Thread by @PhilippMarkolin

🚨🚨🚨 NEW EVIDENCE #zoonosis
Chinese researchers (who have had troubles getting data out) finally managed to sneak upload full #sequencing data from environmental swaps at Huanan market.

Show: Co-occurance of #animal sequences with SARS-CoV-2 RNA

Added to the evidence map 🔽

@KatherineJWu 's atlantic article first reported on this new development.

(independent reseachers have been waiting on these data to come out for over a year)

I will give some context in the next few tweets:
theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

1⃣ Does this prove that SARS-CoV-2 came from racoon dogs?

Not definitively. Co-occurance of sequences could be from chance contamination in theory. Also, even if racoon dogs were indeed infected, they might just have been amplifiers at market, not the original source.

BUT...

what this proves is that racoon dogs WERE at the market, something Chinese authorities have denied repeatedly. This was already clear from Xiao X et al. paper & fotographic evidence. Now genetic too.

There is no more denying. 3 lines of evidence they lied to cover up #wildlife.

2⃣ What does this mean for finding the true origin?

This should finally open up new avenues of investigations into supply chains. Where where the racoon dogs sourced from? Can the virus be traced to a fur farm? This should have happened years ago, as e.g @c_drosten said in 2021

3⃣ What does this mean for the #lableak hypothesis?

Not much. The lableak hypothesis was already implausible and inconsistent with evidence, i.e scientifically dead.

The lableak #conspiracy myth will remain alive and well
No new evidence will chance that
protagonistfuture.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-tw…

Here is a science article with a few more details about the recent environmental swap sequencing data.
science.org/content/articl…

PS: Don't mention it. I realized 😱