Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021...aped-our-world
“I’ve Just Been Swept Up in This Wave”: How the Earliest COVID Coverage Shaped Our World
The omicron surge now dominating headlines comes as pandemic content has long been at the forefront of news coverage, a far cry from the murky, early reports—shared largely among specialists this week in 2019—of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness in Wuhan.
By Joe Pompeo
December 27, 2021
snip
....... Sharon Sanders was getting ready for bed at her home down in central Florida. Around 11:40 p.m., before turning in, she did one last check of the website she runs, FluTrackers. It’s the same routine every night, but this time, something caught Sanders’s eye. A user with family in Hong Kong had posted a link to an article from the city’s public broadcasting service, Radio Television Hong Kong, reporting that medical experts had arrived in Wuhan to investigate a suspected outbreak of acute respiratory disease. Sanders began scouring the internet and found several additional articles. One was a report from China’s People’s Daily. Another, published on Sina Finance, included a minute-long video that a reporter had filmed on a visit to the seafood market. Sanders posted the stories on FluTrackers and frantically alerted a colleague.
“I called Michael Coston who authors the Avian Flu Diary blog at that late hour because we have an agreement to call each other if a very significant item comes across our desk. In 14 years I have never called him late at night,” Sanders recalled for a project about the pandemic by two history professors at the University of Alabama. “What was significant about those media reports was their mere existence. Nothing gets through the China internet firewall unless the government approves. For a single outbreak of any disease involving 27 humans that was being widely broadcast meant something serious was going on.”
Over the next few days, news about the situation in Wuhan began trickling out to a wider audience in the English-language media.
“I’ve Just Been Swept Up in This Wave”: How the Earliest COVID Coverage Shaped Our World
The omicron surge now dominating headlines comes as pandemic content has long been at the forefront of news coverage, a far cry from the murky, early reports—shared largely among specialists this week in 2019—of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness in Wuhan.
By Joe Pompeo
December 27, 2021
snip
....... Sharon Sanders was getting ready for bed at her home down in central Florida. Around 11:40 p.m., before turning in, she did one last check of the website she runs, FluTrackers. It’s the same routine every night, but this time, something caught Sanders’s eye. A user with family in Hong Kong had posted a link to an article from the city’s public broadcasting service, Radio Television Hong Kong, reporting that medical experts had arrived in Wuhan to investigate a suspected outbreak of acute respiratory disease. Sanders began scouring the internet and found several additional articles. One was a report from China’s People’s Daily. Another, published on Sina Finance, included a minute-long video that a reporter had filmed on a visit to the seafood market. Sanders posted the stories on FluTrackers and frantically alerted a colleague.
“I called Michael Coston who authors the Avian Flu Diary blog at that late hour because we have an agreement to call each other if a very significant item comes across our desk. In 14 years I have never called him late at night,” Sanders recalled for a project about the pandemic by two history professors at the University of Alabama. “What was significant about those media reports was their mere existence. Nothing gets through the China internet firewall unless the government approves. For a single outbreak of any disease involving 27 humans that was being widely broadcast meant something serious was going on.”
Over the next few days, news about the situation in Wuhan began trickling out to a wider audience in the English-language media.
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