China is raging as the US revealed satellite images that indicate China has kept silent about coronavirus because it has started earlier in 2019, as reported by Express UK.
The Trump administration is not done with China yet, as it sent another shrapnel piece that drew the ire from Beijing.
Outbreak might have started earlier than reported
According to sources, earlier coronavirus outbreak began in summer but it was not known till now because Chinese health officials kept mum about it.
The evidence points to satellite images that show increased car traffic at hospitals in Wuhan, other clues was an uptick for keywords related to symptoms, all in 2019 before autumn.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that all the conclusions based on traffic going to the hospital is not accurate as proof their accusations. The Chinese just ignored the finding in a briefing, cited in the BBC.
After the report was accomplished, the Harvard team got questions on the validity of their research method, as the scientific community did not agree.
One of the comments were derisive of the methods and called it indirect and not very accurate, by Eric Topol, director of the California-based Scripps Research Translational Institute, according to Reuters.
Dr. Topol disagreed that the outbreak started in August, not in late December as current proofs point out. He spoke his opinion as an outsider as well. Others like him argue that the genetic evidence about the viral jumping to an animal host, and onto humans any time last autumn.
More experts weighed in like Dr Amesh Adalja of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health Security. She just said that she was not aware that the outbreak really started in August.
Another scientist commented that the coronavirus was going around until it was detected and notifying the World Health Organization in late December.
To get a clear view of the problem, the Harvard group examined all satellite images around Wuhan hospitals from 2019, with a comparison to 2018 then.
To get more photos for examination, they got 350 images from private satellites as more references.
One of the conclusions that Harvard Medical School came across was the difference between the cars that were parked in 2019, compared to earlier years. In that autumn, there were more cars that were unusual, to say the least.
For comparison, the number of cars that were in the Wuhan Tongji Medical University was 214 in September of 2019, it was just 112 cars in October 2018.
Another hospital, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University had 506 cars in October 2018, an increase of 640 cars in 2019 on the same month!
More search data on Baidu was interesting. There were more searches of the keywords 'cough' and 'diarrhea'. These were related to the symptom of COVID-19, based on WHO. Dr John Brownstein added that in October there was an unknown event starting.
He said the social disruption was happening and as well as the beginning of a modern plague, called the novel coronavirus pandemic. It was there already, but no one knew just how destructive it would be.
There are 100 nations that want an inquiry to the truth of the pandemic, but China agreed if there is no undue influence.
But the University College London has updated the pandemic, starting October not December but China denies till now. A new charge to China's complicity that might get them to admit if it did start last summer.
