By Milan Adams
Preppgroup
September 4, 2025
One area I've yet to cover in my numerous "early spread" articles is the question of whether Covid is/was really a "novel" virus.
Today, I'd like to expound on the reasons I believe a novel coronavirus - almost certainly produced in a lab - was "spreading" in the world and was, almost certainly, making people sick months before the experts say was possible.
In today's article, I briefly address the theory - now increasingly common among growing numbers of "Covid Contrarians" - that viruses don't exist... or, if they do, viruses are not "contagious" and do not cause other people to become sick.
In my opinion, the theory that viruses either don't exist - or, if they do, they aren't "contagious - is certainly a fair question for intellectual and scientific inquiry.
For my part, I believe viruses (that can and do produce symptomatic illnesses) have been infecting humans since man first inhabited the earth.
However, I also believe 99.9 percent of humans survive even if they are infected with a respiratory virus. That is, unlike many chroniclers of Covid, I don't subscribe to the view that posits a novel virus would have to be unusually "deadly."
These views shared, I do think "mad scientists" manipulating viruses in a lab probably could create a virus that was more "contagious" than naturally-occurring viruses. Per my belief, this is exactly what happened in 2019.
Part 1 of this 2-part in-depth treatment summarizes the evidence that far more Americans were becoming sick in the six-plus months before "official Covid." To me, this evidence jibes with the theory that "mad scientists" could have indeed created a more-contagious virus.
Today's dispatch presents compelling statistics showing that far more flu tests were given in the 2019-2020 flu season than any other flu season in history.
I also expound (again) on the significance of the (ignored) fact that an unprecedented number of U.S. schools closed "due to illness" in the months before official Covid, which is not a "trivial" piece of information and probably not just a "coincidence."
Towards the bottom of this story, I point out that Anthony Fauci and his colleagues went to great lengths to promote the "natural origins" theory. Given that almost everything significant Fauci says is a lie, this, in my opinion, could be construed as further evidence of a lab-made, novel virus.
I also highlight the indispensable and criminal role the PCR test played in convincing people a terrible pandemic was occurring (long after tens of millions of people had experienced Covid symptoms).
As this is another of my "deep-dive" pieces, this article is lengthy. I've added sub-headlines and boldfaced text I think is particularly significant for readers who prefer to skim longer articles.
Now on to the reasons I think a contagious novel virus was circulating in the world at least by the fall of 2019 if not even earlier...
Far more people than normal got sick in the fall and winter of 2019-2020
Based on my extensive research, I know far more people than usual become "sick" in the weeks and months before "official Covid" began. In my opinion, this is an undeniable statement of fact.
Weekly Influenza Like Illness (ILI) Surveillance Reports produced by the CDC and state health agencies in at least 49 U.S. states support the view that the "flu season" of 2019-2020 was "severe," flu activity was "widespread" (and at the highest levels in at least 49 states at different points in the flu season)... began earlier than normal and lasted longer than any other recent flu season. (ILI percentages above the "expected baseline" persisted for approximately 25 consecutive weeks, an "all-time record.")
Even Anthony Fauci was quoted in early January 2020 as saying this flu season was going to be bad.
"The initial indicators indicate this is not going to be a good season - this is going to be a bad season," Fauci told a CNN journalist.
I include this quote to highlight a very important point - namely, every public health expert must have been well aware of the copious evidence of potential "early spread."
Later in this document, I present summaries of evidence of the huge increase in the number of flu tests given and the massive increase in school closings - two more data points that must have been known to all half-way competent public health officials.
In my opinion, the fact this obvious evidence of possible early spread was dismissed, ignored or concealed from the pubic constitutes legitimate grounds to charge certain public health officials with professional malfeasance if not various crimes dealing with fraud and conspiracies.
Headline: 'The U.S. winter flu season is off to its earliest start in more than 15 years.'
Key excerpts:
"Louisiana was the first state to really get hit hard, with doctors there saying they began seeing large numbers of flu-like illnesses in October.
