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Comment by baybal2 | Hacker News Reader

The smoking gun there is the search volume for word SARS has reappeared in Chinese search engines in August-September, and exploded in November.

I believe the quiet whispers of SARS return in autumn last years have been largely validated.

You can even check google.com that is blocked in China. Two regions light up: Hubei, and Beijing.

Another artefact is Chongqing/Sichuan, which also had an early flare up, and severe lockdown. I hears of an opinion that it may have actually started there, and Wuhan only turned to prominence because it being a transport hub, and a more rich city in general.

https://ibb.co/tcp2ZNx

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2019-07-01%202...

So, this also kind of gives more reason to look at rumors of mass exodus of officials during the winter months in China.

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Ehh.. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2010-07-01%202...

Seems that people only started searching SARS in december by which the new coronavirus was already public knowledge or at least public rumor

If you zoom in, "December" here mostly means 12/31, the exact day the virus appeared in public news: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2019-12-09%202...

Please stop spreading false information.

Baidu search index for SARS: https://imgur.com/a/3Sca2v8 .

The uptick started at mid-Dec. There is a tiny bump in early October, however, if you hover over it, the bump shows posts about comparing economic activity to the 2003 SARS period, not related to the disease.

The popularity of searches for SARS never went above 7 before late Dec. when cases of pneumonia were already popping up in the news. There was no signficant difference between searches from July 2019 to November 2019. If you look at the same data exactly one year ago in 2018 you'll find that the prevalence of searches for cough and SARs were actually much higher in 2018[0] (prevalences in the 70s and 50s in 2018 vs prevalence that were less than 10 in 2019). So unless you're suggesting Covid-19 actually started in 2018 it seems any correlation between search volume and cases of covid-19 fails to disprove the null hypothesis.

Plus there's the fact that you're looking at data in English for a search engine blocked in China.

[0] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2018-07-01%202...

Thanks for the first sound counterargument I heard about the search trends story.

According to google trends, it started only after Dec 29 2019. Before that, there seems to be no particular interest, not more than usual.

Tinker with the timeframe, it will be the same cluster in West-Central China, and Beijing over autumn to winter. Same what Baidu, and Tencent data allegedly showed.

Sorry, I cant replicate your result even with your link above. Is Google Trends showing the same results for you and me?

There is actually a recent study that finds deviations in the Trends' results depending on the date of request. Some German links, please use some translation tool if you need to:

https://www.heise.de/news/Stichproben-Zweifel-an-der-Zuverla...

http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.33370.98247

This Harvard study has quotes around the terms ex: “cough”, I imagine that means they’re looking at the Baidu trends for the Chinese words and not their English equivalents... making the comparison to google trends of the English equivalents apples and oranges...

I don't see an abnormal trend if you increase the coverage to 3 or 5 years.

The number of people searching for related keywords is about the same for 2015, 2016 -> 2019 for those regions.

From your Google Trends link I see a spike in “SARS” searches starting end of December and only minor fluctuations before that. OP looked at Baidu data which is more relevant for China and better supports your main point that the virus may have spread earlier than previously reported.

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