Thread by @humblesci

Two insightful articles from Jan 2020. 26th @sciencecohen : "The virus came into that marketplace before it came out of that marketplace," Daniel Lucey asserts.

https://twitter.com/BiophysicsFL/status/1524180446640316417

Jan 31st "Ebright tells ScienceInsider that the 2019-nCoV data are "consistent with entry into the human population as either a natural accident or a laboratory accident." science.org/content/articl…

Shortly after, the Lancet letter, Zhou et al., Liu et al. and then the proximal origin paper were poblished and used to shut down objective discussion of origin

Marketplace has issues: no animal testing +ve ever found; it is implusible that the WIV, with specialists in emerging diseases, and focus on SARSr-CoVs would not have tested the market as soon as outbreak was known

Yet in the Jan 27th preprint by Zhou et al. although they state "market was source" there was no discussion of animal testing to prove this

Date of emergence at market Dec or late Nov by Worobey et al. not consistent by modelling of projenitor emerging sept/oct pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34931186/

The dismissal of intermediate A/B lineage by Pekar et al., without having access to the gaw RNA-Seq datasets-so that each sample can be reviewed to asses if there is significant consistency for the 2 key SNV's, and to assess overall data quality-

And then to conclude so strongly that there were 2 zoonotic jumps-seems problematic

The mapping of cases around market by Worobey et al has been pointed out as lacking in geospatial rigour

The Worobey maps are not consistent with spatiotemporal maps by Peng et al., most interesting is the late Dec/E Jan map centred on Wuchang side of the river. If we assume only a percentage of cases used the hotline, say 10%,

We can explain how some cases aroung Huanan market were not included, but if market was epicenter in Dec, how to explain preponderence of cases on E side, then later in Feb a focus on the high density ares near Huanan mkt with large elederly ppln? mdpi.com/2220-9964/9/6/…

Yet the only way that a natural origin can be reasonably explained to have occurred in Wuhan, is from an animal infected with a projenitor virus infecting a human at a market.

Which appears to be why, even though Gao et al. found no evidence for a animal host at the market, with results being consistent with mkt as superspreader location, scientists with a bias against possibility of lab escape are clinging to market as origin

researchsquare.com/article/rs-137…

Within the market itself several early infections appear to have occurred via human to human transmission in enclosed areas, and shared facilities: “not indicative of direct aerosol from a unique source” (ie specific animal vendor)

#OriginOfCovid

zenodo.org/record/6300876

https://twitter.com/danwalker9999/status/1520783651797045248?t=aoSg0XqwCFdEXol9TohoMQ&s=19

Another issue with market: selection bias.
“the use of “negative controls”—is designed to detect both suspected and unsuspected sources of spurious causal inference. “ Lipsitch et al. 2010

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20335814/

Southern corner of the West side of the Huanan Seafood market had highest number of PCR+ve environmental samples – but was also the most heavily sampled (selection bias)

teachepi.org/wp-content/upl…

Where are the environmental analyses of other high traffic areas in Wuhan in late 2019: train stations, busses, supermarkets?

@threadreaderapp compile