Maybe so, but I absolutely don't believe that anybody on 4chan was discussing covid prior to December 29. People can pretend it gets the "scoop" all they want in their little fantasy world, just want to call out the veracity of those claims when I see them.

It seems they first took up discussing it on January 2, (based on a CBS news report) which is reasonably quick off the mark. The main difference between imageboards and other media is their willingness to take up a topic seriously before it arrives in the mainstream, for good or (more often) ill.

https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/238064455/#238064455

Yes, those comments are definitely indicative of them taking it seriously.

Pretty quick, I'll give them that, but not before coverage - this is only a week or so before I became aware of the virus. Granted, I was traveling in China at the time, but it was known.

I only mean seriously in the sense of giving their attention to it, in somewhat the same way as sewer sampling can be a useful way to detect emerging COVID clusters. Online extremists glom onto anything involving political instability because it's a potential opportunity. I noticed the same thing with the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.