coronavirus.That day, the United States Congress was preparing articles of impeachment and Iran finally admitted that it shot down a Ukrainian airliner by mistake.In China, however, two less-noticed stories were developing that would ultimately have profound consequences for the entire world.From Wuhan came the first reports that a regular customer at a seafood market had died from an unidentified virus, while in Shanghai, a team of researchers had, with amazing speed, just produced the entire genetic sequence of the virus.The first story was confirmation of an approaching descent into a global public health catastrophe.