> Every report on the timeline of Covid-19 marks Dec 31 2019 as the start, because that's when news about it breached China's wall. Obviously the virus itself existed prior to that. The question is, what was known when, and who knew it. Elements of China knew prior to Dec 31 2019. It only became public after that as a result of Taiwan informing the WHO.
So you don't believe it's possible, at all, for rumours to have been running around prior to the 31st, that there was a possible sars outbreak, prior to Taiwan getting some sort of evidence to submit to the WHO to request information about what's going on.
We seem to have miscommunicated. When you wrote "We heard about 'sars outbreak in china' around xmas of 2019" I thought you meant you had heard about a confirmed outbreak reported by some reliable news source, not rumors.
What I meant to underscore was that this knowledge did not become public prior to Taiwan notifying the WHO.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang#Role_in_COVID-19_p...
By 'we' I meant my family and I. My wife is Taiwanese and her family said to be careful because people are saying there was a possible sars outbreak.
Huh? Taiwan did make the WHO aware.
> That there is absolutely no remote possibility that prior to the 30th, anyone could possibly be talking about 'sars' in december, sorry 'atypical pneumonia', because it's not reported by the Times report or the WHO.
There is no public record about this novel coronavirus, later called Covid-19, prior to Dec 31 2019. China kept it under wraps. Wuhan doctors knew but they were not allowed to speak out. When they tried, they were detained and threatened with arrest.
Every report on the timeline of Covid-19 marks Dec 31 2019 as the start, because that's when news about it breached China's wall. Obviously the virus itself existed prior to that. The question is, what was known when, and who knew it. Elements of China knew prior to Dec 31 2019. It only became public after that as a result of Taiwan informing the WHO.
From The facts regarding Taiwan’s email to alert WHO to possible danger of COVID-19, [1]
> To be prudent, in the email we took pains to refer to atypical pneumonia, and specifically noted that patients had been isolated for treatment. Public health professionals could discern from this wording that there was a real possibility of human-to-human transmission of the disease.
The email text is in this Taipei Times article [2].
[1] https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-vi...
[2] https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2020/04/12/2...