- an infected animal at the market transmitted the virus to humans
- an infected human at the market transmitted the virus to humans
> 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.
Note that this doesn't imply the lab-leak hypothesis, as the human in the second case may have contracted the virus from an animal elsewhere.
It is not just a coincidence, but a plausible hypothesis, just like the hypothesis that it is a zoonosis from an exotic animal market.
I think we have to take all possible causes seriously. Act as if it was a zoonosis and act as if it was a lab leak, in order to prevent another pandemic.
(Actually, I think the lab leak is both the more scary and the easier to prevent cause, so no matter what actually happened we should try to shut down this possibility as much as possible in the future.)
Again, if it's zoonotic it's surprising that it would emerge in a city with much less animal trade than somewhere like Guangdong, and in the slow months of that trade.
My point here is assuming zoonotic origin, it isn't a one in a trillion coincidence that Wuhan has a coronavirus lab. It has a coronavirus lab for the same reasons a zoonotic origin appears likely - it is within trading/sampling expedition distance to bat caves and is an urban hub. Perhaps Guangdong still was the more likely candidate for a pandemic emergence, but based on what we know today Wuhan appears to be 1-in-100 betting favourite, plus or minus an order of magnitude.
"(4) (FALSE) Wuhan is a place where SARS transmits from animals into humans frequently. That's why the Wuhan Institute of Virology was built there.
Actually, Wuhan is ~1000km away from SARS spillover zones. Its human population was even used as a negative (no SARS) control group."
1. Wuhan is not known for spillover.
2. Cave visits did happen but this has never been connected to the 3 "sick researchers" reported by US intel.
3. Sure, lab origin, zoonosis, engineering or not, all still on the table, just factually what OP wrote was inaccurate or misleading.
Also, I believe that the first recorded outbreak of SARS was in Guangdong while the origin of the virus was eventually found to be in Yunnan, 1000+km away.
The closest related natural viruses to SARS-CoV2 were not found in Wuhan. They were found in caves in Yunnan, and possibly Laos.
> The same caves three of that lab's researchers went into before becoming hospitalized with a flu-like illness in December of 2019
Again, Yunnan, not Wuhan. The researchers worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Noted, about "nearby", edited.
ETA: parent comment (to their credit!) edited the above to remove the world "nearby" either while I was replying or right after. Still leaving this comment up because it's worth pointing out just how far those caves are from Wuhan.
14^2 * pi * 59 = 36,329 km2
36,329 / 148,326,000 = 0.000245
No to mention that the outbreak is the first known one, not the origin which - if not spread from a lab - is likely somewhere considerably more rural and less likely to attract attention. Took 15 years to trace the probable natural origin of SARS in China (1000km away from the first city outbreak, 1km from a neighbouring village) which wasn't as highly politicised. The subsequent lab-originated local SARS outbreaks were traced to people associated with the labs more easily (though again, they weren't as highly politicised).
Epidemiologists conducted an extensive investigation to trace the origin. The probability of detection is not higher in the city. So I'm afraid that's incorrect. You're not making any sense here. You're disputing both the lab leak theory and the wet market theory? You're just shifting the goalposts to fit your argument.
Of course a novel coronavirus - especially one that does not produce severe or unusual symptoms in most infected people - is more likely to be identified when it becomes established in a city where it spreads quickly to many people with access to good healthcare, not a rural area where there are fewer people and more basic healthcare which infected people are less likely to use. This is why the outbreak of the original SARS novel coronavirus was identified in an urban area 1000 miles from the suspected zoonotic source of the virus, not in the neighbouring village whose unidentified inhabitants (or animal produce) most likely transmitted it to the city. It is not me "shifting the goalposts" that you continue to pretend I didn't point that out in my first post.
> "About 90% of the earth’s people live on only 10% of the land."
And let's assume that all of those 59 labs are in that 10% as well.
I'm sure it's actually smaller than that - since not all of that 10% of the land has enough density to be the epicenter of an outbreak, but... let's roll with that 10%
That'd put you off by a factor of 10.
14^2 * pi * 59 = 36,329 km2 148,326,000 * 10% = 14,832,600
36,329 / 14,832,600 = 0.00245 aka 0.2%
On top of that there have been multiple tries at this - in recent memory we've seen SARS classic, Covid-19, MERS-CoV, and Swine Flu. That's four chances at a target at least as big as 0.2%.
My probabilities are rusty, but I believe that's 99.8% * 99.8% * 99.8% * 99.8% = 99.2% chance of none of those appearing near a lab or an 0.8% chance it was near a lab. If we take that into account, it starts to seem a bit more likely that we'd see something like this...
And let's not even touch the > 1300 BLS3 labs that are out there.
Do you not find it absurd in the extreme that the novel Coronavirus lab a few km from the outbreak of a novel coronavirus was barred from investigation?
Is it not a giant raging blinking neon clue that when Australia wanted an investigation China threatened them with economic apocalypse?
And in this context, you think a .8% chance that it would appear near a lab is high enough to discount the possibility??? My head is exploding.
I wasn’t trying to prove a point, I was trying to dis-prove a point: that you can’t prove the lab leaks based on geography alone. 0.02% chance is VERY unlikely - it’s not proof but it sure does suggest. A 0.2% chance or a 0.8% chance is… well it’s still rare, but not shockingly rare. Again I suspect the geographic odds are even higher, if you properly correlate outbreak-size population density and labs. Bsl3 labs brings the odds closer to 5% (or 19% if you count the four other novel disease incidents and I’m doing my probability math right).
Again, none of this disproves a lab leak. But it sure does tell us that we can’t prove it with geography, as the post I was responding to suggested.