"Epicenter" does not mean "origin", by any definition of the word. The epicenter is a statistical thing, in this context, not an origin thing. The epicenter of

"Epicenter" does not mean "origin", by any definition of the word. The epicenter is a statistical thing, in this context, not an origin thing. The epicenter of COVID in the US was New York [1]. The origin of COVID was not New York. This is no different than the epicenter being the wet market, but the origin possibly being somewhere else. "Epicenter: the part of the earth's surface directly above the focus of an earthquake" It's all probability of intercept. Density and frequency are important. Relative-to-a-mall probably isn't super useful, in a city with 11 million. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6946a2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6946a2.htm