"Children's Hospital New Orleans has already seen more flu cases this fall than it saw all of last winter, said Dr. Toni Gross, the hospital's chief of emergency medicine. Last month was the busiest ever at the hospital's emergency department. Officials had to set up a triage system and add extra shifts, Gross said.
The same article also noted that "the most intense patient traffic" had been occurring in Louisiana's six Deep South neighbors spanning from Texas east to Georgia (home of the CDC!)
According to the same article, by the end of November 2019, "flu was widespread in 16 states."
To me, "early spread" is yet another indicator of a potentially "novel" spreading virus. (
The all-important PCR test...
It's always struck me as bizarre (as well as "sneaky" or duplicitous) that, with Covid, the key metric for identifying a rapidly-spreading novel coronavirus was based entirely on results produced by a new, instantly-produced and approved PCR test.
While unknown even today, it's very possible the majority of "Covid cases" were either asymptomatic (citizens who experienced no symptoms) or people who experienced symptoms so mild they did not affect their ability to perform normal daily tasks.
As myself and other skeptics have noted, officials intentionally changed the definition of a "medical case" - a massive departure from how flu or ILI cases had always been identified or "diagnosed."
Regarding my "Early Spread" hypothesis, I remain gobsmacked that "symptoms identical to Covid" was, apparently, never a metric of interest to public health officials - a metric, one (incorrectly) assumes, might have been of great interest to officials seeking to gauge possible early prevalence of a novel virus.
Instead, the only metric or "case identifier" that mattered to officials was whether someone tested positive on a PCR test.
The CDC and other public health agencies do use symptoms (instead of a highly-dubious PCR test) to determine national and state ILI percentages, figures public health agencies report every week in updated "flu surveillance" reports.
Expressed simply, "more sick patients visiting doctor's offices" = "a worse flu season."
Prior to official Covid, the number of Americans who became sick with ILI symptoms was the key metric used to determine the severity of a respiratory virus in a given "flu season." After Covid (which officials state is a respiratory virus), this traditional criteria was deemed to be insignificant or moot. All that mattered was a positive test on a PCR test.
Not enough people think about this...
The problem with CDC's reliance on a PCR test to hype a once-in-a-century pandemic is that virtually no American could get a PCR test before March 2020.
As it turned out, the CDC had produced only a tiny number of PCR "test kits" by early March 2020.
It was also the CDC that created the "testing protocols" which mandated that only citizens who'd recently been to China should be given such tests. Furthermore, with perhaps a few exceptions, the tests could be administered or analyzed only by the CDC at its Atlanta labs.
One reason I believe a novel virus (probably created in a lab) was circulating widely in America (and the world) prior to March 2020 is that the CDC and other public health "virus sleuths" clearly made a concerted effort to avoid testing tens of millions of American citizens who likely or possibly could have been infected by a "novel" virus in earlier months.
This "dog-that-didn't-bark" evidence (things that should have happened but didn't happen) suggests a conspiracy to conceal evidence of early spread.
For myself, this aversion to identifying possible earlier cases suggests a cover-up.
As I can think of no reason why public health officials might seek to cover-up evidence of a naturally-occurring virus, the counter-theory is that officials were probably trying to cover-up evidence of a novel virus that was made in a lab - perhaps a lab in China, but, also, perhaps a lab in the United States.
Expressed as three equations:
"Lab-created virus" = "Massive scandal."
"Naturally-occurring virus" = "Nobody's fault."
Also, a third equation has always resonated with me:
"No serious or credible early-spread investigation" = "No 'confirmation' of early spread."
Press reports of major flu outbreaks were omnipresent...
I had no problem finding scores or hundreds of contemporaneous news reports from newspapers, magazines, TV stations and Internet sites that document that the winter of 2019-2020 was an unusually severe flu season. Practically every weekly ILI Surveillance Report published by the CDC and state health agencies document the same thing.
To further emphasize a point central to my hypothesis... if far more people than normal became sick in the weeks and months before official Covid, this should not be viewed as a trivial or insignificant epidemiological observation.
