- cross-posted to:
- bbc@rss.ponder.cat
- cross-posted to:
- bbc@rss.ponder.cat
A team of scientists say it is “beyond reasonable doubt” the Covid pandemic started with infected animals sold at a market, rather than a laboratory leak.
They were analysing hundreds of samples collected from Wuhan, China, in January 2020.
The results identify a shortlist of animals – including racoon dogs, civets and bamboo rats – as potential sources of the pandemic.
Despite even highlighting one market stall as a hotspot of both animals and coronavirus, the study cannot provide definitive proof.
The samples were collected by Chinese officials in the early stages of Covid and are one of the most scientifically valuable sources of information on the origins of the pandemic.
…
Their analysis was published last year and the raw data made available to other scientists. Now a team in the US and France says they have performed even more advanced genetic analyses to peer deeper into Covid’s early days.
The prior paragraph is also important
Left on its own this implies that the lab is the source. However, the next paragraph counters that view. It erroneously implies the local area is full of bats and their species hopping coronaviruses. Not even “China’s Bat Woman” thinks that is likely:-
“I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir.