Well — it looks like NYTimes confirmed an unvoiced speculation of mine: the spread of the disease really mimicked what happened at Chernobyl according to the HBO miniseries. Like the Chernobyl authorities, the Wuhan authorities didn’t want to admit that the situation was out of their control and so they delayed informing Beijing about what was happening. Of course, Chernobyl could not be hidden from the world because the radiation was detected elsewhere within hours. The coronavirus could lurk without detection elsewhere for weeks before it exploded on the world stage.