Scientists hone argument that coronavirus came from Wuhan market
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Also fails to note that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China became sick with a flu-like illness and sought hospital care in November 2019.
> The researchers scoured data about the earliest patients, many of whom had direct links to the market or lived nearby. The geography of early community spread showed infections radiating outward from the vicinity of the market, Worobey said: “It’s an insane bull’s eye.”
> Moreover, when the market was first identified as the site of a cluster of cases, Chinese investigators took environmental samples searching for traces of the virus. A disproportionate number of positive virus traces came from the section of the market where live animals had been sold, the new study reports.
> “The virus started spreading in people who worked at the market, but then started spreading in the surrounding local community as vendors went to local shops, and infected people who worked in those shops,” Worobey suggested.
> He believes any alternative scenario — such as a lab leak — is implausible.
> “It now puts us at a point where we know that the Huanan market was the epicenter of this pandemic. That much is now established. If others want to argue with that, they’re now essentially taking a pseudoscientific approach,” Worobey said in an interview Tuesday. “Even though you don’t have the smoking gun of, ‘Yes we’ve sampled the raccoon dog with the virus in December,’ when you put it all together, it’s the only theory that actually explains all the data.”
> Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan and co-author of one of the new papers, said in an email that she agreed with Worobey: “There is no alternative explanation that fits the facts, so anyone trying to come up with one will have to become adept at willful ignorance, a logical contortionist, or simply a fabulist.”