WHO chief inspector says 'likely' patient zero was Wuhan lab researcher

There's quite some spin on this and what he said. The article quotes him as actually saying:

"An employee who was infected in the field by taking samples falls under one of the probable hypotheses. This is where the virus jumps directly from a bat to a human. In that case, it would then be a laboratory worker instead of a random villager or other person who has regular contact with bats. So it is actually in the likely category."

What is likely is that the virus jumped from bats to humans 'in the field', i.e. in nature. This is what happened with SARS and MERS to the best of our knowledge.

Considering that China has made a lot of efforts since SARS to trace SARS itself and other potential virii from bats in the wild, this is indeed a possibility that the human who caught the virus first from a bat might have been a researcher. But the 'likely category' is the set of all people who had contacts with bats in the wild and I don't interpret his comment as suggesting that a researcher is more likely than a villager or someone else.

Taiwannews being taiwan news. Original interview is not saying patient zero was likely a Wuhan lab researcher but zoonotic transmission was a likely origin category of which a hypothetical infection from employee taking field samples would fall under. He is citing an example not making a claim.

> Embarek explained that he believes that infection of a laboratory employee by a bat would be *an example* of direct zoonotic transmission, and is therefore probable:

...

>am concluded that direct zoonotic transmission to humans was "possible to likely," while introduction through an intermediate host was "likely to very likely," and introduction through the cold food chain was "possible," but introduction through a laboratory incident was "extremely unlikely."

...

>"An employee who was infected in the field by taking samples falls under one of the probable hypotheses. This is where the virus jumps directly from a bat to a human. In that case, it would then be a laboratory worker instead of a random villager or other person who has regular contact with bats. So it is actually in the likely category."

Randy Marsh fucking a bat is an example of direct zoonotic transmission, which would fall in the likely category according to WHO.

The WHO lost all credibility when they cow towed to China about human-to-human transmission when Taiwan was screaming that they found evidence of such transmission.

The US has played a part here. We used to fund the WHO better. Seems they have found Chinese benefactors.