Preview Kill Switch: Viruses, History, and the Road to COVID
Today we’re sharing a free advance chapter from Kill Switch: The History of How Viruses Shaped Humanity and Led to COVID-19 by Dr. Richard Burt — a sweeping historical investigation of how viral epidemics have redirected civilization, rewritten policy, and set the stage for the global response to COVID-19. This excerpt traces the long arc of viral influence, showing that modern crises are not anomalies, but the latest turn in a centuries-long pattern.
Read the chapter below.
Dr. Zhang Jixian in Wuhan, China was the first to notice what subsequently became known as the COVID-19 pandemic. On December 26, 2019, when evaluating the images of the lungs from an elderly couple with cough and fever, Dr. Zhang recognized clinical and imaging similarities to the viral SARS pneumonia pandemic that occurred in 2003. (SARS is an abbreviation for severe acute respiratory distress syndrome.)
Dr. Zhang ordered an X-ray of the lung of the couples’ son. It showed the same smoky, ground- glass appearance present in the parents’ lungs, an appearance distinct from the dense consolidation that normally occurs with bacterial infections. Zhang knew that for all family members of different ages to have the same acute lung disease at the same time meant that it was infectious. This virus was later named COVID-19, an abbreviation for coronavirus disease 2019.
Throughout this book, it is important to remember the similarity between the COVID-19 pandemic that started in 2019 and SARS outbreak that occurred in 2003. Both COVID-19 and SARS are coronaviruses (abbreviated Cov). The proper name of SARS is SARS-Cov1. The proper name for COVID-19 is SARS-Cov2. SARS-Cov1 caused the first human coronavirus infection and localized epidemic in 2003 that lasted about 6 months. SARS-cov2 caused a worldwide pandemic that began sixteen years later in 2019 and continues to this day.
On December 27, 2019, Dr. Zhang’s observation of a virus lung infection that mimicked the 2003 SARS-cov1 virus was reported to the Wuhan Center for Disease Control. On December 30 the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released an emergency notice of “pneumonia of unknown cause.”1 In order to control the narrative, the Chinese government substituted the euphemism “unknown cause” for SARS pneumonia.
The First Public Report of SARS
On that same day as the official release referring to a “pneumonia of unknown cause,” Dr. Li Wenliang saw a report from a patient in the Wuhan Central Hospital emergency department, in which the words SARS coronavirus was circled.2 Dr. Li informed his medical school colleagues on a private WeChat social media account stating: “7 confirmed cases of SARS were reported from Wuhan Seafood market.” Later Dr. Li posted on WeChat “the latest news is, it has been confirmed to be coronavirus infections, but the exact virus strain is being subtyped”. This information spread on social media like wildfire because the Chinese people knew how lethal the 2003 Chinese SARS epidemic had been.
Four days after his WeChat, Dr. Li was interrogated by the Wuhan Public Security Bureau. The Security Bureau issued a public warning and censured him for the crime of publishing untrue
statements about SARS. Dr. Li was forced to sign a letter recanting his statements and was threatened with incarceration for any further “false” information. China Central Television (the Chinese equivalent to CNN), then publicly humiliated and shamed Dr. Li for “rumor mongering,” a “character assassination” technique and misdirection also utilized by our own Western media.
On January 8 five days after his interrogation and humiliation by Chinese police and Chinese Central Television, Dr. Li caught COVID-19 from an infected patient whom he was seeing in Wuhan Central Hospital. To protect his family and avoid their exposure to COVID-19, he did not return home. Dr. Li never saw his family again.
Dr. Li was admitted on January 12 to the medical intensive care unit. On February 6 his blood oxygen levels dropped dangerously low. Because his lungs were unable to oxygenate his blood, he was placed on a heart-lung machine for extracorporeal (outside of the body) oxygenation. Later that evening he died.3 Social media posts using his name were being monitored by the Chinese government to prevent “rumor mongering,” and reports of his death from that day were deleted. In the afternoon of the following day, the hospital announced his death. His wife was pregnant at the time of his death. Four months after his death, his widow gave birth to their son.
The Chinese people demanded a response from the Chinese government.4 The social media posting #WeWantFreedomofSpeech gained two million followers in only five hours before it was taken down by government monitors. Two months after Dr. Li’s death, the Chinese central government reversed itself and declared Dr. Li to be a state martyr who gave his life for the Chinese people.5
Summary
COVID-19 went on to become a worldwide pandemic, killing to date approximately eight million people. To prevent another outbreak, we need to know where SARS-Cov2 came from. But how does one begin to answer this question? We need to start by first learning about viruses—what they are, when we discovered them, and how human beings have addressed them in the past. As Carl Sagan said “You have to know the past to understand the present.”6
To get your copy of Kill Switch: The History of How Viruses Shaped Humanity and Led to COVID-19 , buy now on Amazon.
Notes
Chapter 1
1 X. Li, W. Cui, and F. Zhang, “Who Was the First Doctor to Report the COVID-19 Outbreak in Wuhan, China?,” Journal of Nuclear Medicine 16.6 (2020): 782–83.
2 The narrative details here and in the next couple paragraphs derive from J. Czerin, “Dr. Li
Wenliang and the Time of COVID-19,” Journal of Nuclear Medicine 61.5 (2020): 625
3 Cissy Zhou, “Coronavirus: Whistle-Blower Dr Li Wenliang Confirmed Dead of the Disease at 34, After Hours of Chaotic Messaging from Hospital,” South China Morning Post, February 7, 2020, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3049411/coronavirus-li-wenliang- doctor-who-alerted-authorities-outbreak.
4 Shawn Yuan, “Grief, Anger in China as Doctor Who Warned About Coronavirus Dies,” Al Jazeera, February 7, 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/2/7/grief-anger-in-china-as- doctor-who-warned-about-coronavirus-dies.
5 See “Virus Whistleblower Doctor Punished ‘Inappropriately’: Chinese Probe,” The Economic Times, March 20, 2020, https://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/diagnostics/virus- whistleblower-doctor-punished-inappropriately-chinese-probe/74725984; Ian Collier, “Coronavirus: China Apologises to Family of Doctor Who Died After Warning About COVID- 19,” Sky News, March 20, 2020, https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-china-apologises-to- family-of-doctor-who-died-after-warning-about-covid-19-11960679.
6 Quote from Sagan taken from Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, season 1, episode 2, “One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue,” produced by Adrian Malone, broadcast in October 5, 1980 on PBS.