Long-time readers know that we keep tabs on early reports of covid, not searching them out but dropping them into the link-vault as they appear. Here's one from Radio Free Asia, January 9, 2020:
Experts Cast Doubts on Chinese Official Claims Around 'New' Wuhan Coronavirus
....Ren Ruihong, former head of the medical assistance department at the Chinese Red Cross, said she too has her doubts about the reported "absence" of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan.
"It's a new type of mutant coronavirus," Ren said. "They haven't made public the genetic sequence, because it is highly contagious. From what I can tell, the patients caught it from other people. I have thought that all along."
She said the lack of fatalities didn't indicate that the virus was less deadly than SARS, just that antiviral medications have improved in the past 10 years or so.
Ren said she also regarded the relatively high number of infections in Hong Kong with suspicion, given that there had been no reports of cases anywhere in between the two cities, in the southern province of Guangdong, for example.
"Genetic engineering technology has gotten to such a point now, and Wuhan is home to a viral research center that is under the aegis of the China Academy of Sciences, which is the highest level of research facility in China," she said.
Repeated calls to various numbers listed for the Wuhan Institute of Virology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences rang unanswered.
However, an employee who identified herself as a senior engineer said she knew nothing about the virus.
"Sorry, I ... I don't know about this," the employee said....
....MUCH MORE
Not only is that an early story on Covid but it is one of the earliest to mention the WIV publicly.
And speaking of early, How's this for prescient. Originally published at The American Interest September 20, 2016:
Bioengineering The Age of Designer Plagues
....Those that do keep working, medics and police in particular, are likely to catch the virus. We should expect that most economic activity, public services, production of essential goods, and transportation may cease. To minimize inventory costs, businesses, even hospitals, now have “just-in-time” delivery of supplies, sourced from lowest-cost providers on the other side of the world. Even if your local trucker decides to continue working, with multiple long-distance suppliers and shippers involved in moving foodstuffs, a contagious pandemic would certainly disrupt the flow of essential goods. Panic-buying and hoarding will add to the problem of getting food to the population. How long will our public water supplies continue functioning when maintenance personnel fail to report for work? Our highly interdependent, just-in-time delivery economy is very vulnerable to disruptions. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an expert in risk and thinking about rare events, points this out: “Our connected world appears to be more efficient. But when there is a disturbance, the setback is much harder to handle. Not only are we building riskier systems, but also the risks involved in failure are a lot larger.”6....
We didn't catch up with it until October 2021:
https://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/2021/10/bioengineering-age-of-designer-plagues.html
