Coronavirus: Satellite traffic images may suggest virus hit Wuhan earlier | Hacker News Reader

Coronavirus: Satellite traffic images may suggest virus hit Wuhan earlier

bbc.co.uk

33 pointsabhi34 comments

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.

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...

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.

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.

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