Thread by @latimes

The intruder crept in while we were thinking about other things.

Maybe you were thinking about whether the Lakers could make a championship run. About watching BTS perform in Times Square on New Years'. Maybe even about whether your car needed new tires.
latimes.com/california/sto…

But the everyday concerns shrank away for a group of researchers, physicians, public health officers and science journalists.

Peter Daszak, a scientist, picked up the first clues of something amiss days after Christmas.

Weibo, China’s Twitter, carried the warning signals: An odd illness in the city of Wuhan. Patients in respiratory distress. Some developing pneumonia. A few dying, or so said the reports, unconfirmed.

Those fleeting days of 2019 and the first three months of 2020 have passed in a blur for America and the world, turned upside down by a virus previously not identified by humankind and now responsible for a death toll that has climbed past 100,000.
latimes.com/world-nation/s…

For the 54-year-old Daszak and his fellow germ trackers, it’s been a period of long hours and roiling emotions.

Read the full story from @RaineyTime and @kierafeldman now:
latimes.com/california/sto…