Coronavirus: Satellite traffic images may suggest virus hit Wuhan earlier

33 points by abhi3 5 years ago | 4 comments
  • troughway 5 years ago
    I've mentioned before that I have had a doctor asking about visiting Wuhan (here in the West) as early as November of last year. Very blank, matter of fact sort of way. Of all the places.

    However, this is an anecdote. It's meaningless. It runs counter to the HN orthodoxy which is to flippantly dismiss anything that isn't supported by an authoritative source and studies and citations.

    I'm not sure what kind of evidence you're expecting from a country that won't even honestly report the death toll from this.

    So now we have the BBC in on this. Not surprised in the least.

    • vmh1928 5 years ago
      Did you read the article? It's a study by researchers at Harvard Medical School. They looked at satellite photos of Wuhan hospitals and saw an increase in parking lot utilization. They also analyzed search terms used on the Biadu search engine for occurrences of "diarrhea" and "cough". They found an increase in both vehicle counts and searches for those terms starting in August. I don't believe the government of China was involved and the same government has called the study absurd. Using the volume of searches for a particular term to detect disease outbreaks even before public health or hospitals are aware is nothing new.

      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/09/coronavirus-ma...

      • troughway 5 years ago
        Yes, I did the due diligence of reading the article. Did you read the study yesterday regarding the Baidu search and the related HN post? If not, parts of what I'm talking about will seem disconnected. But it's all linked - HN is a terrible place to have a discussion about this topic anyway.
      • fred_is_fred 5 years ago
        I'm not sure what you are trying to claim here. Are you stating that western doctors knew about this that early and were hiding it or that your doctor had some advanced knowledge? There's nothing that indicates this was "well known" in November 2019 - and in fact that's why we are resorting to search terms and parking lot photos to pin it down. If western doctors were truly asking in November, that implies to me clear knowledge.
        • troughway 5 years ago
          We know for a fact that China is hiding things. That is not even up for discussion. The concentration camp of minority Muslims is prima facie of how far they will go. Nobody bats an eye to this, so that should tell you a thing or two about how the West deals with significant trade partners who, almost out in open, are also conducting unethical and illegal organ harvesting operations at mass scale.

          Having said that, no, I don't think that the doctors in the West are in on some global conspiracy. It should not come as a surprise that doctors know other doctors (conferences, meetings, seminars) and inform each other of impending events long before media picks it up. They are still bound by their practicing license to keep a lid on things they know, but that's a separate discussion.

          Therefore my best guess is that the information trickled out of Wuhan and the surrounding area early on, and made it's way through word of mouth to doctors in the West who, although they had no idea exactly what was unfolding, took the precaution to ask their patients who displayed flu-like symptoms if they had been there recently.

          The only thing we have conclusively heard from all this is the attempt by China to silence Li Wenliang. We don't know who else they successfully silenced, and how far back, given that, again, doctors were asking about Wuhan before we heard from Li Wenliang.

          Food for thought.