Going Biking -- Going Walking -- October 19, 2022

High-speed rail map for China. Link here.

Wuhan is the center for high-speed trains (in China). It's the hub for high-speed trains everywhere in China.

Wuhan is a city of eleven million people, the largest in central China.

Among the first Chinese [Covid-19] studies published internationally was one in The Lancet. This study, from a group of 41 people including medical staff at Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan, where many of the December, 2019, cases got treatment, appeared online on January 24, 2020 -- the same day as K.Y. Yuen's report of the family cluster in Shenzhen and the ominous hint of asymptomatic spread.

Twenty-seven of the forty-one had links to the [Wuhan market] but fourteen did not.

The earliest of all forty-one patients was identified / diagnosed on December 1, 2019. The epidemic (not yet a pandemic) most likely began in November, 2019, and at some location other than the [Wuhan market].

First confirmed Covid-19 case was likely "a" Mr Chen who fell sick on December 8, 2019; Mr Chen reported no links to the Huanan market. He shopped at a larger supermarket.

The first recorded fatality was a sixty-one-year-old man, a regular customer at the Huanan market. The date was not specifically given of this man's death but appears to have been on / before January 24, 2020. By that date, there were 24 confirmed Covid-19 deaths. 

So, where did the virus first begin circulating? Three possibilities (among others):

• in the city of Wuhan, or elsewhere in Hubei province;
• somewhere between Wuhan and the caves of Yunnan (bats); or,
• northern Italy.