While skeptics of my hypothesis might proclaim, "this was simply a coincidence," such Covid scholars should at least acknowledge it is a very interesting or odd coincidence.
FWIW, I do not think conspicuously-larger numbers of American becoming sick in the weeks and months just before official Covid is/was an irrelevant coincidence. Indeed, I think this is exactly the type of evidence someone who was looking for evidence of early spread of a novel virus would expect to find.
Two other metrics....
Two other key metrics also support the hypothesis that a very contagious novel virus could have been spreading in America in the weeks and months before the lockdowns. These metrics are "school closings due to illness" and "flu tests given."
In my opinion, the number of "flu tests administered" in a given year might be the best metric to gauge if the 2019-2020 flu season produced more people with symptoms of Covid or ILI.
Far more flu tests were given in 2019-2020...
Thanks to the eye-opening research compiled at two citizen-journalist websites (Hail to You and Health Freedom Defense Fund), I found data that compared the number of flu tests given in the same weeks of eight flu seasons. The primary sources are from the "Flu View" Surveillance Network and "CDC Weekly Surveillance Reports."
Note: Working from three sources, I was able to tally and compare "flu-tests-administered" data from Weeks 5 to 14 of eight consecutive flu seasons and also, from another source, data that compared Weeks 40 through 14 for the three flu seasons before "official Covid." (Unfortunately, the source document for the longer-period analysis is no longer available. However, I did save this data, which I have used in parts of this section.)
As these summaries show, 34 percent more sick patients were given flu tests in 2019-2020 than the prior year.
Also, the number of flu tests administered in 2019-2020 was at least 13.4 percent higher than the Flu Season of 2017-2018 - which was often described as the worst or most severe flu season in "40 years.")
Note:
For this analysis, I wasn't particularly interested in the percentage of flu tests that were "positive" for Influenza A or B in given flu seasons, but the number of flu tests that were administered to sick patients who visited a medical clinic.
(Per my research, the percentages of "positive" flu tests are fairly constant in given flu seasons, ranging from 5 to 30 percent depending on the week reviewed. Significantly, this means 95 to 70 percent of flu tests are negative. Still these "flu-negative" citizens must have been sick from "something" or else they wouldn't have gone to the doctor and been given a flu test.
Total flu tests administered (Weeks 40 thru 14):
2019-2020: 1,047,958*
2018-2019: 782,412
2017-2018: 924,205
As these numbers reveal, at least 265,546 more flu test (34 percent more tests) were administered in the 2019-2020 flu season compared to the prior flu season of 2018-2019.
*Note: I could not find data for Week 45 of 2019, which means the total for the 2019-2020 season is an undercount of approximately 21,266 (the average of "flu tests given" in Weeks 44 and 46).
Comparisons 2019-2020 vs. 2018-2019
According to several CDC "Flu Burden" articles, the 2018-2019 flu season was the longest flu season where ILI was "elevated" above an expected baseline since the CDC began compiling ILI statistics. However, the 2019-2020 flu season had elevated ILI percentages at least three weeks longer than this "record" season.
Compared to the 2018-2019 season, more flu tests were administered to sick patients for 26 consecutive weeks in the 2019-2020.
Comparison of Week 5 data from consecutive flu seasons...
Week 5 of the 2019-2020 flu season was January 26-February 1st. The difference in the number of flu tests in this week compared to the previous flu season of 2018-2019 is striking.
Week 5 - 2020 (January 26, Feb. 1st, 2020): 53,247
Week 5 - 2019 (January 27, 2019 - Feb 2nd, 2019): 33,362
Note: 19,885 more flu tests (+59.6 percent) were administered at sampled clinics in 2020 compared to 2019.
Also, per my research, February 2019 (the flu season before "Early Covid" 2020) was the "peak" or worst part of the prior flu season, meaning 60 percent more flu tests were given in Week 5 of the 2019-2020 flu season than one of the peak weeks of the prior season.
Flu tests given - 2017-2018 vs. 2019-2020...
