TL;DW: This is propaganda. It omits a basic, crucial fact from the timeline -- that China notified the World Health Organization on December 31, 2019, right when it was first possible to reasonably guess that this would be serious. It instead suggests that China was refusing to acknowledge anything into January. This omission completely changes the narrative they present.

On the 1st of December 2019, a man in his 70s fell ill... Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, within days up to 200 people were likely already infected with the coronavirus. They were walking around undetected, most likely with mild symptoms or none at all.

So this spread significantly before anyone had reason to identify it as a potential pandemic.

Three weeks after the first illnesses emerged, doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital took a sample from a patient’s lungs... The report back on Dec. 26 is to say, "Oh, my God, this patient’s samples contain genetic sequence most related to bat coronavirus"... "I’m 100% sure; this is real."

Almost a month later this fast-spreading virus is identified. This is the earliest point at which anyone could have concluded there was a real danger of a pandemic, and the report estimates that there were 2,300-4,000 already infected by then.

Several more samples were sent to other labs for sequencing... "So the sequence of a pathogen is really important... It’s really crucial information for health authorities in other countries to start detecting this virus. Where is it going? Is it going to go outside of China? Is it going to become a pandemic? Is it human-to-human transmissible?"

"Of course, you don’t want to rush out some information that could potentially be false and make everyone think that this is some other kind of pathogen and somehow misinform people."

After the initial test results on 12/26/19, samples are sent to other labs. It's still unknown whether the virus is even human-to-human transmissible, which says a lot about its potential danger.

Then a lab in Beijing that had been reviewing a sample of the virus sent Wuhan Central Hospital some startling results. This lab had gotten a different result from the previous one: rather than a virus similar to SARS, they said it was SARS itself.

It would turn out the lab had made a mistake, but the results quickly started circulating among doctors at Wuhan Central Hospital...

At around 5.30 p.m. it reached Li Wenliang, an eye doctor. He forwarded it on, with a warning: “Don’t circulate this information outside the group, tell your family and loved ones to take precautions"... His message went viral... News of an outbreak had escaped.

We're at December 30th, there are conflicting test results, it's not known if this is human transmissible, and this original story contains erroneous information. Note also that Li Wenliang is the doctor chud media usually claims was silenced. This report is at least honest enough to mention that he had spread bad information about a potential pandemic, and acknowledge that his punishment amounted to a "reprimand."

Here's where it turns into propaganda. What they don't tell you is that "On 31 December 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China." So the day after inaccurate information broke, and right as they're starting to get back test results to determine the threat, China informs the world.

What does PBS tell you?

When I first started seeing the reports on Dec. 31, doctors from inside were describing it as SARS. So I started searching "Wuhan SARS" to see what the discussion was online, and I couldn’t find anything. You had that standard term "that relevant search term is blocked," which was not a surprise, because the government obviously wants to keep things stable. I’m pretty sure they did not want any comparison to SARS; they wouldn’t want a panic to ensue because of that...

So let me tell you what international law requires. If the government knows about a novel infection that meets the criteria within the International Health Regulations, and a novel coronavirus by definition meets those criteria of a potential public health emergency of international concern, the government is obliged by law to report that to the World Health Organization within 24 hours. So it was reportable. The failure to report clearly was a violation of the International Health Regulations.

The World Health Organization first learned about the outbreak not from the Chinese government, but from social media and the ProMED post. On Jan. 1, its incident management team began a series of emergency conference calls.

Not only is there zero mention of China informing WHO on the 31st, but they present someone who talks about the 31st as if official information was being censored, and then someone who claims China violated international law by not having informed WHO by then. And then they suggest that WHO was still trying to work around the supposed censorship on January 1st!

So here's the abbreviated timeline:

• Dec. 1: first case
• Dec. 26: initial tests on samples are returned, additional tests are began
• Dec. 30: secondary tests are returned, erroneous information is spread
• Dec. 31: China notifies WHO that there's a problem <--------------------- PBS omits this

PBS then suggests China hadn't officially acknowledged anything even in early January. Their report continues at least a week into January 2020, mentioning multiple dates, *but still not the date when China officially acknowledge the issue. In light of what can only be viewed as a deliberate omission of the notification on December 31st, this is probably another tactic to deliberately paint China's early response in a negative light. And of course there's no mention of data that suggests the virus may have originated elsewhere, or may have spread earlier before being noticed.