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Comment by xyst

15 hours ago

Reports like this remind me of very early COVID days. And USA just elected a POTUS that did a shit job of getting us through that same pandemic. With the cabinet that he has (rfk jr, oz…), let’s just hope these are truly fringe cases and doesn’t lead to an outbreak

35 comments

xyst

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bee_rider  14 hours ago

Ya know, I could have sworn I remember reading a little bit about COVID in Nov of 2019, but my recollection doesn’t line up with the Wikipedia timeline. I remember being nervous around campus at the time… although there were some other pretty bad colds going around that year, so maybe I just got mixed up.

I think I recall a little bit on Reddit in Dec 2019 and Jan 2020, is that plausible?

Anyway, “early COVID” had a feeling to it—stuff was going on in China but news was taking a long time to trickle out, probably just because of the language barrier, and also because nobody (general public-wise) was paying attention to that sort of thing. The bird flu stuff seems quite different, it’s been reported on quite a bit, people are hyper-vigilant about this kind of stuff now, and it has been bouncing around quite visibly in non-human animals for ages. Plus it is in the US, so we hear about it immediately.

Not saying it isn’t anything to be worried about, but we’re getting updates in realtime.

  • drjasonharrison  13 hours ago

    First case in December 2019. February 2, 2020 fogging machines on city streets in China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLdwCdyiDCw

    We were definitely reading about the lockdowns in Wuhan in January 2020.

    January 19, 2020, the first case in Washington state was detected in a man who had recently traveled from Wuhan.

    Surveillance blood samples from Dec 13, 2019 to January 17, 2020 from several nine US states were tested for COVID-19 antibodies: "Of the 7389 samples, 106 were reactive by pan-Ig. Of these 106 specimens, 90 were available for further testing. Eighty-four of 90 had neutralizing activity, 1 had S1 binding activity, and 1 had receptor-binding domain/ACE2 blocking activity >50%, suggesting the presence of anti–SARS-CoV-2–reactive antibodies. Donations with reactivity occurred in all 9 states"

    https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/72/12/e1004/6012472

  • Anon84  41 minutes ago

    You probably did, but it wasn't called CoVID back then. I remember I had Chinese coworkers who were already forced to quaranteen when they went home around late Dec 2019.

    In the beginning nobody knew what it was and it went through some name changes over the first few months. It the beginning (from what I remember) it was nCov19 (as in Novel Coronavirus). Eventually people figured out it was an off-shoot of SARS-Cov (from 2004) so it settled as SARS-CoV-2 and the respective cluster of symptoms/disease as CoVID-19 (CoronaVirus Infectious Disease).

  • nostrademons  13 hours ago

    2019-2020 was also a big H1N1 (Spanish/Swine Flu) year, as were 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. Entirely possible that's what you remember reading about or getting. If COVID hadn't happened Spanish Flu would've been a big headline anyways; as it is, a lot of the people who think they got COVID before March 2020 probably actually had H1N1. Before then the case numbers are orders of magnitude higher for flu, but COVID was more transmissible and almost 10x more lethal, and so post-lockdown it dominated.

    • mleo  1 hour ago

      My daughter’s birthday party in January 2020 was canceled last minute due to her getting the flu. No idea of the type, but remember we were unable to reschedule due to Covid lockdowns occurring before getting rescheduled at the venue.

    • thenipper  6 hours ago

      I remember going in for a physical Jan 2020 and my doctor talking about lot about the flu. He gave me the pneumonia vaccine and then was like oh there is this other thing but probably nothing to worry about…

  • anonzzzies  12 hours ago

    Nov sounds early but I was in China in oct-dec '19 and jan '20 and then it was definitely talked about a lot going to feb when I left (luckily and completely coincidental). I had to go on another business trip right after and returned, again completely coincidental (I was an idiot in hindsight), just 2 days before my country fully locked down. On that last trip I contracted covid which gave me an annoying couch.

    Coming out of covid, suddenly it appears we can work with slack, zoom, etc and I have not been on a business trip since.

    • bee_rider  11 hours ago

      It is funny, I guess it is it uncommon at all given the nature of a, well, pandemic. But you got it so early. I dodged the thing for like two and a half years I think. Our experiences were so different, haha.

      Did you get out much, being immune and all?

      I guess it’s somehow just occurring to me that, despite this giant shared experience that we all had as a society, a lot of us had it in totally different ways.

      1 reply →

  • ashoeafoot  8 hours ago

    The first ive heard of it was a wave of sickleave traversing through the machine integrator community ,many of them travelling back from the coast. Oh and then adv china.

  • piva00  8 hours ago

    Dec 2019 is when I first read something on reddit about it, I remember thinking "oh, SARS is coming back".

    I remember commenting about it during Christmas dinner that year, spending whole January reading the news dripping from China, and then it hit us hard in Sweden in February, my friends and I were a little more prepared than others (had a month's worth of food stocked, didn't need to leave the house until late March for groceries).

    • bee_rider  4 hours ago

      I quietly and slowly bought extra stuff—canned food, etc, in the weeks leading up. Didn’t want my m significant other to think I was paranoid, if nothing happened, haha.

nightowl_games  14 hours ago

One lone case doesn't remind me of early covid. Many cases reminds me of early covid.

Though this case is concerning.

  • xcrunner529  12 hours ago

    Cases were happening in China around Dec ‘19 and I was worried. Then a case in the US followed by “no reason to worry”. Then it spiraled.

tomjen3  1 hour ago

It sounded like the same in the beginning with monkey pox, but that did not take of in the same way covid did.

We shall see.

dyauspitr  13 hours ago

They’re just going to deny anything is wrong, sweep deaths under the rug and carry on with absolutely nonsensical “gut feel” reactions to real problems. Hell, didn’t Hegseth say he doesn’t even believe in germs and so he doesn’t wash his hands.

shiroiushi  13 hours ago

It's really concerning how the next 4 years in America will turn out; during his 1st term, along with some clowns, Trump at least picked some people who were pretty competent. This time, the competent people want nothing to do with him (and vice versa) and he's surrounded himself entirely with incompetent clowns.

UncleOxidant  11 hours ago

Will there even be a flu shot next year with rfk jr. in charge of HHS? NIH formulates what goes into to the next year's flu vaccine in the spring and HHS is over the NIH.

  • etiam  4 hours ago

    The rest of the World won't have it skipped and I expect that US entities will not be banned outright from importing vaccines, though maybe with cost penalties added. So even in a bad case scenario you shouldn't be cut off completely, right?

    It's important to realize that H5N1 "bird" influenza is very different from anything that typically goes into the annual vaccines. Typical seasonal influenzas can have case fatality ratios up to about 1% for bad years if memory serves. Strains close to what's discussed in the article have had CFR into many tens of percent in spillover events. Metaphorically speaking, this one has potential to turn into a blazing inferno that makes the coronavirus spillover in 2019 look like an ambitious fire drill.

OCASMv2  8 hours ago

What would have a democrat president done different during the first year of the pandemic?