For the 27 weeks compared, at least 123,753 more flu tests (+13.39 percent) were given in the Flu Season of 2019-2020 at clinics that were part of the Surveillance Network. (This figure would be higher by at least 22,000 if data from Week 45 was available.)
As I documented in a recent article, the flu season of 2017-2018 was widely-described as one of the most severe and "deadly" flu seasons of the last 40 years. (The same article documented that case estimates are almost-always dramatically revised downward. I believe 2019-2020's major revisions might have been an effort to conceal evidence of "early spread.")
Based on the "flu-tests-given metric," the 2019-2020 Flu Season produced significantly more people who became sick, went to the doctor and were given a flu test than one of the worst flu seasons in four decades.
More flu tests were administered to citizens in the 2019-2020 flu season in 20 of the 27 weeks examined. (The difference in Week 8 was 0.07 percent or almost identical). The only weeks more flu tests were administered in 2017-2018 was Weeks 2 through 7, the peak of that severe flu season.)
The week-to-week comparisons presented below illustrate that far more flu tests were given in the 2019-2020 season in all but six weeks. This data shows statistics from two weeks before and after Weeks 2 through 7.
Week 10 (the first week of March):
2018: 28,213
2020: 43,868 (+ 55.8 percent)
Week 49 (Early December):
2017: 19,326
2019: 30,510 (+ 57.9 percent)
Total Flu Tests Given (Weeks 5 thru 12) - for 7 consecutive years...
Number of Flu test administered among members of surveillance networks sampled, Weeks 5 through 12. For 2020, this would be eight weeks from Jan. 26th through March 21st. Lockdowns began around March 15th.
2020: 385,422 (48,178/wk) + 32 percent compared to previous year; same 8 weeks.
2019: 292,099 (36,512/wk)
2018: 339,843 (42,480/wk)
2017: 235,765 (29,471/wk)
2016: 171,102 (21,388/wk)
2015: 151,494 (18,937/wk)
2014: 63,644 (7,956/wk)
Note 1: The comparison above includes Weeks 5, 6 and 7 - which occurred in the peak of the severe 2017-2018 flu season and the peak of the 2018-2019 season.
27-week totals and comparisons...
- In the 2019-2020 season, more than 40,000 flu tests were administered in 13 weeks.
- In the 2018-2019 season, more than 40,000 flu tests were administered in 1 week.
- In the 2017-2018 season more than 40,000 flu tests were administered in 8 weeks.
Note 2: It should be noted that the CDC added more clinics that participated in the Flu Surveillance surveys after the 2015-2016 flu season, which would make numbers from earlier seasons smaller. However, the number of participating clinics is/was constant from 2017-2018, meaning the final three years are "apples-to-apples" comparisons.
To illustrate that the flu season of 2019-2020 started earlier than previous flu seasons (judged by "flu-tests-given"), I'll present the flu-test statistics from Week 40 (end of September/First week of October 2019).
Week 40 - Flu Tests Given
2019: 14,227
2018: 12,336
2017: 10,152
Note: 40.1 percent more flu tests were given in Week 40 of 2019 than in the historically severe flu season of 2017-2018.
Flu-test summary:
CDC data showing that far more Americans received a flu test in the months before official Covid reinforces my opinion that something was making more people sick during these pre-Covid months.
Again, if far more people became sick with respiratory illness symptoms in these months, this atypical data/evidence would jibe with the view that a novel virus that was more-contagious might have been circulating in America (and word-wide).
Also, per my belief and common sense, the vast majority of Americans who become sick with cold and flu symptoms probably don't go to the doctor when they are sick (as they believe there's nothing doctors can do for them and they know they'll get better on their own in a couple of days or a week or so). This means, ILI percentages based on doctors' visits and flu-tests-given metrics don't capture at least half of the population that was also sick in these periods.
Expressed differently, if more people were indeed sick from September 2019 to early March 2020, the number of sick people who didn't go to the doctor would also be significantly larger. However, "official" statistics wouldn't capture this cohort of the population.
