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ple, in turn, could infect others. As Victor Davis Hanson, a history
professor at Stanford University in California, explains, “Modern
life squeezes millions into cities as never before. Jet travel, with
its crowded planes and airports, can spread diseases from conti-
nent to continent in hours.” 7
The fi rst reported death from COVID-19 occurred on January
11, when a sixty-one-year-old customer of the Wuhan market
succumbed to the disease. The death occurred just before the
lunar new year, which is a major holiday in China; millions of Chi-
nese citizens travel to celebrate the holiday with family members
in other cities. It is likely that many of those travelers unknowingly
spread the disease to others throughout China and elsewhere.
On January 16, authorities in Japan disclosed that a Japa-
nese man who had traveled to Wuhan was now infected with
COVID-19. In the United States, the fi rst case was confi rmed on
January 20 in the state of Washington. Cases also surfaced in
South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. On January 23, Chinese au-
thorities closed the city of Wuhan to travel and ordered all of its
residents to stay in their homes. By this point, 17 people had died
in China, and the number of infected people worldwide stood at
570. The fi rst death outside China—a forty-four-year-old man in
the Philippines—was reported on February 2. The death toll by
that date stood at more than 200, with some 9,800 cases re-
ported around the world.

The Diamond Princess
Some of those cases were found among the thirty-six hundred
passengers aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which
docked in Yokohama, Japan, on February 5. The passenger list in-
cluded more than four hundred Americans. The passengers were
quarantined aboard the cruise ship, where the disease spread
throughout the close quarters of the vessel. Screenings aboard
the ship detected more than six hundred cases. On February 19,
passengers who had tested negative for the disease were permit-
ted to leave the ship and return to their homes.

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