Thread by @Engineer2The

1/🧵on the earliest market cases and an exploration into where the market outbreak began. First, a summary of the situation highlighted in purple as of Dec 13, 2019. #RacoonDogGate

2/ 65M - His HSM stall (19-23 12th st, 20-24 11th st) sells frozen dumping, and he also owns stalls at Baishazhou. He is retired, but may do deliveries, is a visitor, and stall owner. Depending which source you use, he does them all (visitor, owner, delivery).

3/ He's also referenced in WHO report, table 7 pg 76 with onset Dec 13, 2019. However, his main activity at the HSM is socializing and playing mahjong. This puts him in his stall visiting staff on occasion, but mostly in the mahjong room on 5th street near the toilets.

4/ 49M - His stall (5-7 7sth st, 6-8 6th st) sells dry goods and condiments, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar. His onset is Dec 12, 2019 and he plays mahjong. His wife and brother also work in the stall, while 78M stepfather stays home.

nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

5/ 57F - Her stall (14 2nd street) sells fresh shrimp, primarily to hotels. Her onset is Dec 10-11 depending on source. She doesn't play mahjong according to her interview with thepaper.

thepaper.cn/newsDetail_for…

6/ 57F is a clinically diagnosed patient. She elected to stay at Union hospital and never went to Jinyintan. It's obvious she's positive. After she visited Zhongsheng clinic for injections, 2 doctors and 2 nurses became sick and they shut the doors.

wsj.com/articles/how-i…

7/ 44M doesn't have a stall and is transportation staff. His calculated onset is Dec 12, 2019.

He might be responsible for driving shrimp product ordered by 69M from 57F stall, but further proof is needed.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

8/ 69M doesn't have a stall. He lives in Wuhan near the market, and places seafood orders for a hotel in Jingzhou. A separate delivery person delivers the product after he places the order.

9/ A market caretaker residing in East market dormitories for a long time was interviewed about the situation of the first 27 market patients. The English subtitles are telling, although you should substitute mahjong for cards in this case.

10/ The mahjong room was first described by Peter Hessler. With the description being near the toilets, one of the greatest searches in #OriginsOfCovid19 began by searching for a picture of the toilet - in order to locate the mahjong room.

newyorker.com/magazine/2020/…

11/ After more than 4 months of searching videos and pictures, we found the toilet. Phew, what a relief! We were so happy to finally find the toilet!

The pic was revealed in Peter Daszak's WHO slide deck contained in Katherine Eban's Vanity Fair piece.

vanityfair.com/news/2022/03/t…

12/ The picture in Peter Daszak's WHO slide deck matches Peter Hessler's "Nine Days In Wuhan" description. Thank you Peter and Peter!

Surprisingly, the mahjong room is located near the wild game area hot spot mentioned in the #RaccoonDogGate paper.

13/ But there's more!

Even the HSM market epicenter authors know about the mahjong room.

14/ Back to the first post of patient suspects. What does a Raccoon dog having in common with stalls selling fresh shrimp, seasonings and frozen dumplings? Nothing.

15/ 65M and 49M both play mahjong. It's possible the seafood buyer for hotel 69M and transportation staff 44M both interact with shrimp vendor 57F to deliver seafood to that hotel. After all, 57F specializes in sales to hotels. 57F doesn't play mahjong though.

16/ Speculation of the outsiders.
44M (possibly transportation of seafood to hotel) and 69M( places the order for hotel) most likely interact with 57F shrimp vendor(who sells to hotel).
The interviews of those at the market suspect the mahjong infections came from outsiders.

17/ I didn't post the other citations for mahjong super spreader outbreak at the market, although there are many. I don't believe the #RaccoonDogGate story.

There might be a zoonosis elsewhere, it's just not at the HSM. We need to stop wasting time on the HSM.

18/ There is more coming on this topic in a #MahjongMarketOrigins paper. It just needs to move to the top of the priority list.

19/ In the Gao preprint, they show 3 stalls with live virus isolate. 57F is one of the stalls, but she was at Union hospital by Dec 16, 2019. Sampling was much later in Jan. This is easily explained as she infected neighboring stalls and her family.
thepaper.cn/newsDetail_for…