Thread by @Ayjchan

One common #OriginOfCovid misunderstanding is that early Covid-19 cases were linked to market stalls selling wildlife.

There's actually no data to support the claim, and the data provided by the China-@WHO joint study, whether you trust it or not, contradicts the claim.

@WHO Although some cite the China-WHO joint study report in support of the claim above, the report actually contradicts their interpretation:

Page 45: "no clear clustering with one specific part of the market was apparent as cases were widely distributed"
who.int/publications/i…

It's also important to note that even though "most cases were associated with the western side of the market", we're talking about a market the size of more than 9 NFL football fields combined.

You're saying most cases were in 4.5 football fields.

Again, whether you trust the China-WHO joint study data or not, the data doesn't show any correlation between stalls selling wildlife products (blue stripes) and Covid-19 cases (red dots) or positive environment samples (yellow boxes).

So I would say this statement is not substantiated by data:

"that most early symptomatic cases were linked to Huanan Market—specifically to the western section (1) where raccoon dogs were caged (2)—provides strong evidence of a live-animal market origin"

science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Photo of the market to help understand the size of it. Credit: A general view shows the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market, where the first cluster of cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) emerged, in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, January 15, 2021. REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Inside this humungous space, only 7 stalls sold wildlife. Unfortunately, we do not know where these stalls are in the market map and we do not know how many potential intermediate hosts were actually on sale between Oct-Nov 2019 (estimated spillover time).
nature.com/articles/s4159…

The data presented in the study is aggregated across 4 wildlife markets in Wuhan over 2.5 years. But the month by month count of potential intermediate hosts sold at each stall in each market must exist in order to have generated this aggregate analysis. nature.com/articles/s4159…

It is also unclear how many of these mammalian species are capable of transmitting SARS-CoV-2 to human beings. It's not ethical to test animal-to-human transmission.

We know from the first SARS epidemic that civets can transmit SARSrCoV to people. That's about it.

I'm not saying that a natural #OriginOfCovid is off the table. It should still be investigated.

All I'm saying is that the claims about strong evidence for a natural origin are overblown and not substantiated by data, which often does not exist or is inaccessible/not verifiable.

If natural #OriginOfCovid proponents believe the data exists, the onus is on you to advocate for access to:

1. Wildlife sold at Huanan market in fall 2019.

2. Data+samples from supply chain farms.

3. Signs of SARS2-like virus in the wildlife trade other than 3 pangolin CoVs.

The coincidence argument cuts both ways.

What are the odds early cases occur at a market in the most crowded part of Wuhan?

What are the odds SARS2 emerges in the city where a lab is studying its closest relatives with a pipeline for inserting unique features found in SARS2?

We know that food markets, even open air ones with no sale of live animals, are hotspots for Covid-19 clusters.

So the least natural origin proponents should do is find out how many potential intermediate hosts were sold at Huanan market in late 2019.
channelnewsasia.com/singapore/covi…

A June 2020 Covid-19 cluster linked to a Beijing food market led to a wave of people boycotting salmon and sushi just because virus was found on a fish chopping board.
bbc.com/news/world-asi…

We're now seeing Covid-19 clusters at Christmas markets, which are often open air. No, there aren't any wild animals there giving people the virus.
cnbc.com/2021/12/23/ger…

On the other hand, we know SARS2 is damn good at escaping from high biosafety labs, even though the live SARS-related coronavirus work in Wuhan was performed at one of the lowest levels of biosafety (BSL2).

https://twitter.com/Ayjchan/status/1473396452944752646

Lab leak proponents have been advocating endlessly for access to data, records, communications and documents describing the types of viruses collected, animals sampled, experiments conducted in Wuhan prior to the pandemic - some of these data/emails/docs are here in the US.

These questions about what wildlife exactly was sold at the Huanan market in late 2019 and what experiments were being done in Wuhan in the years leading up to the pandemic are answerable.

Data, records, emails, documents for the above exist. Some of it even outside of China.