Wuhan authorities first informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the unknown, pneumonialike illness that would later be identified as the new coronavirus on December 31.

A majority of the initial 41 cases were linked to the wet market, which was shut down on January 1. Given that the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003 started at a similar venue in Guangdong, China, the wet market seemed like a logical origin. (The SARS coronavirus jumped from bats to civet cats to people.)

But none of the animals at the market tested positive for the virus, Colin Carlson, a zoologist at Georgetown University told Live Science. If they were never infected, they couldn't have been the intermediary host that facilitated the spillover. 

A growing body of research supports the Chinese CDC's conclusion that the outbreak's origins were unrelated to the market. The virus seems to have been circulating in Wuhan before those 41 cases were reported: Research published in January showed that the first person to test positive for the coronavirus was likely exposed to it on December 1, then showed symptoms on December 8. The researchers behind the study also found that 13 of the 41 original cases showed no link to the wet market.

Similarly, an April study suggested that the coronavirus had already established itself and begun spreading in the Wuhan community by early January.

The identity of "patient zero" hasn't been confirmed, but it may have been a 55-year-old man from China's Hubei province who was infected on November 17, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), which reviewed government documents.

Carlson told Live Science that the Wuhan wet market may simply have been the a site of an early super-spreader event -- an instance in which one sick person infects an atypically large number of others.

Trump's order essentially would pave the way for U.S. agencies to revisit and potentially undo long-standing legal protections known as Section 230, which spares tech giants from being held liable for the content they allow online and their own moderation decisions, according to two people familiar with the document, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it has not been finalized. The Post also obtained an undated draft copy of the order, which sources cautioned could still change before the president signs it.

The directive specifically could pave the way for federal officials to seek a new rulemaking proceeding at the Federal Communications Commission to rethink the scope of the law, the people familiar with the document said. A change could have dramatic free-speech implications and wide-ranging consequences for a broad swath of companies reliant on doing business on the Internet.

The order also would seek to channel complaints about political bias to the Federal Trade Commission, which would be encouraged to probe whether tech companies' content-moderation policies are in keeping with their pledges of neutrality. It would further create a council along with state attorneys general to probe allegations of political bias, while tasking federal agencies with reviewing their spending on social media advertising, according to the people familiar with the White House's thinking.

"In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to handpick the speech that Americans may access and convey online," according to an undated draft version of the executive order obtained by The Post late Wednesday.

The order could mark the White House's most significant salvo against Silicon Valley after years of verbal broadsides and regulatory threats from Trump and his top deputies. It also may raise fresh, thorny questions about the First Amendment, the future of expression online and the extent to which the White House can properly -- and legally -- influence the decisions that private companies make about their apps, sites and services.

It is not clear, however, if the FTC and FCC plan to take the actions sought by the president. The agencies are independent, operating separately of Trump's Cabinet, leaving enforcement to their discretion. The FCC declined to comment, and the FTC did not immediately respond.

Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic FCC commissioner, blasted the draft order Thursday as unworkable. "Social media can be frustrating," she said in a statement. "But an executive order that would turn the Federal Communications Commission into the president's speech police is not the answer."

Others fretted the proposal Trump is considering threatens to circumvent Congress. "The idea you could have an executive order that reinterprets a clear statute that Congress passed, that has been interpreted by the courts for over 20-plus years, as recently as yesterday ... is just nonsense," said Jesse Blumenthal, who leads tech policy work for Stand Together, an organization backed by industrialist Charles Koch.

According to new reporting from The Guardian and Open Secrets, Leo, Carrie Severino of the Judicial Crisis Network, and their dark-money backers are promoting the Orwellian-named "Honest Elections Project" to pressure elections administrators to limit access to the ballot and to undermine trust in elections. The messaging echoes Trump's baseless claims that various states' efforts to let people vote by mail are fraudulent--and turns these lies into policy. "The project announced it was spending $250,000 in advertisements in April, warning against voting by mail and accusing Democrats of cheating," the Guardian explained. "It facilitated letters to election officials in Colorado, Florida and Michigan, using misleading data to accuse jurisdictions of having bloated voter rolls and threatening legal action. Calling voter suppression a 'myth', it has also been extremely active in the courts, filing briefs in favor of voting restrictions in Nevada, Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin and Minnesota, among other places, at times represented by lawyers from the same firm that represents Trump."