[M T]

Doctors in China were definitely noticing this disease the first week of December. People were starting to die. Prior to that it's a little murky. Supposedly the Chinese have traced the disease back to November 17. If they have traced it further they are not saying. I'm not sure the US intelligence agencies would have known much prior to December, but we have no way to know at this time. Knowing how medicine works there was certainly some initial confusion. But that first week of December is when the local CCP tried to clamp down on things per well publicized reports. If they knew something certain before that I don't know. 

Early December is the point where they should have been making the knowledge public. China did not notify the WHO regarding the disease until Dec.31. That's a 3.5 to 4 week delay. With the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003, the first cases were eventually traced back to mid November, but they probably realized that there was an emergent disease in early December. The Chinese did not report it to WHO until March 3. That was certainly worse than what happened this time.

(I added the underlining to indicate dates that I don't know the evidence for.)

akiddoc, I know you're doing very important work and don't have time to research everything you write, but, respectfully, I think you've stated as fact events that differ from what I believe to be a fact.  I'm going to document what is published by sources I tend to believe.  If you can document your earlier dates, please let me know so I can understand where that info is coming from:


Case count is from the WHO-China Joint Mission Feb 24 report, and is not the number of cases known/suspected at the time.  It appears that a number of cases were retroactively diagnosed as COVID-19 that weren't recognized as such originally.

Nov 17: This date is 2 weeks before the earliest date given for Patient 1 symptoms.  It has been suggested as the date he got the disease, but I would suspect it is symptom onset minus the upper limit of incubation period, as presumptive earliest he would have been infected.
Dec. 1:  First patient gets first symptoms. ("First patient" in the Jan 24 Lancet article.) (On Jan 12, WHO indicates 1st patient symptoms began Dec 3)
Dec. 2:  There is a patient in the WHO-China graph for this date.  This may be an entry for a doctor in Hunan province.  While his symptoms agree with COVID-19, he is marked in WHO-China graph as not confirmed.  He was immunosuppressed. His diagnosis was Streptococci pneumoiae & fungi.  It would be surprising for him to not have started a cluster in Hunan if he had COVID-19. He was hospitalized at least until Jan 10.
Dec. 8:  First patient seeks medical treatment.
Dec. 10:  Patient 2 seeks treatment.  Perhaps this is the wife of patient #1
Dec. 12:  Patient 3
Dec. 15:  Patients 4 & 5
Dec. 15:  This is the date mentioned by Dr. Ian Lipkin that he first heard of the issue.
Dec. 16:  Patient 6.   Patient 1 is placed in the hospital.
Dec. 17:  Patient 7
Dec. 19:  Patients 8,9
...  Continues at 3-4 a day
Dec. 30: The Wuhan health council tells everyone to report all similar cases immediately. Cases 41-45
Dec. 31: Outbreak announced by Wuhan (WHC); NHC & China CDC investigating. Cases 46-47
           WHO China Office informed. 
           At the time of the Dec. 31 announcement, Wuhan only knew of 27 cases, of which 7 were severe.
Jan 1: The suspect market is closed. Cases 47-56
Jan 3: NHC notifies WHO & other countries & regions; gene sequencing complete.  Emergency monitoring, contact management.  Cases 64-77
          2 days later, WHO indicates that as of Jan 3, there were 44 cases.  China begins to inform US of outbreak & response on regular basis.
Jan 4: Telephone conversation by head of China CDC with head of US CDC
Jan 5: Wuhan Health Council indicates that none of the first 59 cases (then known) has yet died.
Jan 6: China CDC Level 2 emergency.
Jan 8: Novel coronavirus official announced as pathogen.  Telephone conversation of head of China CDC & head of US CDC
Jan 10: Gene sequence shared;  PCR test developed. Telephone conversations between head of China NHC and head of China CDC with Director-General of WHO
Jan 11: Test reagents supplied to Wuhan.
          Wuhan Health Council puts out a release that talks about the first 41 confirmed cases.  Indicates 1 death has happened.  This release makes the clearly wrong statement that there were no new cases since Jan 3.  (Could this be that the day-old test was being done on the patients, and only 41 patients had been tested, the latest of which was admitted Jan. 3?  Note that 6 days earlier, there were 59 cases.)
Jan 15: China CDC Level 1 emergency
Jan 16: Exit screening applied to Wuhan
Jan 21: Test reagent probes & primers shared with public

I believe the "clamp down on things" that you attribute to early December, is a reference to the January 3 apology required of 8 people who posted on 30 December that there were SARS cases in the hospital.  (In the US, perhaps they would have been censured for posting patient information.)  By the time that  claim was posted, and certainly before the apology was required, the information about the outbreak was being shared to the WHO, the US, and other countries.   The claim that Li Wenliang was a whistleblower is suspect.  He forwarded a hospital memo & patient info to a set of colleagues and told them only to tell their families. 

Sources:
Figure 1 in NEJM: Early Transmission Dynamics in Wuhan, China, of Novel Coronavirus-Infected Pneumonia  Feb 21
Figure 2 in Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)  Feb 24
   I believe I've seen a more detailed version of these 2 graphs, but I didn't find it for this posting.
The Lancet: Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China[/url]  Jan 24
[url=https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/]WHO Emergency Preparedness, Response  Jan 5
WHO Emergency Preparedness, Response  Jan 12
Wuhan's Dec. 31 announcement
Timeline of China releasing information on COVID-19 and advancing international cooperation
South China Morning Post  March 13 claims based on "seen documents" of early cases
Wikipedia Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic from November 2019 to January 2020
Jan 4 article about a MD hospitalized on December 2

[M T]

Doctors in China were definitely noticing this disease the first week of December. People were starting to die. Prior to that it's a little murky. Supposedly the Chinese have traced the disease back to November 17. If they have traced it further they are not saying. I'm not sure the US intelligence agencies would have known much prior to December, but we have no way to know at this time. Knowing how medicine works there was certainly some initial confusion. But that first week of December is when the local CCP tried to clamp down on things per well publicized reports. If they knew something certain before that I don't know. 

