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Science

Scientists Again Link Covid Pandemic Origin to Wuhan Market Animals (msn.com) 40

Posted by EditorDavid from the following-the-science dept.
The Washington Post reports: An international team of scientists published a peer-reviewed paper Thursday saying genetic evidence indicates the coronavirus pandemic most likely originated with a natural spillover from an animal or animals sold in a market in Wuhan, China, where many of the first human cases of covid-19 were identified. The paper, which appears in the journal Cell, does not claim to prove conclusively that the pandemic began in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, and it is unlikely to end the acrimonious and politicized debate over the coronavirus's origin... "The results we see are consistent with infected animals, but we cannot prove that they were," said Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and a co-author of the new paper...

Many of the 23 authors of the paper are known to have long supported a market origin for the virus. In an informal report in March 2023, they presented a central feature of the genetic data — the confirmation that animals potentially capable of triggering a pandemic were in the market... The new paper in Cell is longer, more comprehensive, probes a broader range of questions, and includes more data from the market and early-patient cases than the international team's informal 2023 report, Débarre said. Both the earlier and the new reports document that traces of the virus were found clustered in a section of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market where genetic traces of animals were also found. Several of those species — raccoon dogs, rabbits and dogs — are known to be susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid. Raccoon dogs have also been shown experimentally to be capable of transmitting the virus. A significant element of the new paper is an analysis of when the pandemic began. Scientists can study mutations of the coronavirus, which evolves at a relatively steady rate, to estimate when the millions of genomes deposited in databases had the most recent common ancestor. That genetic evidence points to mid-November 2019 as the most likely time the virus spilled into humans and began spreading, and there could have been two or more spillover events, the researchers said.

"The timing of the origin of the market outbreak is genetically indistinguishable from the timing of the origin of the pandemic as a whole," the report states. There are many independent lines of evidence pointing to the market as the epicenter of the pandemic, said Kristian Andersen, an infectious-disease researcher at Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif., and a co-author of the report in Cell. No previous virus spillover has been so well-documented, he said. "Of any previous outbreak, pandemic, you name it, we don't have this level of granularity," he said. "We can narrow it down to a single market, and narrow it down to a section in that market, and maybe even narrow it down to a single stall in that market. That is mind-boggling...." The genetic evidence, the new report contends, supports the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in the same way that SARS-CoV-1 — which sickened people in 2002-2003 but was extinguished before it could cause a full-blown pandemic — is widely believed to have started, from animals sold in a market.

The authors contend the world needs to take more aggressive action to shut down the illegal trade in wildlife to lower the risk of another catastrophic pandemic... There is no evidence that the virus, or its progenitor, was inside a laboratory before the outbreak.... "To the question — Did it come from a lab or come from a market? — I think we already knew the answer to that," Andersen said. "Yep, it's the market. It's natural, as we've previously seen happen."
One co-author posted a summary on X.com "If you don't want to read the papers."
  • "Early cases centered around the market (not a lab)"
  • "Environmental swabs that tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 clustered in the corner of the market where animals were sold."
  • "There were 2 lineages of SARS2 that spilled over separately at Huanan."

Scientists Again Link Covid Pandemic Origin to Wuhan Market Animals More | Reply

Scientists Again Link Covid Pandemic Origin to Wuhan Market Animals

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  • Let's see what the experts have to say about this.

  • What I really get a kick of, though, are the commenters on slashdot and elsewhere saying "CCP virus" etc. in support of lab leak, but also denying that the US had any part in the research. It's a weird take that kind of glows since right wingers who care about covid's baclground would be familiar with the NSAID part of the story.

    • The latest strain of Covid seems to be making the rounds lately, so this is just like how twice a year we get a daylight saving time story. By this point though, the real answer to "where'd Covid come from?" is "that person who coughed on you."

      • Hey. Only way to be sure you don't catch covid at that big rager is to be the one who spreads it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        The thing that gave COVID-19 legs is that it initially evades the innate immune system which is actually responsible for many of the symptoms like fevers and coughs we associate with a respiratory infection. That means you're out and about feeling fine, and infecting people because you're talking to them or just breathing in their direction.

  • Sure, it'd be nice to nail down details of the previous scary time for everybody, but what about catching the next one earlier? Or stopping anything else scary before it can impact us all?

    I don't trust other people to do what is best for everyone else (isolate and report problems). Especially when their own lives are impacted. And I don't think our society helps them be good people either (with universal healthcare, or general paid vacation/sick time access).

    How do we minimally bother people, but still n

    • > what about catching the next one earlier? Or stopping anything else scary before it can impact us all?

      If the epicenter is China... good luck. They're far more interested in cover-ups than prevention.

      Even authoritarian regimes have limits to their power, and apparently locking the sick in their apartments during an outbreak is one thing, but taking away their wet markets and other unsafe food habits is another.

  • And how much is he paying to promote conspiracy theories aligned with his interests?

  • An exotic animal bazaar with zero hygiene control; a bioweapons lab in an authoritarian state with zero accountability; in the same area, possibly one supplying the other with regular cross-contamination. There's no way anyone is going to untangle that.
  • They can say it originated at the market, but it seems to me that whoever captured and transported the animal would probably have been infected even earlier. Although the marketplace may have exposed more people.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Well, maybe. We can't rule that out, nor can we rule out a lot of other things.

      The question being addressed here is, I think, what is the link between the place where we know the virus must have originated and the first identified outbreak at a wet market 1500 kilometers from the nearest bat cave? It's not unreasonable to focus on the bush meat trade, since that's what the market specialized in. Whether the pathogen actually arrived at that market in an animal or a person like a truck driver is a questio

  • Of course, the first _reported_ cases came from a high-traffic area.
  • The article is pretty clear that the animals in question are also easily infected by coronavirus. That animals at the market are infected early on, just like humans at the market are infected early on, does not mean the nearby lab doing coronavirus gain of function research on animals is not involved. A leak from the lab, human or animal, may have gone to the market and infected both animals and people.

    An initial cluster shows where patient zero (human or animal) first came into contact with a large popu
  • If they think it was spread from Nov 2019 in Wuhan, they should probably have checked the flights from SFO to Seattle in October when I first got it. I can still remember not being able to stop coughing unless I had a cough drop in my mouth and I was burning up on that flight. I know it was the same covid-19 because I have gotten that same virus and it temporarily damages my kidneys each time. I get magnesium and calcium reabsorption issues each time that drop my energy levels significantly, call it long h
  • I mean, unless they somehow discovered incontrovertible evidence that it was a Chinese government operation to deliberately start a pandemic, or something else equally outlandish, does it really matter anymore where the gods-be-damned virus came from? It's not even a pandemic anymore, it's endemic, we're stuck with it, probably for as long as our species exists.
    Managing outbreaks of it, and continual development of a better vaccine against it should be the primary focus, that and dispelling all the disinfo

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