Reply to Stephen Andrews's comment on the Synchronicity of deaths.

Dear Stephen, thank you for your comment. We are on similar lines. In our The SARS-CoV-2 transmission riddle - Parts 5  and 10, we give Hope Simpson and his ideas pride of place and have discussed environmental factors in that context.

Hope-Simpson’s presentation of upper respiratory diseases as non-infectious drew gasps from some of our readers.

We read your re-working of the activation hypothesis in a molecular epidemiology key with interest.

It is partly explicative of synchronicity, the mounting evidence of pre-circulation of viruses prior to the outbreak and the origin and destination of respiratory viruses. 

However, we are not aware of any evidence that any humans are carriers, and it does not explain the failure of most challenge studies to reproduce transmission. We should also discuss how you would go about testing it.

You may be interested to know that from mid-September, we are starting a series of lectures for subscribers on just such problems starting with the conceptions of …