An unpublished COVID-19 paper alarmed this scientist—but he had to keep silent | Science | AAAS
▻https://www.science.org/content/article/unpublished-covid-19-paper-alarmed-scientist-he-had-keep-silent
On the train home from work on 16 January 2020, Thijs Kuiken made a troubling discovery. A veterinary pathologist at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, Kuiken was reading a manuscript The Lancet had asked him that morning to review within 48 hours.
The paper, by researchers at the University of Hong Kong, described a family from Shenzhen, China, just across the border from Hong Kong, that had been struck by the new coronavirus, then provisionally named 2019-nCoV, after a trip to Wuhan, some 1000 kilometers to the north. Of six travelers, five had become infected. None had visited the infamous Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market there, which many known early cases had links to. After their return, a seventh family member who had not visited Wuhan became infected as well.
The researchers’ conclusion was clear: The new virus, now known as SARS-CoV-2, was transmissible between humans. And they reported two more disturbing findings: Two infected family members had no symptoms, suggesting the new disease could spread surreptitiously, and one did not have respiratory symptoms, the most common feature of the new disease, but diarrhea, which meant doctors might be overlooking cases. “It really scared me,” Kuiken says.