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

  • 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