Studies link COVID-19 to wildlife sales at Chinese market, find alternative scenarios extremely unlikely
www.sciencedaily.com
Analyses based on locations and viral sequencing of early COVID-19 cases indicate the pandemic started in Huanan market in Wuhan, China, with live animals being sold at the market as the likely source. Genomic studies revealed that the SARS-Cov-2 virus jumped into humans on at two separate occasions.

All up not the worst outcome.

Best outcome would have been that it was already spreading globally (as suggested by wastewater analysis) and China just detected it first.

Next best would be that it was brought into the wet market, but by a person.

Slightly worse is if it jumped from animals at the market, as that vindicates the racists. <— we are here

Worse than that is accidental lab leak of natural virus.

Worse still is accidental lab leak of manufactured virus.

Worst of all is intentional release of manufactured virus.

  • crime [she/her, any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    They determined that the pandemic, which initially involved two subtly distinct lineages of SARS-CoV-2, likely arose from at least two separate infections of humans from animals at the Huanan market in November 2019 and perhaps in December 2019.

    This part still gives me pause without reading the actual paper

    Funding for the research was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

    Yeah I'm gonna wait for China to sign off on this

    • CheGueBeara [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      NIH and NSF are fairly hands-off funders, probably the least problematic funding you can get in the US.

      Doesn't mean the paper is right, though.

      • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        As someone who receives funding from NIH (and possibly NSF too, can’t remember) this is very true. They hardly even care that you actually do the study you told them you were gonna do with their money, as long as it’s vaguely related.

        Which is how research funding should be imo. Just give researchers money.

        • CheGueBeara [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Yep, exactly. They're basically the only "basic X" funders in the country, where X is biology, physics, anthropology, mechanical engineering. And since "basic X" can be just about anything non-applied and has to be flexible, they do the right thing and let researchers wander as necessary.

          • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            In contrast, one time I worked on a project funded by DARPA and it was a pain in the dick. We had to give them progress reports every couple months, they were constantly up our asses, and they constantly changed what they wanted. My PI eventually dropped them because they were a pain and also the ethics of doing research for the military.

            The good news is we discovered absolutely nothing, and wasted a lot of their money to build a table where a rat could basically play the “Simon says” game, which only got used like twice.

            • CheGueBeara [he/him]
              ·
              2 years ago

              :rat-salute:

              Yeah DARPA is the worst and dominates entire fields of engineering. They're always looking for an applied military angle and many people delude themselves into thinking their research could never help the military, but even with the MIC run by bumblefucks they know what they want to get out of these relationships.

              And yeah they're notorious for having multiple on-site visits per year + several intermediate reports. Just to check in, eh?