5 ms·

Which still doesn’t really draw the line of how an outbreak occurred at the wet market. Also common seasonal illness isn’t exactly a smoking gun

MarkMarine 3y ago
not really typical for healthy researchers in their 30s to end up in the hospital with seasonal illness symptoms though.
- DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
  People go directly to hospitals for primary care in China. It's not the same as the US, where people go to a general practitioner first.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  Perfectly normal for regular, healthy folks to occasionally come down with seasonal flu. Sometimes people get sick, it happens. The issue was that a whole bunch of them did, rapidly, and in non-trivial numbers.
- hwillis 3y ago
  Did they "end up in the hospital" or did they go to the hospital to get a diagnosis? I live in a city, and my PCP is in the local hospital. "seasonal illness symptoms" sounds FAR more like they were just sick and went to the doctor, like anyone else would. For medicine.
  - MarkMarine 3y ago
    I read it was hospitalized, but who knows with this kind of reporting.
  - ipqk 3y ago
    And what exactly does "hospital" mean in China? I know in India a hospital can basically be a small clinic, not unlike an urgent care center in the USA.
    - hwillis 3y ago
      This is a very large, very modern city. I'm very willing to believe they went to real hospitals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#/media/File:Wuhan_Yangtze_River_Bridge_in_2020.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#/media/File:Wuhan_Yangtz...
nomel 3y ago
Outbreaks can only happen in places of high density/congregation, by the nature of the required proximity. It could have been dancing around the perimeter for some time. Maybe my perspective is incorrect, but this seems trivially possible to me. This problem with proximity is why kids didn't go to school.
- hwillis 3y ago
  The wet market was one of the less densely trafficked areas of the city: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/figure/f3/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/figure/... Check out the other figures in that paper. The epicenter was the wet market itself.
  - baja_blast 3y ago
    Here is a thread explaining the flaws in Worobey's paper https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1595653898572042240 https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1595653898572042240
    - hwillis 3y ago
      That's not really relevant. The cases are all still very far away from the WIV, which is itself far from anywhere the thread implicates eg residential areas. I also suspect the thread is just flat wrong- the people most relevant to viral spread are NOT the ones who are only spending part of their day in the city. Its the people who live there and spend all their time there. 2/3rds of the population of Wuhan lives in the urban districts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#Administrative_divisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#Administrative_divisions The people commuting in/out are a small minority. No model is perfect.
    - dekhn 3y ago
      .... written by a geoscientist. There are limits on the ability to transfer knowledge between domains (although this doesn't mean the geoscientist is necessarily wrong, and often even amateurs can find big problems with papers that got through peer review).
graeme 3y ago
The market is extremely close to the lab. Within walking distance
- hwillis 3y ago
  That's the CDC, a totally unrelated building which even then isn't very close to the wet market, which is not a very popular spot in the city. The WIV was many miles outside the city.
mike_hearn 3y ago
Supposedly there was a problem for a long time with researchers selling used lab animals on the street to make a bit of extra cash.
- hwillis 3y ago
  That's ridiculous. The animals are transgenic mice.
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    Labs experiment on all sorts of animals. Serial passage is often done with ferrets for example.
- acdha 3y ago
  “Supposedly”? That kind of claim really needs a level of proof beyond “it would be politically convenient if this were true”.
Vrondi 3y ago
If a single staff person caught a virus, then anyone they interacted with and gave it to went to the market, then that's all it would take.
- hwillis 3y ago
  Incredibly unlikely. There are thousands of locations that are far more trafficked than the wet market: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/figure/f3/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/figure/...

MarkMarine 3y ago

not really typical for healthy researchers in their 30s to end up in the hospital with seasonal illness symptoms though.

DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
People go directly to hospitals for primary care in China. It's not the same as the US, where people go to a general practitioner first.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
Perfectly normal for regular, healthy folks to occasionally come down with seasonal flu. Sometimes people get sick, it happens. The issue was that a whole bunch of them did, rapidly, and in non-trivial numbers.
hwillis 3y ago
Did they "end up in the hospital" or did they go to the hospital to get a diagnosis? I live in a city, and my PCP is in the local hospital. "seasonal illness symptoms" sounds FAR more like they were just sick and went to the doctor, like anyone else would. For medicine.
- MarkMarine 3y ago
  I read it was hospitalized, but who knows with this kind of reporting.
- ipqk 3y ago
  And what exactly does "hospital" mean in China? I know in India a hospital can basically be a small clinic, not unlike an urgent care center in the USA.
  - hwillis 3y ago
    This is a very large, very modern city. I'm very willing to believe they went to real hospitals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#/media/File:Wuhan_Yangtze_River_Bridge_in_2020.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#/media/File:Wuhan_Yangtz...

nomel 3y ago

Outbreaks can only happen in places of high density/congregation, by the nature of the required proximity. It could have been dancing around the perimeter for some time. Maybe my perspective is incorrect, but this seems trivially possible to me. This problem with proximity is why kids didn't go to school.

hwillis 3y ago
The wet market was one of the less densely trafficked areas of the city: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/figure/f3/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/figure/... Check out the other figures in that paper. The epicenter was the wet market itself.
- baja_blast 3y ago
  Here is a thread explaining the flaws in Worobey's paper https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1595653898572042240 https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1595653898572042240
  - hwillis 3y ago
    That's not really relevant. The cases are all still very far away from the WIV, which is itself far from anywhere the thread implicates eg residential areas. I also suspect the thread is just flat wrong- the people most relevant to viral spread are NOT the ones who are only spending part of their day in the city. Its the people who live there and spend all their time there. 2/3rds of the population of Wuhan lives in the urban districts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#Administrative_divisions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan#Administrative_divisions The people commuting in/out are a small minority. No model is perfect.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    .... written by a geoscientist. There are limits on the ability to transfer knowledge between domains (although this doesn't mean the geoscientist is necessarily wrong, and often even amateurs can find big problems with papers that got through peer review).

graeme 3y ago

The market is extremely close to the lab. Within walking distance

hwillis 3y ago
That's the CDC, a totally unrelated building which even then isn't very close to the wet market, which is not a very popular spot in the city. The WIV was many miles outside the city.

mike_hearn 3y ago

Supposedly there was a problem for a long time with researchers selling used lab animals on the street to make a bit of extra cash.

hwillis 3y ago
That's ridiculous. The animals are transgenic mice.
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  Labs experiment on all sorts of animals. Serial passage is often done with ferrets for example.
acdha 3y ago
“Supposedly”? That kind of claim really needs a level of proof beyond “it would be politically convenient if this were true”.

Vrondi 3y ago

If a single staff person caught a virus, then anyone they interacted with and gave it to went to the market, then that's all it would take.

hwillis 3y ago
Incredibly unlikely. There are thousands of locations that are far more trafficked than the wet market: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/figure/f3/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9348750/figure/...