The story has been well told at this point, and experienced firsthand to varying degrees by anyone listening to this episode

contemporaneously. But to establish context for this week's topic, let's do a quick summary

of how the COVID-19 pandemic started and how we got to where we are now. At the tail end of

December 2019, Chinese medical professionals began to treat several dozen

cases of pneumonia that had an unknown cause. The Chinese government covered up a lot of the

hubbub that was rising and beginning to seep out into the larger international medical community

over the next few weeks.

But by mid-January 2020, they had reported their first confirmed death from this unknown,

seemingly virus-caused illness, and the 61-year-old man, who died, was a regular customer

at a wet market in Wuhan. And there were enough other links to this market

where fresh meat and other foodstuffs were sold,

including live animals killed on site,

that it seemed increasingly likely this market might have been the origin

of whatever disease was causing these fast-spreading pneumonia symptoms.

By late January, other countries began to confirm cases on their soil,

most but not all of them, easily traceable to folks who had recently traveled to China.

At this point, the Chinese government had locked down Wuhan,

a city of more than 11 million people, closing

down highways and trains and flights, making it nearly impossible to get in and out of the city,

while the government worked on and implemented quarantine procedures to slow or stop the spread

of infection.

In mid-February 2020, we knew this disease was caused by a coronavirus,

...