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We do know that they were studying coronavirus in Wuhan so it is possible that somebody could have been exposed to it in Wuhan's biolab. And, my understanding i
by lhnz 6y ago
We do know that they were studying coronavirus in Wuhan so it is possible that somebody could have been exposed to it in Wuhan's biolab. And, my understanding is that it hasn't been ruled out.
I also disagree that people that had read his blog and that article in particular didn't see them as connected. I had read that article earlier in the year, and I remember being surprised that the UK lockdown hadn't happened earlier since in 2019 he appeared to understand the dangers.
- azernik 6y agoWe have quite a lot of evidence for: * recent zoonotic origin (closely related to bat coronavirus samples, with likely pangolin recombination - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0092_article https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0092_article) * initial spread at an open-air market Whereas our evidence for spread from Wuhan is mostly wild speculation about research on the same very broad family of viruses.
- lhnz 6y agoThe article quoted says: "Although the Wuhan market was initially suspected to be the epicenter of the epidemic, the immediate source remains elusive. The close relatedness among SARS-CoV-2 strains suggested that the Wuhan outbreak probably originated from a point source with subsequent human-to-human transmission, in contrast to the polyphyletic origin of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (14). If the Wuhan market was the source, a possibility is that bats carrying the parental SARSr-BatCoVs were mixed in the market, enabling virus recombination. However, no animal samples from the market were reported to be positive. Moreover, the first identified case-patient and other early case-patients had not visited the market (15), suggesting the possibility of an alternative source." And there are people online that read it very differently from you (https://twitter.com/toad_spotted/status/1263536558482866176 https://twitter.com/toad_spotted/status/1263536558482866176).