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The main database of samples and viral sequences of the Wuhan Institute of Virology went offline on Sep 12th 2019.


Satellite images of Wuhan may suggest coronavirus was spreading as early as August 2019:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52975934.amp

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/08/health/satellite-pics-cor...


Would it mean it was active earlier but a critical mass was needed to cause a pandemic? Or it evolved in humans while circulating Wuhan?


That's a smoking gun. And next month it was likely already circulating in Wuhan (https://www.reuters.com/world/china/first-covid-19-case-coul...), coincidence.

> A joint study published by China and the World Health Organization at the end of March acknowledged there could have been sporadic human infections before the Wuhan outbreak.


No, it doesn't. Quote from the article:

> Researchers from Britain's University of Kent used methods from conservation science to estimate that SARS-CoV-2 first appeared from early October to mid-November 2019, according to a paper published in the PLOS Pathogens journal.




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