3 ms·

We have quite a lot of evidence for: * recent zoonotic origin (closely related to bat coronavirus samples, with likely pangolin recombination - https://wwwnc.c

We 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 ago
The 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).