Wuhan market was epicentre of pandemic’s start, studies suggest

Someone writes up a bunch of tweets Omnicron is a lab leak too: 576 points.

Three studies suggest it originated from the Wuhan markets: 28 points.

Mmm.

This came up recently, and I think it's high relevant to some of the folk posting here:

https://jaydaigle.net/blog/replication-crisis-math/

> A lot of psychology results that don’t replicate look a little different from this perspective. Does standing in a power pose for a few seconds make you feel more confident? Probably! It sure feels like it does (seriously, stand up and give it a try right now); and it would be weird if it made you feel worse.

> Does it affect you enough, for a long enough time, to matter much?

> Probably not. That would also be weird.

Papers like these are uncontroversial, because they are probably right.

If they were all wrong, it would be weird. Surprising. TED talk worthy.

Not impossible... but, probably not.

Note that this is based on studies by Chinese-only researchers in state-backed institutions [1] that has not yet been peer reviewed. Occam's Razor says that the Wuhan Institute of Virology known for studying coronaviruses must have played a part.

[1] https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1370392/v1

My take on Worobey, et al. and Pekar, et al. is that the most significant thing to consider is that two strains of SARS-CoV-2 emerged at the same place in November-December 2019, Lineage A and Lineage B.

Worobey makes strong claims based on geographic data, but I can see weaknesses in that. The genetic evidence for multiple crossovers provides a stronger indication of animal origin.

I lived in Macao, China for 6-plus years, and I have been to wet markets. Isn't this simply a model of spread with other contributing factors to find an origin? The other point is that the Wuhan Huanan Haixian Seafood Market is close enough to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, 26 min. 19.6 km, that I can picture lab personnel stopping by the market to pick up premade lunches, or raw food for cooking later at home. If they had an unnoticed mishap at the lab, and were carrying the COVID virus, this would explain how it took off at the market where many people congregate. The fact that bats and pangolins were not sold there per an Oxford University study, and all of the animals they tested around the WIV and far from it, did not have the SARS-CoV-2 virus, kind of points to a potential modeling error or wrong conclusion. This and the 292 pages finally released by the NIH that are so redacted to be totally useless, certainly raises the stink level. What are they redacting? Hey, if they did nothing wrong they should have nothing to hide, right. I am now a vegetarian, but I used to go to the wet market and choose a live chicken, and have it butchered to bring home. They were pretty messy places, and would by no means pass around here, although you take your chances with street food anywhere, I guess.

I wish people would stop using the word "epicentre" when the appropriate word is "centre". An epicentre is a point on the earth's surface vertically above the centre of an earthquake.

I think writers use the word "epicentre" when they're not sure if the location in question is the centre, or not; it seems to be used to mean "handwavy centre".

I find it very interesting that this in in conflict with the report as described in the book "Viral".

Article:

> They also examined the locations of the positive samples collected in the market, as reported in the WHO study

Book:

> Eventually, when international experts convened by the WHO were granted permission by China to visit Wuhan and arrived in early 2021, they were given a detailed run-down on what had been found in the market. The China-WHO joint report published on 30 March 2021 revealed that the Chinese CDC inspectors had visited the market about thirty times from 1 January before a final clean up on 2 March 2020. In addition to animal products and frozen goods, samples had been taken from doors, stalls, transport carts, trash cans, toilets, sewage, ventilation systems, stray cats and other animal vectors such as mice. Two other nearby markets had also been sampled.

> This China-WHO report revealed a different picture from that given by media reports. The market was called a seafood market for a reason: most of the stalls were selling seafood and freshwater aquatic products. Crocodiles were being sold alive. Snakes and salamanders were being slaughtered on the spot for sale. From sales records in December 2019, just ten stalls were selling meat or products from birds and mammals, including chickens, ducks, geese, pheasants and doves; and deer, badgers, rabbits, bamboo rats, porcupines and hedgehogs. According to the market authorities, all of these animals were from licensed farms and no illegal trade in wildlife was detected.

> The authorities tested 457 samples from 188 animals spanning 18 species. They all proved negative for SARS-CoV-2 genetic material. This included 27 stray cats (a species that is susceptible to the virus), which were presumably living free in or around the market, as well as 52 rabbits and hares, 16 hedgehogs, ten mice, seven dogs, six muntjac deer, six badgers, six bamboo rats, a number of pigs, five chickens, three giant salamanders, two wild boar, two crocodiles, two soft-shelled turtles, two fish, one sheep and one weasel. They tested 616 animals of ten species from the suppliers to the market and found no sign of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material.

> A total of 923 environmental samples were tested, meaning samples from countertops, door handles, toilets, sewage and the like. By mapping the samples that came back positive for virus genetic material to the stalls in the market, the China-WHO team were able to assess what products the vendors at those affected stalls were selling. Of the twenty-one impacted vendors, sixteen were selling ‘cold-chain products’ – delivered and sold in frozen form – out of eighty-seven vendors selling such products whose stalls were sampled; thirteen out of seventy-three selling aquatic products; six out of fifty-six for seafood; eight of thirty-seven for poultry; five of thirty-six for livestock; and two of eight selling vegetables. Only one out of nine vendors selling wildlife products was linked to a positive market environmental sample, and he or she had also been selling cold-chain products, aquatic products, poultry and livestock products.

> Needless to say, this was a vital slug of information to emerge after so many months of speculation worldwide that the wildlife trade was bound to be the culprit. There was, after the back and forth by the Chinese CDC director and a year of waiting, no evidence that the virus had emerged in the Huanan seafood market via the wildlife trade. The epidemiological data, the genetic data and the positive environmental samples from the market were consistent with a scenario in which a sick person brought the virus into the market, where it became amplified in a poorly ventilated and crowded space. On the role of the Huanan seafood market, the China-WHO joint team stated that: ‘No firm conclusion therefore about the role of the Huanan market in the origin of the outbreak, or how the infection was introduced into the market, can currently be drawn.’

This seems to be interesting timing, with the current geopolitical situation, that Nature are now even acknowledging this kind of claim.

I'd recommend people to read Matt Ridley's book before trusting these "studies". https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58647975-viral