>More than half of the earliest Covid-19 cases were connected to the Huanan market, and epidemiologic mapping revealed that the concentration of cases was centered there. In January 2020, Chinese officials cleared the market without testing live animals, but positive environmental samples, including those from an animal cage and a hair-and-feather–removal machine, indicated the presence of both SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-susceptible animals.5 Recently released findings included raccoon dog DNA, pointing to a possible SARS-CoV-2 progenitor.
Not a single positive animal sample at the market, or anywhere else. Not a single one. That raccoon dog "evidence" shows that raccoon dogs were at the market, in the same place where the virus was found. That's all.
Humans brought the virus to the market. It's screamingly obvious and always has been.
Well of course, the racoon dogs et al all come in via human transport.
Testing infrastructure was poor, and maybe it still is. Chinese government interest was not in finding facts, but in taking action to 'solve the problem'. It's hard to find facts when the people with power just want the problem to go away. IMHO, that doesn't weigh in favor of either explaination. The wuhan local government and the chinese national government would have likely taken the same actions regardless of the source, because they're both not very interested in facts.
US health authorities pushing on the market theory are just doing their typical behavior of taking what little information is available and pushing it with no nuance. I enjoyed seeing the cdc stickers telling me not to use a mask out in public areas when the cdc was requiring them; the congitive dissonance was so palpable.
They prioritized healthcare workers to wear masks
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/science/covid-raccoon-dog...
And the behavior of China behind that whole story looks very much like China tried to cover up the existence of susceptible animals at the market.
https://news.yahoo.com/raccoon-dogs-did-not-start-covid-19-n...
I'm not making the argument that the DNA samples indicate that the Raccoon Dogs that the samples were from had SARS-CoV-2. I'm just arguing that previously it had been stated that there were no Raccoon Dogs in the market at all and that has been proven wrong.
Especially the fact that covid was not found in a single animal sample does make the evidence rather weak.
In addition it seems that the lack of sampling from outside the market and the fact that the market is a busy place in the center of the city where the virus would likely be once it's spreading from person to person , does not really lend support to the conclusions in the paper at all.