4 ms·
I feel like Unherd's article is actually misstating things. For example, "no infected animal on sale in the market or elsewhere in China has been found..." In
by MilnerRoute 4y ago
I feel like Unherd's article is actually misstating things. For example, "no infected animal on sale in the market or elsewhere in China has been found..." In fact, Bloomberg reported:
"Disease detectives arriving from Beijing on the first day of 2020 ordered environmental samples to be collected from drains and other surfaces at the market. Some 585 specimens were tested, of which 33 turned out to be positive for SARS-CoV-2... All but two of the positive specimens came from a cavernous and poorly-ventilated section of the market's western wing, where many shops sold animals."
The Unherd article also claims: "There is no evidence of exposure to SARS-like viruses among Wuhan market traders prior to the Covid outbreak." But CNN reported:
Research helped [Michael] Worobey come up with a map of the earliest cases that clusters them all around the market. "That so many of the more than 100 COVID-19 cases from December with no identified epidemiologic link to Huanan Market nonetheless lived in its direct vicinity is notable and provides compelling evidence that community transmission started at the market," he wrote.... "The virus didn't come from some other part of Wuhan and then get to Huanan market. The evidence speaks really quite strongly to the virus starting at the market and then leaking into the neighborhoods around the market.... So many of the early cases were tied to this one Home Depot-sized building in a city of 11 million people, when there are thousands of other places where it would be more likely for early cases to be linked to if the virus had not started there.""
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/health/covid-origins-market-theory/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/health/covid-origins-market-t...
Interestingly Worobey actually signed a letter demanding the lab leak theory be investigated. But he now believes there's -- in his words -- "a big red flashing arrow pointing at Huanan Market as the most likely place the pandemic started."
- dekhn 4y agoThe unherd article just advertising for the author's book. This is a cry for attention.
- mikeyouse 4y agoYep. Ridley and Chan wrote their book when the lab leak idea was vaguely more plausible, but even then it really overstated the evidence. It's aged very poorly.
- Symmetry 4y agoI don't think anybody doubts that the first superspreader event happened at the Hunan market. The question is whether the first human/animal crossover happened there. With a high k disease like Covid-19 you might very well have a chain of transmission many links long before it starts going exponential as in, for example, what contact tracers uncovered about how the virus first got into France.
- mikeyouse 4y agoUnfortunately, tons of people dispute it still. There's prominent people insisting Covid was in Italy in mid 2019 among other ridiculous things. Unfortunately they're common travelers with the more intellectually honest lab leak folks so it's hard to separate them.
- kaitaincps 4y agoThey seem to me to be a totally separate group. They’re more fellow travellers with the “Bill Gates’s Plandemic” crowd.
- eduction 4y agoThese are simply not contradictions. To restate what you’ve posted: -Unherd says no infected animal has been found on sale in China. vs. -Disease detectives found Covid positive environmental samples at the animal market ———— -Unherd says no market traders were found to have been exposed to Covid Vs -A researcher found 100 Covid cases from the same month in the vicinity of the market. ———- Animals vs environmental samples. Infected animal traders vs infected people living near the market. It’s apples and oranges and does not support the claim that the Unherd piece misstated the things you quoted.
- mrjin 4y agoHmmm, Bloomberg... Can anyone comment on what that tiny chip could be in the following article? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...