July 6, 2020
Dr. Tom Jefferson, a senior associate tutor at the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine (CEBM) at Oxford University, and visiting professor at Newcastle University, strongly believes growing evidence that Covid-19 originated somewhere else before Asia.
Last week, virologists from Spain announced they have discovered traces of Covid-19 in samples of wastewater collected in March 2019, about nine months before the coronavirus outbreak started in China, according to The Telegraph.
Italian scientists announced they also found evidence of the coronavirus in sewage samples taken in Milan and Turin mid-December. Other experts have discovered traces of the disease in Brazil in November as well.
Dr. Jefferson believes many different viruses lie dormant throughout the world and emerge when environmental conditions are right. “Where did SARS 1 go? It’s just disappeared,” Dr. Jefferson stated. “So we have to think about these things. We need to start researching the ecology of the virus, understanding how it originates, and mutates.”
“There was a case in the Falkland Islands in early February. Now where did that come from? There was a cruise ship that went from South Georgia to Buenos Aires, and the passengers were screened and then on day eight, when they started sailing towards the Weddell Sea, they got the first case. Was it in prepared food that was defrosted and activated?” Dr. Jefferson stated.
“Strange things like this happened with the Spanish Flu. In 1918 around 30% of the population of Western Samoa died of Spanish Flu, and they hadn’t had any communication with the outside world.”
Dr. Jefferson continues “There is quite a lot of evidence that huge amounts of the virus in sewage all over the place, and an increasing amount of evidence there is faecal transmission. There is a high concentration where sewage is four degrees, which is the ideal temperature for it to be stabled and presumably activated. And meatpacking plants are often at four degrees.“
“These meat packing clusters and isolated outbreaks don’t fit with respiratory theory, they fit with people who haven’t washed their hands properly.”
“These outbreaks need to be investigated properly with people on the ground one by one. You need to do what John Snow did. You question people, and you start constructing hypotheses that fit the facts, not the other way around,” Dr. Jefferson concludes.
Feature Images via Oxford & The Guardian