September 28, 2022 11:57 AM

The Covid pandemic (新冠肺炎疫情) was first reported in late 2019 in Wuhan city. The pandemic then quickly spread beyond the city and appeared in almost every region in the world. People were first scared and might give China some bad looks and thoughts. It is natural and even I sometimes behaved that way.

News and reports on this topic were constantly in the spotlight. Google search suggestions mirrored global interest in China, as entering keywords related to Wuhan or China consistently led to top suggestions associated with COVID, coronavirus, pandemic, and the like. In addition to these factors, China’s economy and technological advancements continued to develop. This led my interest in delving deeper into China, and I even learned some Chinese.

There were some reports that were easily accessible on the internet. I was following them almost every single day. Some were grabbed from Google and the National Vietnam government websites. I also tried hitting Baidu with the keyword 越南疫情大数据报告 and found some statistical information. It is not too much but seems slightly different (maybe different datasource or data were not correct, but they did share the same shape) when compared to Google. Something similar to this.

Supporting to these kinds of report is that the geographic distribution graph of COVID-19 highlighted a significant concentration of infections within urban centers. Within a given country, major cities seemed to be the initial locations where confirmed cases emerged, with subsequent cases also reported in other densely populated urban centers. Hence, there appears to be a correlation between the movement of people from large cities to other large cities or countries and the transmission of the virus.

Because the virus transmission to these cities probably results in an outbreak, there appears to be another evidence that supports correlation between large city and the transmission of the virus.

A great outbreak in a large city shows that the citizens make frequent and quite far travels between home and workplace, each individual is physically close to others and they do make physical contact.

The transmission of the virus reflects the movement and physical contact of humans.

An individual develops itself by coming to make physical contact with other individual and making long-distance travel.

Looking back on Wuhan city, it was known as the epicenter of the Covid pandemic. However, it serves as the capital of Central China’s Hubei province and ranks one of the top cities in China with notable institutes including higher education, financial centers, and scientific research.

Some thing may give you a bad impression at the first look but it is actually not.

These are reflections I recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. A year later, I came across information relating to Computational Social Networks, which appeared to help correct my thinking at that moment.