It made some news, it was suspicious cases of pneumonia in china. First time I read the article, I was like "uh oh". It did not make the headlines though, but it was still noticeable. I think I spotted it on reddit or hackernews. Maybe the article was on BBC? BBC has quite a good world coverage.
I guess you can google news by year. I'm very certain those articles exist. Next time I heard about it, it was getting much worse.
True, but between actually seeing the first news and figuring out: "Oh my God, this is going to be a global pandemic!", it took me a while. I think most people were in the same boat.
My wife had taken a couple infectious diseases courses as part of her anthropology degree so she was tuned into this whole thing and the first article she read about it end of December I remember her freaking out. "Oh, great, another SARS-type virus has been found, we're screwed" and me being like "honey, you're being paranoid. relax."
Some months back, I had the same recollection: an article about suspicious pneumonia cases in China published by the BBC sometimes in December. I did some searching, and nothing, I think the first article is from the 31st of December. Funny how the mind can trick you, maybe it is linked to "Déjà vu" [1].
I journal daily and like to capture the news among my daily record. The first time I found COVID/Coronavirus mentioned by BBC News was January 3rd 2020 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-50984025.
It is of course possible I missed a story but before January 3rd there was little to no mainstream news coverage. It is quite frustrating to find accurate articles now as many sites are falsely returned in date range Google searches. All "mystery flu-like pneumonia" stories I've found reported in December 2019 are medical news so it is extremely unlikely someone would come across such an article as part of normal news reading.
On January the 4th their were posters (printed A4) up on Public Transport in Hong Kong. I remember thinking it was very strange - I had heard a story on the BBC world service the night before. The posters warned of a "Novel Pneumonia from Southern China". How the world changed...
How it changed indeed! Reading my journal for the first four months of 2020 is fascinating. I must have read over those first few months ten times since. So much has happened with advice and guidance changing as we learn more about the virus and the disease. So much mis- and disinformation. Crazy behaviours all over. I am so glad I keep a journal as it will be quite something to read back in a decade or two.
Especially for my 8 year old son. He is old enough to understand things are not normal but young enough to not fully understand the gravity of the situation or have memories of much outside of his little bubble.
If you can get access to an archive of South China Morning Post that hasn't been scrubbed, the term you want to search for is "mystery pneumonia" or "sars like".
Thanks, I have several Chinese/Asia news sources from December however I was asking for a BBC reference as M2Ys4U mentioned it was reported by the BBC on New Years Eve and the earliest I have is January 3rd.
According to Giuseppe Remuzzi there were strange pneumonia cases in northern Italy in November 2019, but as far as I can see they were not reported until March 2020.
Apart from that I remember the first reports from China in December 2019.
I remember hearing about it prior to that as well. I remember because I was building a shed and had someone helping me who was talking about it and it was prior to the new year, early December at the latest. He heard about it on a Doomsday type podcast.
I guess you can google news by year. I'm very certain those articles exist. Next time I heard about it, it was getting much worse.