Connie Goldsmith - Understanding Coronaviruses: SARS, MERS, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

We humans act like we own the planet, when really its the microbes and the insects that run things. One way they remind us whos in charge is by transmitting disease, often with the help of small animals, including rodents or bats.

Dr. Ali Khan, epidemiologist, 2016

D r. Li Wenliang studied medicine at Wuhan University in Wuhan, a large city of about eleven million people along the Yangtze River in central China. After medical school, he went to work as an eye doctor in Wuhan Central Hospital in 2014. In December 2019, Li noticed a cluster of patients with respiratory symptoms similar to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). SARS emerged in 2002, making it the first new disease of the twenty-first century. The seven patients were quarantined in Lis hospital. Most of them had something in common. They had recently visited a local seafood market.

Li wanted to alert his fellow physicians about the outbreak of a possible SARS-related virus. One patients lab tests showed the man had been infected by a coronavirus, the type of virus that causes SARS. Li sent a message to his school alumni group using WeChat, a Chinese social network. He advised his friends to avoid infection by wearing protective clothing. I only wanted to remind my university classmates to be careful, Li said. He became worried when the posting went viral. I realized it was out of my control and I would probably be punished.

He was correct.

Four days later, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau summoned Li to its offices and forced him to sign a form that accused him of making false comments and of disturbing the social order. The police threatened he would be brought to justice if he did not sign his name to the lie. Li signed. The form, in which he acknowledged that he made false statements and that his behavior had been illegal, circulated online in China.

The Chinese government allowed Li to return to work. A week later, he treated a woman with the eye disease glaucoma. Neither she nor Li knew that she also had the new coronavirus. By January 10, 2020, Li was coughing and had a fever. Two days later, he was in an isolation room at the hospital. Many of the patients he had cared for became ill and were hospitalized. On January 20, China declared the outbreak an emergency.

It was too late for Li, however. His condition continued to worsen, and he died on February 7 at the age of thirty-four in the Wuhan hospital. He left his pregnant wife and his small son behind. Fortunately, they didnt become ill. Across China, people called Li the hero doctor. His colleagues credited him with being the first medical professional to raise concern about the new coronavirus.

Dr. Tom Inglesby, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said of Li, One of the worlds most important warning systems for a deadly new outbreak is a doctors or nurses recognition that some new disease is emerging and then sounding the alarm. It takes intelligence and courage to step up and say something like that, even in the best of circumstances.

If the government had listened to Li rather than force him to say that he lied, then perhaps the outbreak of the new coronavirus could have been contained, or at least controlled. Perhaps it wouldnt have spread around the world so quickly, becoming a pandemic, killing millions, closing businesses and schools, and upending our way of life.

In March 2021, NPR announced that a team from the World Health Organization (WHO) identified the probable source of the new SARS virus. Wildlife farms in China had been breeding exotic animals such as civets, porcupines, and pangolins to sell in wet markets. Its likely the virus spilled over from bats to the animals at those farms. The animals were then sold in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan. The crowding in the wet market stressed the animals and weakened their immune systems, giving viruses the chance to mingle and swap genetic material. This can create mutated viruses such as SARS and the new virus that killed Li. These new diseases infect the animals, which then infect humans.

Dr. Linfa Wang was a member of the WHO investigative team that searched for the source of the new virus. He said, There was massive transmission going on at that [Huanan] market for sure. In the live animal section, they had many positive samples. Chinese authorities shut down the Huanan market on December 31, 2019, and then closed all the wild animal farms that supplied animals to wet markets in February 2020.

Akin to farmers markets in the United States, Chinese wet markets sell fresh meat and produce. Many also slaughter fish and other live animals, such as civets and pangolins, for their customers. Researchers believe this practice led to the 2002 SARS outbreak and to the outbreak of the new coronavirus as well.