Early December is the point where they should have been making the knowledge public. China did not notify the WHO regarding the disease until Dec.31. That's a 3.5 to 4 week delay. With the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003, the first cases were eventually traced back to mid November, but they probably realized that there was an emergent disease in early December. The Chinese did not report it to WHO until March 3. That was certainly worse than what happened this time.

(I added the underlining to indicate dates that I don't know the evidence for.)

akiddoc, I know you're doing very important work and don't have time to research everything you write, but, respectfully, I think you've stated as fact events that differ from what I believe to be a fact.  I'm going to document what is published by sources I tend to believe.  If you can document your earlier dates, please let me know so I can understand where that info is coming from:


Case count is from the WHO-China Joint Mission Feb 24 report, and is not the number of cases known/suspected at the time.  It appears that a number of cases were retroactively diagnosed as COVID-19 that weren't recognized as such originally.

Nov 17: This date is 2 weeks before the earliest date given for Patient 1 symptoms.  It has been suggested as the date he got the disease, but I would suspect it is symptom onset minus the upper limit of incubation period, as presumptive earliest he would have been infected.
Dec. 1:  First patient gets first symptoms. ("First patient" in the Jan 24 Lancet article.) (On Jan 12, WHO indicates 1st patient symptoms began Dec 3)
Dec. 2:  There is a patient in the WHO-China graph for this date.  This may be an entry for a doctor in Hunan province.  While his symptoms agree with COVID-19, he is marked in WHO-China graph as not confirmed.  He was immunosuppressed. His diagnosis was Streptococci pneumoiae & fungi.  It would be surprising for him to not have started a cluster in Hunan if he had COVID-19. He was hospitalized at least until Jan 10.
Dec. 8:  First patient seeks medical treatment.
Dec. 10:  Patient 2 seeks treatment.  Perhaps this is the wife of patient #1
Dec. 12:  Patient 3
Dec. 15:  Patients 4 & 5
Dec. 15:  This is the date mentioned by Dr. Ian Lipkin that he first heard of the issue.
Dec. 16:  Patient 6.   Patient 1 is placed in the hospital.
Dec. 17:  Patient 7
Dec. 19:  Patients 8,9
...  Continues at 3-4 a day
Dec. 30: The Wuhan health council tells everyone to report all similar cases immediately. Cases 41-45
Dec. 31: Outbreak announced by Wuhan (WHC); NHC & China CDC investigating. Cases 46-47
           WHO China Office informed. 
           At the time of the Dec. 31 announcement, Wuhan only knew of 27 cases, of which 7 were severe.
Jan 1: The suspect market is closed. Cases 47-56
Jan 3: NHC notifies WHO & other countries & regions; gene sequencing complete.  Emergency monitoring, contact management.  Cases 64-77
          2 days later, WHO indicates that as of Jan 3, there were 44 cases.  China begins to inform US of outbreak & response on regular basis.
Jan 4: Telephone conversation by head of China CDC with head of US CDC
Jan 5: Wuhan Health Council indicates that none of the first 59 cases (then known) has yet died.
Jan 6: China CDC Level 2 emergency.
Jan 8: Novel coronavirus official announced as pathogen.  Telephone conversation of head of China CDC & head of US CDC
Jan 10: Gene sequence shared;  PCR test developed. Telephone conversations between head of China NHC and head of China CDC with Director-General of WHO
Jan 11: Test reagents supplied to Wuhan.
          Wuhan Health Council puts out a release that talks about the first 41 confirmed cases.  Indicates 1 death has happened.  This release makes the clearly wrong statement that there were no new cases since Jan 3.  (Could this be that the day-old test was being done on the patients, and only 41 patients had been tested, the latest of which was admitted Jan. 3?  Note that 6 days earlier, there were 59 cases.)
Jan 15: China CDC Level 1 emergency
Jan 16: Exit screening applied to Wuhan
Jan 21: Test reagent probes & primers shared with public

I believe the "clamp down on things" that you attribute to early December, is a reference to the January 3 apology required of 8 people who posted on 30 December that there were SARS cases in the hospital.  (In the US, perhaps they would have been censured for posting patient information.)  By the time that  claim was posted, and certainly before the apology was required, the information about the outbreak was being shared to the WHO, the US, and other countries.   The claim that Li Wenliang was a whistleblower is suspect.  He forwarded a hospital memo & patient info to a set of colleagues and told them only to tell their families. 

Sources:
Figure 1 in NEJM: Early Transmission Dynamics in Wuhan, China, of Novel Coronavirus-Infected Pneumonia  Feb 21
Figure 2 in Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)  Feb 24
   I believe I've seen a more detailed version of these 2 graphs, but I didn't find it for this posting.
The Lancet: Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China[/url]  Jan 24
[url=https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/]WHO Emergency Preparedness, Response  Jan 5
WHO Emergency Preparedness, Response  Jan 12
Wuhan's Dec. 31 announcement
Timeline of China releasing information on COVID-19 and advancing international cooperation
South China Morning Post  March 13 claims based on "seen documents" of early cases
Wikipedia Timeline of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic from November 2019 to January 2020
Jan 4 article about a MD hospitalized on December 2