Flagged for misinformation. There definitely was an uptick in deaths and pneumonia. Scans of patient's lungs showed new symptoms not normally associated with pneumonia. This happened over the course of a few months and is what tipped off doctors in Wuhan that there was something new spreading.
>>sparrc+(OP)
And another point that cements this was the Reddit “china_flu” subreddit’s creation in December 2019, when word was spreading outside China that _something_ was spreading, probably flu, and nobody knew what