The strange explosion of school closings in 2019-2020
According to a paper produced by the CDC and published in The Lancet, a record 2,886 American schools closed due to excess absences from November 2019 to February 2020.
In the seven previous flu seasons, an average of 749 schools closed due to illness in America. In 2019-2020, this figure exploded by 258 percent - an increase of almost 4-fold.
In American history, no flu season has caused more superintendents to close schools due to flu-like symptoms than the flu season of 2019-2020. In other words, this wasn't a small increase - it was a massive increase.
The video below will shock you because you will be among the first to watching this secret! 
Flu Season Year: # of School Closings...
2011-12: 103
2012-13 383
2013-14: 11
2014-15: 308
2015-16: 40
2016-17: 1,292
2017-2018: 1,966
2018-2019: 1,912
2019-2020: 2,886
Readers should note that...
- In 2019-2020, school closings increased by 50.9 percent compared to 2018-2019. (Until 2019-2020, the prior season had set a record for most consecutive weeks where ILI percentages were above the expected baseline).
- School closings increased by 45.3 percent compared to 2017-2018 flu season (said to be "the worst flu season in 40 years.")
- In the seven flu seasons before 2019-2020, 5,995 schools closed due to illness. In 2019-2020, 48.14 percent of this cumulative figure occurred in just one 4-month period.
- One of the most-pronounced peaks of what I believe was "early Covid" occurred from mid-December 2019 to early January 2020. During these two weeks American schools would have been out for Christmas holidays. Otherwise, far more schools might have closed due to illness in the 2019-2020 flu season.
Also, it should be noted that schools in every section of the country closed during this flu season, which also suggests a respiratory virus that was affecting all parts of the country (albeit at different times in the flu season).
Per my own research into school closings, I found several school systems (for example, two in Texas) that "closed due to illness" in November 2019, which is extremely rare as the peak flu seasons are typically December and January. Numerous school systems closed in February, meaning school closings occurred in four consecutive months.
As the authors of The Lancet paper noted, school closing statistics are an excellent proxy for spreading ILI and strongly correlate to outbreaks of Influenza Like Illness (ILI).
Wrote the paper's authors: "We observed annual occurrences of ILI-School Closings, which coincided with and were likely a result of widespread illness."
This means that if 15 to 40 percent of students and teachers in local schools were sick, the same or similar percentages of parents and community residents might be expected to have been sick at the same time, which is worth thinking about when attempting to gauge what true "Covid prevalence" might have been in the weeks and months before the first Covid case had been "confirmed" by the CDC (on Jan. 9th, 2020).
A virus that was obviously 'more contagious' would be significant...
One reason I believe the coronavirus was a "novel" virus is that it was far more "contagious" than typical viruses. At least to myself, massive numbers of students and teachers getting sick in "congregate" school settings all at the same time obviously suggests the cause was a contagious pathogen.
I also place great significance on the "school-closing" metric for the simple reason that superintendents and principals would not have closed their schools unless huge numbers of students and staff suddenly became ill and were absent from school as a result.
That is, it's impossible to hide or conceal huge numbers of sick students and teachers.
Generally speaking, school officials close local schools when a threshold of 15 to 20 percent of students and teachers miss school due to illness. However, from my own research, I found several examples of officials reporting that 40 percent of students and staff were all sick at the same time.
Unknown is the number of schools and school systems that had a large spike in ILI illnesses, but superintendents or principals chose to not close local schools. (This happened in my hometown of Troy, Alabama where large swaths of students became ill in January 2020, but local schools did not close.)
Two anecdotes that illustrate a very contagious spreading virus...
To cite two personal anecdotes, my wife was an English teacher at Charles Henderson High school in late January 2020 (when I became very sick with what I think was probably "Early Covid.") One day when I was at home in bed, my wife came home from school and told me that 15 of 30 students in one of her four classes was absent due to illness.
A few days earlier - the same day I become sick - I checked my 3rd grade daughter out of school because she was ill. I later learned that eight of 21 of Maggie's classmates were out sick - plus her teacher and all four of her teacher's children.
