Studies link COVID-19 to wildlife sales at Chinese market, find alternative scenarios extremely unlikely
www.sciencedaily.com
Analyses based on locations and viral sequencing of early COVID-19 cases indicate the pandemic started in Huanan market in Wuhan, China, with live animals being sold at the market as the likely source. Genomic studies revealed that the SARS-Cov-2 virus jumped into humans on at two separate occasions.

All up not the worst outcome.

Best outcome would have been that it was already spreading globally (as suggested by wastewater analysis) and China just detected it first.

Next best would be that it was brought into the wet market, but by a person.

Slightly worse is if it jumped from animals at the market, as that vindicates the racists. <— we are here

Worse than that is accidental lab leak of natural virus.

Worse still is accidental lab leak of manufactured virus.

Worst of all is intentional release of manufactured virus.

  • CthulhusIntern [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    What about that sharp increase in pneumonia cases in the Washington area throughout 2019, or that sudden "vaping sickness", which included symptoms such as loss of taste and smell, which mysteriously disappeared after covid was discovered?

    • Sincerity [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      This is why we have epidemiologists; we look for reasons for these things all the time.

      If you want a good recent example - the clusters of hepatitis in children, some of whom required liver transplants. Multiple extremely experienced public health agencies and academic colleagues looking at sequencing data, PCR data, biopsies, good biological tissue samples. And it's still not fully clear exactly what caused them; after months of hard scrutiny. There was a paper this week which has posited that the commonality between them all was a rare adeno-associated virus. But we're still not entirely sure on the mechanisms at play.

      Sometimes clusters happen, and they're not always easily explicable. However - it's certain that the most parsimonious explanation for those incidents you listed above is not that all the genomic and phylogenetic information we have amassed on COVID is incorrect and there is some kind of mass cover up by international evolutionary virologists.