Thread by @Ayjchan

Listened to a podcast where a disease ecologist said the words "jump" & "spillover" don't accurately describe the way animal pathogens emerge in humans.

I agree. To me, it's like a shots on goal scenario where a pathogen has to take numerous opportunities to cause an outbreak.

This is why I was perturbed by the abrupt appearance of a pandemic-ready SARS-like virus in a city with no history of SARS-like viruses in its people or markets.

Instead it had a unique lab studying how SARS-like viruses jump between species & infect humanized mice & civets.

With world-leading SARS virus hunters based in Wuhan, you'd think that they would know if SARS-like viruses were taking shots on goal in their city center.

Instead they used their own city's population as a negative control for exposure to SARS-like viruses. Zero shots on goal.

The Wuhan market sold animals that might have carried the virus from South China/SE Asia. But did the virus only have opportunities to take shots on goal in Wuhan and no other city anywhere else in China or SE Asia?

Why did it cause an outbreak in Wuhan and nowhere else?

And why, of all times, did the virus emerge in Wuhan ~2 years after the lab there created & tested recombinant SARS-like viruses at low biosafety + proposed to put gain-of-function features into undefined SARS-like viruses in their collection?

In other words, many shots on goal.

Both market and research-related #OriginOfCovid hypotheses are plausible.

Based on each person's priors, one might perceive that there are more shots on goal at either the market or the lab.

My assessment is that there are more on the side of the lab than the market in Wuhan.