In my opinion, anecdotes like this should matter.
The 'no-virus' theory doesn't jibe with the above anecdotes...
To me, these particular anecdotes undeniably suggest a very contagious virus was spreading in my hometown (per my belief, from mid to late December 2019 through early February 2020).
Regarding those who believe contagious viruses don't exist... one presumes or assumes that something made large swaths of local populations sick at the same time. (The alternative is nothing made them sick.)
I've read comments from posters who opine that human bodies shed toxic substances, a process of the natural immune system which creates illnesses. While this theory could be true, speaking for myself, I don't think it's likely or credible that 20 to 40 percent of people in one town or school would all shed toxins at the exact same time.
Which illustrates why I believe that viruses (that can be contagious and cause ILI symptoms) must be real.
Via deductive reasoning or logic, one can also plausibly conclude that all viruses are not equally contagious. That is, some viruses make more people sick than other viruses or are more likely to make large percentages of people sick.
Which leads me to my conclusion/hypothesis that, very possibly, a circulating, contagious virus that was somehow "novel" might very well have produced anatypical number of "sick" people.
To play contrarian with myself, I do allow that just because many more people became sick in a given five to six-month period doesn't mean this virus was somehow made to be more contagious in a lab.
However, a conspicuously "novel" spike in the number of people who became sick certainly comports with the theory that a circulating virus in 2019 and early 2020 might have been noticeably different than typical ILI-producing viruses.
Preview of key points I will develop in Part 2...
In Part 2, I will highlight how "Covid symptoms" - according to countless anecdotes - are/were different (in distinct respects) than bouts with illness people had previously endured.
I will note the numerous scientists who assert the Covid-19 virus - as viewed under an electronic microscope - has distinct markers, including a novel spike protein. I will also remind readers that it's undeniable that "gain of function" research and experiments - funded by the government - had been occurring for years.
While I confess to being a scientific layman, the only reason I can think of that scientists might try to modify existing viruses is to make them either more deadly and/or more contagious. In my opinion, based on copious credible evidence, such "lab work" or "gain-of-function" experiments clearly took place.
I will also highlight the extreme measures that public health officials like Anthony Fauci took to convince the public that Covid-19 was caused by a naturally-occurring "virus" (with, Fauci and everyone else who matters in virology, stating infected bats were the true source of this pandemic).
I will also develop a point which I think is key but others might view as blasphemous or controversial.
Specifically, no person with discernment or common sense should believe anything officials like Anthony Fauci say. In fact, if officials (who have been proven to be liars time and again) say one thing, it's almost certain the opposite must be true.
In the context of Covid, this alternative process of gauging the "real truth" tells skeptics that any virus that was circulating and making unusually large numbers of people sick in this period of time must NOT have been "naturally-occurring." (Again, whatever the experts say, the opposite is likely the truth).
... Which makes me think this virus was not "natural" and was probably created in a lab, which, of course, is information no person in the U.S. government would want the public to know.
One more equation:
"Likely truth" = "Exact opposite of official claims."
Conclusion...
As this document hopefully establishes, far more people than normal became sick with ILI symptoms in the pre-Covid months. This simple and, I believe, undeniable observation/evidence highlights one key difference between the virus circulating in 2019/early 2020 and previous circulating viruses - namely, whatever virus was circulating was definitely more contagious.
Said virus might have killed a few more people than a naturally-occurring virus, but any early Covid deaths were almost-certainly missed or mis-diagnosed. As I've noted ad nauseam, no spike in excess deaths was observed before mid-March 2020.
Also, as I've noted elsewhere, respiratory viruses typically don't kill enough people to raise any alarms... and, say, necessitate a global lockdown nor mass panic.
Thus, it's not the mortality figures of Covid that suggest a novel virus was circulating.
What does suggest a novel virus was circulating was the statistically-significant increase in the number of people who became sick... coincidentally only a few weeks or months before the "official" arrival of Covid-19.
And as I am now a bonafide conspiracy theorist, I do not believe in coincidences.