Member-only story

A Free Email Service Broke the News of the Coronavirus in 2019

ProMED had previously spotted outbreaks of MERS, Zika, and Ebola

Chris Baraniuk
OneZero
Published in
4 min readMar 26, 2020

Image: Peter Zelei Images/Getty Images

TThe rumors first surfaced on WeChat and Weibo. Users of the Chinese social media platforms were saying a pneumonia-like illness had hit Wuhan — and that it was killing people. Staff at EcoHealth Alliance, a global nonprofit that monitors emerging diseases, noticed this chatter in late December 2019.

Peter Daszak, president of the organization, combed through the material himself, popping paragraphs into Google Translate and getting back imperfect translations. Colleagues who spoke Chinese also helped him figure out what was going on.

“Clearly something was out there,” he told OneZero. “There was a lot of very contentious and often dramatic discussion.”

By New Year’s Eve, Daszak had gathered information that he thought was worth flagging to ProMED-mail, a service that sends out free regular alerts about disease outbreaks around the world to more than 83,000 email subscribers, many of them epidemiologists and public health experts.

When Daszak went to tell ProMED about what he’d found, he realized they had beaten him to it. On December 30, ProMED staff sent out an alert citing an urgent notice from Wuhan about an “unexplained…

Create an account to read the full story.

The author made this story available to Medium members only.
If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Or, continue in mobile web

Already have an account? Sign in

OneZero
OneZero

Published in OneZero

OneZero is a former publication from Medium about the impact of technology on people and the future. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Chris Baraniuk
Chris Baraniuk

Written by Chris Baraniuk

Freelance science and technology journalist. Based in Northern Ireland.

Responses (3)

Write a response

Really interesting article — coronavirus is already showing the critical role of big data in trying to get ahead of emerging black swans. Digital data scientists are now considered ‘critical infrastructure’ workers during the pandemic by the US Department of Defense.

Not sure what you’re trying to prove here. The disease was first spotted by Dr. Zhang Lixian at the Hubei Province Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine on December 27, when she noticed that 4 patients from a same family…

“Clearly something was out there.”

Good writing! I Love your work, I’m looking forward for your next article :) KUDOS.