Thread by @amymaxmen

I read this 320-page investigation into COVID origins so you don't have to!

The undercurrent here is that the market-origin hypothesis is back.

The flashpoint is that even @DrTedros isn't happy that his team didn't have more access to the Wuhan lab.
nature.com/articles/d4158…

The team dug deep into data to figure out when the outbreak started spreading in earnest: Conclusion is December 2019.

They spent a lot of time on data from the Huanan market, finding that people w/Covid had visited the same stalls where positive samples were found.

They also went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology & asked a ton of questions. The list of rumors they confronted there are listed in the Appendix. eg

Still, this was a government sanctioned visit. While @MMKavanagh doesn't have reason to believe SARS2 came from a lab, he told me: "This is an authoritarian regime that closely holds information. The WHO has gotten a remarkably good look at some data but it can only get so far."

.@edwardcholmes told me it's (a) naive to think that a 2-wk visit to China will reveal the origin & (b) naive to think that any investigation they did would satisfy those saying this is a lab-leak.

"Bloody hell, this will go on for years." (A darling quote cut from my story)

Most remarkably, @DrTedros @WHO isn't completely satisfied with the origin investigation. "In my discussions with the team, they expressed the difficulties they encountered in accessing raw data...I do not believe that this assessment [into Wuhan Institute] was extensive enough."

This is NOT the final investigation. Far from it. More on this & other findings in my piece, which is wayyy shorter than the report. Please read it :) nature.com/articles/d4158…