He was the first that publicly recognised the original outbreak as something new, but that's not the sort of preventive surveillance we're interested in.

Of course it would have been great if the Chinese were more transparent during those early days (and in general honestly), but it's pretty clear that the original outbreak was just the first smoke escaping from inside the burning roof: by late December it was already an uncontained epidemic that had spread far outside Wuhan.

We'd like something that would pick up the disease before it makes it to the epidemic status.