COVID Patent Timeline | Biometrics, Digital Health & the Road to 2020

BIOMETRICS • DIGITAL HEALTH • COVID-19 • SURVEILLANCE • SOVEREIGNTY • ACCOUNTABILITY

“When history leaves behind a paper trail, the responsibility of the investigator is neither to dismiss it nor exaggerate it—but to keep following it.” — Great Awakening Report

Source: GAR Contributing Writer / The 17th Disciple

A striking image circulating online claims that the “Rothschilds patented COVID-19 biometric tests in 2015 and 2017.” At first glance, the supporting document appears remarkable: U.S. Patent Application US 2020/0279585 A1, titled System and Method for Testing for COVID-19, identifies Richard A. Rothschild of London as its inventor and applicant, while patent databases display an earliest priority date of October 13, 2015. That combination has fueled claims that COVID-19 technology was being patented years before the pandemic.

The document itself is real. The patent application describes a system for collecting biometric information—particularly pulse and blood-oxygen saturation—from a user with a pulse oximeter, transmitting the information to a smartphone, checking movement to improve measurement accuracy, and sending the resulting data to a remote system for analysis. The 2020 application specifically states that the information could help determine whether someone has a viral infection “such as COVID-19.”

The Date That Created the Controversy

The confusing part is the 2015 priority date. Google Patents lists October 13, 2015 as the earliest priority date associated with the patent family. The COVID application also identifies earlier related applications, including one filed in April 2017. That information is visible in the patent record and helps explain why screenshots showing “2015” and “2017” alongside a COVID-19 patent title have circulated so widely.

But a priority date is not necessarily the date on which every element or term appearing in a later patent application was invented or filed. Patent families can develop through continuations and continuation-in-part applications, allowing later applications to trace portions of their subject matter to earlier filings. That distinction is crucial here.

The COVID-19 Application Was Filed in May 2020

According to the patent record, the application specifically titled “System and Method for Testing for COVID-19” was filed May 17, 2020 and published September 3, 2020. It subsequently became U.S. Patent 11,024,339, granted June 1, 2021. The U.S. National Library of Medicine’s PubChem database goes further and explicitly cautions readers about interpreting the 2015 date. It states that the priority date comes from a series of related applications dating to 2015, but that only US 2020/0279585 A1 in that sequence mentions COVID-19, and that application was filed on May 17, 2020.

What Existed Before COVID-19?

The earlier work concerned technology for acquiring, processing and displaying biometric and health data. The later COVID application built upon that technological lineage and applied it to identifying possible viral infection.
In other words, there is an important difference between: “Technology underlying a later COVID-19 testing patent traces to filings beginning in 2015” and “COVID-19 testing was patented in 2015.”

The available patent record supports the first statement. It does not establish the second.

The 2017 date visible in the application’s history has a similar explanation. Google Patents records an April 24, 2017 application within the earlier patent chain, but the COVID-specific application did not arrive until 2020.

What the Technology Was Designed to Do

The actual invention is interesting without the sensational interpretation. The system envisioned a connected-health architecture in which a pulse oximeter measures pulse and oxygen saturation, a smartphone receives those measurements, accelerometer information helps determine whether movement may have compromised their accuracy, and verified measurements are transmitted to a cloud or host system. Those measurements can then be compared with previous data or other indicators to help determine whether a person may have a viral infection.

Viewed from today’s perspective, the architecture resembles the broader expansion of remote patient monitoring, wearable health technology, smartphones, cloud computing and algorithm-assisted diagnostics that accelerated during and after the pandemic.

Why the Screenshot Is So Persuasive

The viral image combines several individually genuine pieces of information:

• ROTHSCHILD
• COVID-19
• 2015
• 2017
• PATENT

Placed together without the patent-family history, they appear to tell an extraordinary story. But patent chronology matters. The dates refer to different stages and related applications rather than showing that a document explicitly describing COVID-19 existed in 2015. This is a useful example of why primary-source investigation requires going beyond screenshots.

WHAT, EXACTLY, WAS BEING BUILT?

The COVID patent is not simply about a laboratory test.

Its architecture involves acquiring an individual’s biometric information, including pulse and blood-oxygen saturation, transmitting those measurements wirelessly to a smartphone, using the phone’s accelerometer to assess movement and measurement reliability, and then uploading the information to a cloud or host system. The data could subsequently be analyzed to determine whether someone was suffering—or was likely to suffer—from a viral infection such as COVID-19, with information potentially communicated to authorities.

That raises a different set of questions.

What was really being patented—the detection of disease, or an infrastructure capable of continuously collecting, transmitting and remotely analyzing human biometric information?

And if such systems become ubiquitous, who ultimately controls the data?

A technology can provide genuine medical benefits while simultaneously creating capabilities that deserve scrutiny. Remote monitoring can help patients. But an architecture capable of moving intimate biological information from the human body through personal devices into centralized digital systems also creates questions about privacy, consent, ownership, cybersecurity, algorithmic authority and personal sovereignty.

COVID dramatically accelerated society’s acceptance of digital health monitoring. The long-term implications of that transition deserve far more attention than they have received.

COINCIDENCE, CONVERGENCE—OR SOMETHING MORE?

This is where the investigation becomes larger than one patent.

COVID was accompanied by an extraordinary convergence of technologies and policies: digital health systems, remote medical monitoring, unprecedented collection of health information, vaccine credentials, contact tracing, QR codes, restrictions on movement and employment, enormous transfers of public money, expansion of emergency governmental authority and rapidly increasing influence by technology companies over public discourse.

Was all of that simply the response of institutions improvising during an unprecedented emergency?

Were some systems already being developed for unrelated purposes and rapidly repurposed once the pandemic arrived?

Did governments, corporations, foundations, financial interests and technology companies recognize an opportunity to accelerate transformations they already favored, or was there greater coordination before the pandemic than the public has been told?

Those are radically different possibilities. The Rothschild patent does not answer them.

GAR’s BOTTOM LINE | Accountability BEGINS WITH QUESTIONS WE REFUSE TO ABANDON

Millions of people died during the COVID era. Families lost parents, grandparents, spouses and children. Businesses disappeared. Education was disrupted. Medical care was postponed. Governments exercised extraordinary emergency powers. Pharmaceutical companies earned extraordinary revenues. Societies fought bitterly over lockdowns, mandates, treatments, vaccines, censorship and the origin of the virus.

The consequences were too enormous for either credulity or complacency.

That is why accountability cannot mean selecting a preferred explanation and forcing every document to support it.

Accountability means following every credible trail far enough to discover where it actually leads.

The Rothschild patent gives us a real document, a real biometric technology, a real patent lineage beginning years before the pandemic and a COVID-specific application filed after the pandemic had begun.

This raises legitimate questions about the evolution of biometric monitoring, the ownership and use of human health data, the extraordinary technological transformation accelerated during COVID, and the people and interests developing these systems before and during that transformation.

And those questions should not disappear simply because some answers remain uncomfortable—or because the most sensational version of the story cannot yet be proven.

The responsibility of the truth seeker is not to declare the investigation over.

It is to keep asking who knew what, when they knew it, who benefited, what systems were already being built—and ultimately, who should be held accountable for what actually occurred.

Review the patent record on Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200279585A1/ms?utm_source=chatgpt.com)