mess. And frankly it doesn't matter when it happened. It happened.
But no matter how you spin this, IMO, the chineese is the source of this mess. And frankly it doesn't matter when it happened. It happened.
The key is to have open data and not let Chinese to have world data whilst they close theirs for themselves or not used it for fear of political consequences. Close an area and let china choose to do it or not is not the human right answer. You need to force them to join the world in a meaningful way. We cannot study photos or things like that like study Soviet Union politics.
Seems like virus activity is going on all the time even without Coronavirus. Did the data indicate that virus activity in Fall 2019 was in excess of what would be expected from observing other years?
This seems like low-value data that doesn't mean anything by itself.
This seems like low-value data that doesn't mean anything by itself.
Correlation does not imply causation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...)
[deleted]
What could be inferred from this? Does it mean the fatality could be lower than believed? Or that it takes longer than previously thought to spread? Or Asian countries could have had experienced it earlier leading to some level of immunity?
I would use Autumn here for clarity for sure
...of 2019
Most of the posts in this thread are noise.
Here is the established timeline so far:
Nov. 17 - earliest reported dates involving corona in China, reported by US disease experts
Dec. 1 - first reported Wuhan hospitalization confirmed to be corona
Dec. 15 - first date of non-Chinese people I know who became sick with a contagious flu in Shanghai with the same symptoms as corona
Jan. 15-19 - first US confirmed case in Washington State
Jan. 23 - Chinese internal travel ban
Jan. 24 - Disney closes Shanghai theme park.
Jan. 31 - Trump's travel ban on Chinese flights.
So the window of interest is international travel from Dec. 1 to Jan. 15 - certainly SFO and LAX were flooded with corona - a large part of the 100,000 pax per week arriving in the USA from China.
The hospital parking lot data is significant because China destroyed Wuhan Corona Lab data, and denied there was an epidemic.
They will never admit to the coverup publicly except under extreme duress from Trump because they want to protect their dictatorship (Chinese rulers historically seek internal credibility, even when they don't technically need it in the short term.)
If Xi has to choose between a total trade embargo (or seizure of all Chinese assets outside the country as reparations for deliberately infecting 200+ countries) and admitting the corona coverup, he will choose the latter: he will admit it outside China, and censor it internally.
Note that HNers erroneously focus on post-Jan. dates, when corona spread internationally months before.
First Confirmed US Hospital Case in Washington State
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191
For those new to the above data, Dr. Victor Davis Hanson is in agreement, so check out his Youtube lecture videos. Search for "Victor Davis Hanson covid-19".
Here is the established timeline so far:
Nov. 17 - earliest reported dates involving corona in China, reported by US disease experts
Dec. 1 - first reported Wuhan hospitalization confirmed to be corona
Dec. 15 - first date of non-Chinese people I know who became sick with a contagious flu in Shanghai with the same symptoms as corona
Jan. 15-19 - first US confirmed case in Washington State
Jan. 23 - Chinese internal travel ban
Jan. 24 - Disney closes Shanghai theme park.
Jan. 31 - Trump's travel ban on Chinese flights.
So the window of interest is international travel from Dec. 1 to Jan. 15 - certainly SFO and LAX were flooded with corona - a large part of the 100,000 pax per week arriving in the USA from China.
The hospital parking lot data is significant because China destroyed Wuhan Corona Lab data, and denied there was an epidemic.
They will never admit to the coverup publicly except under extreme duress from Trump because they want to protect their dictatorship (Chinese rulers historically seek internal credibility, even when they don't technically need it in the short term.)
If Xi has to choose between a total trade embargo (or seizure of all Chinese assets outside the country as reparations for deliberately infecting 200+ countries) and admitting the corona coverup, he will choose the latter: he will admit it outside China, and censor it internally.
Note that HNers erroneously focus on post-Jan. dates, when corona spread internationally months before.
First Confirmed US Hospital Case in Washington State
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001191
For those new to the above data, Dr. Victor Davis Hanson is in agreement, so check out his Youtube lecture videos. Search for "Victor Davis Hanson covid-19".
We are separated from the schizos by acknowledging that this is just a theory, no matter how bad the circumstances may look.
The schizo will take this theory as hard proof that China knew of the virus early. You and I will wait for hard evidence before we pass judgment, even if we privately believe that these circumstances are conclusive evidence.
The schizo will take this theory as hard proof that China knew of the virus early. You and I will wait for hard evidence before we pass judgment, even if we privately believe that these circumstances are conclusive evidence.
They deprived us of 4 month of corona parties and inaction
- only 6 small hospitals were included, and far away from the wet market
- Baidu Search Index doesn't match what they claim https://imgur.com/a/UkcUZou
- No test for statistical significance, really?
COVID-like mysterious pneumonia was not that hard to detect, the hospital would be alerted once doctors and nurses got infected.