Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus activity in Fall 2019

Re:Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus... by mellosouls on Monday June 08, 2020 @04:46PM (#23460582)

This is very interesting but the date significantly precedes my (layman's!) understanding of TMRCA estimations of mid November (earliest cases examining the existing genetic evidence and extrapolating backwards through genetic drift calculations).

How do the scientists here account for the disagreement - beyond the fact they are using completely different methods?

Alternatively, I'd be interested in somebody explaining why my understanding of the TMRCA is incorrect - like I said, its not my field.

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Re:Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus... by pstrateman on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:02PM (#23460772)

TMRCA relies on accurate information about when specific strains were identified.

There is ample reason to believe Chinese authorities lied about when they observed specific strains.

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Re:Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus... by ImaCake on Monday June 08, 2020 @08:54PM (#23462492)

Can you provide some evidence to back up your claim here?

The TMRCA calculations would have ample information to provide a statistically accurate date without a single Chinese genome at this point. Those early Chinese genomes merely act as a validation that the genetic clock is "ticking" how the model(s) estimates that it did.

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Re:Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus... by MiroF on Monday June 08, 2020 @09:28PM (#23462697)

Just rampant misinformation in this thread - a mid-November start date is still by far the most probably and you are pretty much guaranteed to have had some other disease than SARS-Cov-2 in October 2019.

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Re:Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus... by pstrateman on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @01:40PM (#23468847)

The TMRCA calculations need to know approximately how many people were infected to calculate the time.

Mutation rate is essentially based on how many people the virus passes between not really time.

So if China is lying about the number of infections early on (or even simply doesn't know the true number) then the calculated time of first infection would be off.

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Re:Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus... by akaryocyte on Monday June 08, 2020 @04:55PM (#23460702)

*TMRCA (Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor)

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Re:Wuhan hospital traffic, search engine data indicate virus... by mellosouls on Monday June 08, 2020 @05:00PM (#23460749)

Thanks, corrected. I must have typed that two different ways several times in the last 20 minutes...

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