There is a paper out reporting high prevalence of #SARSCoV2 antibodies (IgG/IgM) in Italy from early September on. Factoring in a 1-2 week needed for seroconversion, this would imply that #COVID19 was in widespread circulation in Italy in August or before.
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) November 15, 2020
1/ pic.twitter.com/cnAToNjVLO
Researchers do a study, get surprising results that make no sense, but publish it any way.
Peer review compares the study to others that agree or disagree, and conclude "this is bullshit".
The study claimed to find evidence for 14% seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in Italy in September. (14% would mean a huge epidemic had swept through in July and August and nobody noticed.) Genomics shows that the March 2020 outbreak came from China, so this initial outbreak would have needed to expand to millions of people, then just go away without a trace.
Far more likely their not-well-explained methods cross-reacted with a cold virus. But it's good that they published, because if this type of study started showing similar results around the world, we'd at the very least want to dig in more and understand what we're seeing.