The disease, obviously. When the disease was running rampant through Hubei, there were innumerable reports of it on social media.
The WHO has had a large team of disease experts, public health experts and others in China since late January, and they say China has been totally transparent.
The unfortunate truth is that authoritarian regimes are better suited to dealing with a pandemic, particularly competent, technocratic regimes like China's.
Not really a fair accounting at all. Everyone points to local efforts to control information about the disease, but that lasted a couple days, not two months.
Genetic analysis indicates a single index patient sometime around mid-November. In late December, there was a large cluster of pneumonia cases with multiple patients at the same hospital in Wuhan, which were mostly linked to the Huanan Seafood Market.
And this is exactly what you would expect. One case in mid-November, 2-3 cases a week later, 4-9 cases by early December, 16-81 cases by mid December, and maybe a couple hundred cases by late December. And among these cases, only a minority are going present to a hospital for treatment. Most will get sick, but simply stay home.
On December 31st, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission became aware of the Huanan Seafood Market cluster and issued a notice to local hospitals. That same day, Li Wenliang made a statement to friends about the unknown pneumonia cases, which was shared by friends to social media. Local authorities arrested Li Wenliang and made him sign a statement acknowledging a misdemeanor, and ordered him not to talk about the illness publicly.
Later that same day, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization of an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause.
On January 1st, local authorities closed the seafood market.
On January 7th, Chinese researchers identified SARS-CoV-2 as the causative agent in the outbreak.
On January 12th, Chinese researchers shared the viral genome with the world health community.
On January 22nd, with about 500 confirmed cases, China locked down Wuhan, and all of Hubei Province the next day.
There were clearly some local efforts at suppressing information about the virus, but at a time that very little was known about it, and apparently all at the local level.
Somehow this is seen by some in the West as state-sanctioned efforts at suppression, but the President of the United States saying it's just the flu, nothing to worry about, there are very few cases, most of them are getting better, it's totally under control - that's not suppressing information, just efforts to project calm.
The reality is that China's response to this novel virus represents a new gold standard for emergent disease response. In terms of both speed and efficacy, it was the best response the world has ever seen.
I agree this started in Nov., but dont have a source. Do you have a link?
As I've written before, "a powerful flu like corona" was circulating in SE Asia already by Dec. 10. So the Dec. 31 WHO notification was pretty slow.
I'm lukewarm on congratulating China since they were the epicenter for SARS-1 in 2002/2003, and various bird flus since. I wonder how many hospital staff Wuhan lost in Dec. 2019? Must have been dozens - did that make the press?
