Timelines associated with the spread of COVID-19 have changed over the past several months and, with new information, may change again in the future. There seems to be widespread agreement in publicly available sources that individuals with odd flu-like illnesses were observed in China as early as August 2019. Nothing was confirmed until a 70-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disease was diagnosed in late December 2019 in Wuhan. According to the Lancet, which, despite recent irregularities, remains a flagship English-language general medical journal, the symptoms of this first patient presented around Dec. 1, 2019. There also seems to be agreement that by late 2019 the “novel” coronavirus had jumped from an animal to a human being; this is called a zoonotic transmission. At this point, narrative agreement breaks down. Some observers said the transmission from an animal, not yet specified, to a human took place in the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, also in Wuhan. It was called a “wet” market not simply because it sold slaughtered live seafood that requires water to live. It was also the site of the live slaughter of pangolins, wolf pups, hares, snakes, raccoon dogs, porcupines, badgers, pigs, chickens, and peacocks.
Opinion
‘It All Began in China’—Book Excerpt From ‘COVID-19: The Politics of a Pandemic Moral Panic’
A security personnel stands guard as members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19, make a visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, in China's central Hubei Province on Feb. 3, 2021. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images
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Book Excerpt
Dr. Barry Cooper is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, author of 35 books and 200 studies, and is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy and the Royal Society of Canada.
