Thread by @DPembic

1/ Did the May 2018 flooding at Fort Detrick which led to the overflow and ultimately failure of the Steam Sterilization Plant cause environmental contamination?

fredericknewspost.com/opinion/letter…

2/ "Even after follow-up requests from both our mayor and county executive in February, Colonel Nunnally and the Army have continued to be nontransparent about their environmental monitoring data and assessment process."

In other words: Who knows?

3/ What we do know, is that quite a few animal species can be infected by SARS-CoV-2.
They can be both infected by the virus and transmit it back to humans. Mink can also transmit the virus to other animals. frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…

3/ Mink are Mustelids, and it has been shown that other mustelids share the same vulnerability to Covid. The virus has been confirmed in a US wild mink.

Another animal of interest is the White Tailed Deer, which is very common and numerous across the US.
nature.com/articles/d4158…

4/ A survey in 2021 showed 40% of deer in 4 states had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. Other archived samples in early 2020 showed antibodies, and even one from 2019 did.

The article goes on to state a possible route of infection to the deer was CONTAMINATED WASTEWATER.

5/ Other animal species, both domestic and wild (and humans), are inevitably going to come into contact with these deer. Besides predation and natural deaths, many deer are killed by vehicles, and then scavenged by a variety of species. Mustelids are notorious scavengers.

6/ There are emerging more and more a variety of species that can be both a reservoir of the virus and a source of transmission to humans.
A couple more examples are the deer mouse and the striped skunk (close mink relative). Skunks are both carrion eaters and hunters.

7/ So here we have a variety of wild species that can be infected with SARS-CoV-2, potentially transmit it amongst themselves and to other species, and certain species that can demonstrably or potentially transmit it to humans. I'm not talking about pangolins and civet cats.

8/ The timeline of an outbreak occurring in Wuhan in Nov/Dec 2019 is no longer viable. We have evidence around the world that the virus was present where it could not or should not have been yet. Until we are certain of an accurate timeline, we cannot be certain of other things.

9/ Segue to March 2020. CDC Director Robert Redfield states that YES, deaths were attributed to Influenza that were actually in fact due to Covid. c-span.org/video/?c486126…
Why? Because there isn't post mortem testing available everywhere.

10/ Here in the U.S. there are many people who claim they were sick with what they believe was Covid, in November and December of 2019. I know personally an individual in W. Virginia who knows many people who were sick with "the worst flu of their life".

11/ Something that I noticed last year is that W. Virginia lagged way behind the rest of the country in the early spread of Covid. I thought "that's odd".
Virginia was the same, but not as dramatically so. No other state looked like this that I'm aware of.

12/ So here it is, another hypothesis:

Water contaminated with virus leaked into the environment in May 2018 in Frederick, Maryland.
Deer, deer mice, who knows what else picked up this virus and spread it amongst their own kind, and then to other species.
Sounds preposterous?

13/ This early strain of SARS-CoV-2 circulated in a variety of wild species in the US for a period of time, and at some time in 2019 crossed over into humans. The virus at this stage did not yet possess the adaptations that it later gained.

14/ The earliest examples (that I know of) were in N. Virginia in July 2019. The virus did not yet have the transmissibility that it would later gain, but it was starting to show its ability to result in hospitalization, ARDS, and death. fairfaxcounty.gov/health/outbrea…

15/A bit later in the summer EVALI reared it's ugly head. A pneumonia like disease that presented as severe Covid infection. Though vitamin E acetate was implicated, it was not conclusive. yalemedicine.org/conditions/eva…

16/ And then we arrive at the Flu Season.
And Co-Infection. cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspecti…
Simply put, the early stages of SARS-CoV-2 flew under the radar and were masked by Influenza. Patients were not being tested for Covid yet. And the virus was still evolving.

17/ Yes, the origin of the virus is still a Horseshoe Bat which lives in China. But since it's discovery in 2013, that virus has lived in laboratories around the world, and it could have escaped from any of them. Maryland, N. Carolina, Wuhan -- each is as plausible as the other.

18/ The outbreaks which occurred in Wuhan and Italy/Europe -- it was those strains of the virus which circled back to the US and caused the outbreak as most of us recognize it. But was there a predecessor to the Wuhan strain, and was it from the USA?medicaltopnews.com/2021/05/07/the…