Comment by DoreenMichele

Retrospective review of early COVID-19 cases identified 174 patients with onset in December 2019, 32% of whom had an ascertained link to this location, within a city of over 12 million...a geospatial analysis of residences of the early cases with no identified link to the Huanan market showed that they lived unexpectedly close to and centered around the market,3,5 even though geographic proximity was not used as a case criterion.

The genomic epidemiology of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) shows that there were very few human infections before the earliest ascertained market case with onset on December 10th, 2019.

In February 2020, China’s government enacted a far-reaching ban on the sale of wildlife for human consumption.

Zoonotic spillovers in wildlife markets have long been known to present risks for viral emergence.

This has significant implications for urban planning and community development as a means to protect human health, a function the field once served which was a primary purpose at one time but which gets relatively short shrift these days.

Haussman's redesign of Paris was prompted by high death rates due to disease for poor Parisians living in overcrowded slums. His redesign is still world influencing and Paris remains famous as a very livable city.

Urban planners used to routinely consider things like walkability of the city not as a matter of convenience for residents but as a means to ensure people got adequate exercise in day-to-day life without really trying or having to join a gym and make time in their day for it. This kind of thinking has largely been abandoned in urban planning circles.

Time to bring it back with an eye towards "How do we stop disease transmission across large expanses of space?"

Disease wiped out a lot of Natives when Europeans began coming to The New World (aka The Americas). In some cases, entire tribes went extinct. Disease likely killed far more Natives than conflict with European settlers.

Hundreds of years later and planet Earth still can't get the memo about travel and disease transmission as evidenced by the pandemic.