About those "41 earliest cases": "By Jan 2, 2020, 41 admitted hospital patients were identified as laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection in Wuhan." - from t

About those "41 earliest cases": "By Jan 2, 2020, 41 admitted hospital patients were identified as laboratory-confirmed 2019-nCoV infection in Wuhan." - from the source cited by the article. Those are not "the first who had it", they were identified hospitalised cases. It is guesswork how many people were infected at the time, but assuming ~ 10^3 in Wuhan at January 2nd 2020 seems likely. Remember: France had cases in December, as did Italy: - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/french-hospital-discovers-covid-19-case-december-retested https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/04/french-hospita... - https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/smart-water-magazine/study-detects-coronavirus-northern-italys-wastewater-december https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/smart-water-magazine/stu...