Book Excerpt Timelines associated with the spread of COVID-19 have changed over the past several months and, with new information, may change again in the future. There seems to be widespread agreement in publicly available sources that individuals with odd flu-like illnesses were observed in China as early as August 2019. Nothing was confirmed until a 70-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disease was diagnosed in late December 2019 in Wuhan. According to the Lancet, which, despite recent irregularities, remains a flagship English-language general medical journal, the symptoms of this first patient presented around Dec. 1, 2019. There also seems to be agreement that by late 2019 the “novel” coronavirus had jumped from an animal to a human being; this is called a zoonotic transmission. At this point, narrative agreement breaks down. Some observers said the transmission from an animal, not yet specified, to a human took place in the Huanan Wholesale …