Michael Worobey
2021 · Science
Elucidating the origin of the pandemic requires understanding of the Wuhan outbreak
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I wonder how the classified intelligence report responds to the fact that the early cases clustered around the Huanan Market not the Wahun Institute of Virology... https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/03/03/1083751...
That’s not true — again showing the problems with headlines like these.. (drive by viewers integrate the headline into their understanding even though the actual article is very light on information). Nearly every early case — before there could have been “pressure” to hide the origins was connected to the market: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 This alone doesn’t disprove a lab leak of course, but it tilts the odds dramatically compared to the alternate scenario where WIV employees were among the first infected.
The Wuchang campus is closer, 17k away. Crucially, however, the now famous “earliest” COVID-19 case (1), a 41-year-old male accountant, who lived 30 km south of Huanan Market and had no connection to it—illness onset reported as 8 December—may have become ill with COVID-19 considerably later. . . . This suggests that he may have been infected through community transmission after the virus had begun spreading from Huanan Market. [C]onclusive evidence of a Huanan Market origin from infected wildlife may nonetheless be obtainable through analysis of spatial patterns of early cases and from additional genomic data, including SARS-CoV-2–positive samples from Huanan Market, as well as through integration of additional epidemiologic data. Preventing future pandemics depends on this effort. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454
Per the CCDC 33 of 585 environmental samples taken early Jan. were positive, and 31 of those were concentrated near the live-animal region of the Huanan market. Environmental PCRs aren't magic, they have a finite level-of-detection, RNA viruses don't survive very long in the wild... There's no handwaving and I'm not positing a particular evolutionary history - the sarbecoronaviruses are clearly understudied and we don't have a good survey of what's out there, we just know about a few close relatives. These are known to be highly mosaic viruses! "few relatively simple additions to a known virus" Which additions and which known virus? There are a huge number of random…
mutations between the above mentioned strains and SARS-COV-2, there's no plausible story for lab manipulation here from those strains. ...have you ever worked with viruses before? There are billions of animals in the chinese markets, each a test tube... this is the cauldron of evolution, not a few dinky petri dishes in one lab, man. I'm in love with parsimony, and the history of human disease is the history of zoonosis. If extraordinary claims are going to be made, the burden is on those with the radical new theory to offer up a shred of molecular or epidemiological evidence, not just stories about conspiracies. Recent work re-evaluating timelines has only -strengthened- the case for Huanan market and a possible link to a racoon-dog intermediate. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454
It was received knowledge well before 11/21, I remember well from that morning on NPR [0]. I read that article and the academic paper [1] behind it. There is nothing there other than thin correlation. No evidence to say a single zoonotic exposure occurred, much less many over several months, over that human to human transmission occurred there. Correlation is great for starting an investigation such as Snow’s [2]. After the map Snow established causation and a mechanism, Worobey does nothing. 0. https://www.npr.org/2020/01/29/800725826/why-wet-markets-are... 1. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm4454 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb...
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