source for highlighted study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0300891620974755?journalCode=tmja

China also claims to have found a perfect match of the Wuhan strain in Italy predating the first case in Wuhan. I couldn't dig up the exact study so i didn't screenshot it here, but here's a link anyway for completeness.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3113444/coronavirus-italian-scientists-find-perfect-match-wuhan-strain

Even without that though, it's looking pretty likely that COVID-19 actually originated in italy.

edit: found the new study!

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33292923/

We describe the earliest evidence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in a patient in Italy, ≈3 months before Italy’s first reported COVID-19 case. These findings, in agreement with other evidence of early COVID-19 spread in Europe, advance the beginning of the outbreak to late autumn 2019

    • cilantrofellow [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      It’s anti-science to declare something scientists have said to be inviolably true. It’s a process not an institution.

    • mittens [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      meanwhile the covid19 subreddit just rolled with the possibility that it might've originated elsewhere. though admittedly, it was because it supported the iceberg theory which is now bunk (though it was a nice theory to be invested in)

    • lvysaur [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      probably originated in Southeast Asia. It explains the dearth of deaths, plus that region has the highest bat diversity.

      If it actually originated in wiggaland then I feel like westerners wouldn't be dropping dead by the bucketful