The previous mainstream narrative of "anything outside of a zoonosis is a conspiracy theory" was built upon two letters (not articles), among most cited papers of the year. Even Dr. Shi used them. They are both sinking now.
1/ The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2
The corresponding author is self-debunking, and a co-author was de-facto retracting
2/ Lancet's letter (or Daszak's letter)
It did not fare any better. It was proved orchestrated by @PeterDaszak and, AFAIK, at least three co-authors de-facto retracted publicly declaring that the question of the origin was open
Bonus. Thanks to @USRightToKnow
"I think it's very important that we do so strongly and in plain language ("consistent with" [natural evolution] is a favorite of mine when talking to scientists, but not when talking to the public - especially conspiracy theorists)"
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They finally concede after more than a year: "Here, we report the identification of a novel lineage of SARSr-CoVs, including RaTG15 and seven other viruses, from bats at the same location where we found RaTG13 in 2015"
No mention to the miners or the mine. Just this: "in Tongguan town, Mojiang county, Yunnan province in China in 2015, the same location where we found bat
RaTG13 in 2013"
1/ MSc thesis of Wang, 2nd co-author of the article of the first 4 trips to the mine (Ge et al., 2016), and dated 2 years before this article and can be considered as some of the first steps of this research
She states that "fever patient sera were obtained from a hospital in Yunnan Province". Very vague description! But later, in the Fig 2.6 there is an important clue: samples are named as "MJ123", using one of WIV standard naming formats...
[Thread] In-silico molecular overclocking of RaTG13.
TLDR: 191-nt RdRp segments of SARS-CoV-2, RaTG13 and Ra7896 show an unexpected molecular clock behavior. In-silico synonym mutations is one probable explanation.
Assuming SARS-CoV-2 is an ancestor of Ra7896 (used in RaTG13) does not fully explain it. Implied evolutionary rate would be in the order of 10^-2 substitutions/site/year in a well-conserved part of the genome, far from a normal ~10^-3 for a complete genome
So, it is not only SARS-CoV-2 having its molecular clock frozen, but also RaTG13 molecular clock running more than expected. @nerdhaspower and @quay_dr have already noted strange patterns of synonym mutations along the genome of RaTG13
[Thread of threads] #originsofSARSCoV2#DRASTIC
Compilation of relevant findings. Live thread.
Let's start with the Addendum and the 7896 clade recently confirmed to come from the Mojiang mineshaft