Two years ago this week, a middle-aged man in Wuhan caught a strange respiratory disease. The 41-year-old accountant was called Chen and he worked for his family firm, commuted to work by public transport and shopped in a sleek modern supermarket rather than a traditional market selling wild animals. He had not travelled outside the city in the days before catching the disease beyond a short trip to some hills north of Wuhan and — bar one relative working in healthcare — had no obvious links to high-risk settings.
