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Animal sales from Wuhan wet markets immediately prior to the COVID-19 pandemic

Xiao Xiao, Chris Newman, Christina D. Buesching, David W. Macdonald, Zhao-Min Zhou

2021 · Scientific Reports

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From the abstract

AbstractHere we document 47,381 individuals from 38 species, including 31 protected species sold between May 2017 and November 2019 in Wuhan’s markets. We note that no pangolins (or bats) were traded, supporting reformed opinion that pangolins were not likely the spillover host at the source of the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While we caution against the misattribution of COVID-19’s origins, the wild animals on sale in Wuhan suffered poor welfare and hygiene conditions and we detail a range of other zoonotic infections they can potentially vector. Nevertheless, in a precautionary response to COVID-19, China’s Ministries temporarily banned all wildlife trade on 26th Jan 2020 until the COVID-19 pandemic concludes, and permanently banned eating and trading terrestrial wild (non-livestock) animals for food on 24th Feb 2020. These interventions, intended to protect human health, redress previous trading and enforcement inconsistencies, and will have collateral benefits for global biodiversity conservation and animal welfare.

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Original HN comments, with labels from simple text rules. A label describes the whole comment and may miss context or irony. Read the discussion to make up your own mind. About the labels

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credit_guy
Neutral mention · rule
Here's some evidence: if you fart in an elevator, it stinks, but if you fart outdoors, not so much. Viruses, as opposed to farts, don't smell, but otherwise they are similar. If someone coughs outdoors, the aerosols containing the viral particles just spread around and soon their concentration becomes negligible. If someone coughs, or just breathes indoors, the aerosols spread, but if the space is not very large, their concentration will stay elevated, enough to infect other people. With this preamble out of the way, what is the hypothetical scenario where the pandemic starts in the market? Covid does not spread from dead meat, it's an airborne disease. Was there some…
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live bat (or pangolin) that was sneezing in some enclosed space, and some people acquired the virus there? A google search shows links with evidence to the contrary ([1], [2]). Here's and NY Times article [3] that's arguing for the non-lab-leak origin, but you'll notice they are using misdirection (e.g. "dozens of species that can carry pathogens that infect humans" -> ok, this says nothing specific about Covid, but is written to prime the reader to think Covid was among those pathogens). Overall, the simplest explanation is that one lab worker acquired the disease from aerosols in the lab produced by the lab mice infected with the virus. The worker then left the lab and stopped here and there (home too) and left aerosols that some other people inhaled. Whenever it was outdoors, the aerosols did not cause infections, but sometimes when it was indoors, they did. Is it possible that that person went to the market nearby to have lunch or dinner and coughed or sneezed while indoors, and some of the market workers, or co-diners got infected? It does not sound outrageous. You can envision tons of plausible scenarios with an initial lab worker getting infected, but you need to get into contorted scenarios to cook up a theory where some bats from a few thousand kilometers away get transported to Wuhan and fail to infect anyone on their way, then the disease explodes like a bomb in Wohan, and then nobody is able to find evidence of those live bats being sold in that market. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2 [2] https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-co... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/world/wuhan-animal-market... [4]
reilly3000
Neutral mention · rule
Understood, I should have been more clear that it is the largest urban center close to a large and interesting bat population i.e. hundreds of miles away. Certainly that's not the only wet market, and I just discovered a paper claiming that there were no bats actually being sold at that particular market: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2 Coincidentally, my sister lived in Wuhan for 3 years. Prior to 2020, I had to explain its location to people here in the US, but that is no longer the case!
Natsu
Neutral mention · rule
One problem for the wet market theory is that neither bats nor pangolins were sold at that wet market: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91470-2 "Here we document 47,381 individuals from 38 species, including 31 protected species sold between May 2017 and November 2019 in Wuhan’s markets. We note that no pangolins (or bats) were traded, supporting reformed opinion that pangolins were not likely the spillover host at the source of the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic." That doesn't mean there couldn't be a zoonotic explanation, of course, but it does significantly complicate the main alternative to the theory that WIV was doing coronavirus research in humanized mice and that escaped from the lab.

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