New US book Breathless cites 1st journal report of the infection later attributed to SARS-CoV-2

The October 4, 2022 book Breathless -- the scientific race to defeat a deadly virus by US science writer David Quammen (Simon & Schuster, NY, NY) describes the January 24, 2020 publication in The Lancet of the world's first medical journal report of an unknown pneumonia spreading rapidly within a family and their close contacts earlier that month in southeastern China.

The link from The Lancet will not properly transfer into ATS, so here is the journal title info: A familial cluster of pneumonia associated with the 2019 novel coronavirus indicating person-to-person transmission: a study of a family cluster, journal article date: January 24, 2020. Authors:

Jasper Fuk-Woo Chan, MD *
Shuofeng Yuan, PhD *
Kin-Hang Kok, PhD *
Kelvin Kai-Wang To, MD *
Hin Chu, PhD *
Jin Yang, MD
Fanfan Xing, MD
Jieling Liu, BNurs
Cyril Chik-Yan Yip, PhD
Rosana Wing-Shan Poon, PhD
Hoi-Wah Tsoi, MPhil
Simon Kam-Fai Lo, MPhil
Kwok-Hung Chan, PhD
Vincent Kwok-Man Poon, MPhil
Wan-Mui Chan, PhD
Jonathan Daniel Ip, MSc
Jian-Piao Cai, BSc
Vincent Chi-Chung Cheng, MD
Prof Honglin Chen, PhD
Christopher Kim-Ming Hui, MD
Prof Kwok-Yung Yuen, MD
Published:January 24, 2020DOI:doi.org...(20)30154-9
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At that time, I had already started scouring online medical journals for updates on the possibility of a novel virus causing these infections, but I never saw that article. Certainly even then, I was not checking the journals every day, so I never saw it until now. Mr. Quammen goes on to say that few people saw this journal article then and for some time afterwards.

Tragically, that journal article (by senior author Kwok-Yung Yuen + many others, Yuen being his surname) does explicitly state these cases of human infection show evidence of person-to-person transmission and *also* one of that family's children "shedding virus without symptoms."

I'll have to look to see if this article was ever included in the US National Library of Medicine that month or afterwards. More on this later.

a reply to: Uphill

the scientific race to defeat a deadly virus

Is that the same virus that's never been isolated and has a fatality rate of more or less zero?

a reply to: myselfaswell -- hi, if that is your opinion, that opinion is based on what?

a reply to: Uphill

It is my considered opinion based on facts.

Sars-CoV-2 has never been isolated. The definition of isolation has gone from;

There's one right there.

To

We're kinda getting some sort of chemical signature out of this soup we've made from all this stuff we've pulped. It's probably in there somewhere, well at least there's probably parts of it in there anyway, probably.

a reply to: Uphill By comparison, the following is the (USA) PubMed summary of that journal article. Note that the abstract of that article contains serious omissions, and only in its Interpretation paragraph does it mention person-to-person disease transmission in that family, but still does not mention that the asymptomatic child was shedding the novel virus:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

This journal article from The Lancet was apparently indexed into the US PubMed database on February 15, 2020.