University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey.
A prominent Arizona scientist's assertion that a wet market in China is the likely ground zero of the COVID-19 epidemic has renewed a long-running international debate.
The lab leak that was shown to be the origin of the Pandemic is almost off the table, according to research published in the journal Science. He believes it happened after a jump from animal to human.
A female seafood vendor at the Huanan wet market near Wuhan is the earliest known case of COVID-19, according to an investigation conducted over several months with the help of translators. He found that the first known COVID-19 case was not the 41-year-old accountant from Wuhan.
The origins of the virus that causes COVID-19 in humans has been a source of controversy. The officials pointed to the animals at the market, but there was another hypothesis that the virus had existed inside a Chinese research lab and then released accidentally or intentionally.
Scientists, including the one at Worobey, have called for a more transparent investigation, saying that understanding the origin of the Pandemic is the key to avoiding future outbreaks.
The new research found that Chinese disease surveillance did not identify an earlier case that provided strong evidence of a live- animal market origin of the Pandemic.
One of the 18 scientists who signed an open letter published in the journal Science called for a transparent, data-driven investigation into the origins of COVID.
The scientists wrote that knowing how COVID-19 emerged is important for telling global strategies to reduce the risk of future outbreaks.
In an interview with The Arizona Republic this week, he said that he was very seriously considering the lab leak idea. Everything points to a wet market origin, as I followed the evidence.
Since the article was published, there has been a flurry of media attention and social media discussions about how the SARS-CoV-2 virus was transmitted.
Some of the reaction has been critical, and skeptics of the theory have called for further investigation.
There is ongoing research into the origins of the Pandemic.
He said that he was working on additional analyses.
Few have been as rigorous in challenging all possibilities as Michael. There is more reason to read his new perspective and this thread.
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Stephen Goldstein is on November 19, 2021.
It's not likely that the seafood vendor was patient zero.
The history of the HIV/AIDS outbreak has been researched and found to include compelling evidence that community transmission started at the Huanan market near Wuhan.
There was no feedback on the article that was substantial, despite the hand-wringing on the social networking site. I think it's pointing to this particular market as the likely site of the origin.
The female seafood vendor, who was identified in the paper, became ill on December 10 and was likely exposed to respiratory transmission from an animal host. His original article was published in December.
The seafood vendor got sick on Dec 10, not 11. This will be fixed in the print version of the paper. I pinned this down after the early release version was posted.
Guixian is the first known case of COVID-19 in a human, but her research does not confirm that she was patient zero of the epidemic.
She may have been among the very first cases of novel coronaviruses, since only a small percentage of those with the novel coronaviruses end up in the hospital.
The article states that the index case could have been any of hundreds of workers who had brief contact with live mammals.
There was a discrepancy about the timing of the most well-known COVID-19 case outlined in a joint report by China and the World Health Organization.
The 41-year-old with no connection to the wet market was interviewed and it was found that his symptoms didn't set in until December 16. The man's dental problem was related to baby teeth that were retained into adulthood.
"This is supported by hospital records and a scientific paper," he wrote. The virus had begun to spread from Huanan Market and this indicates that he was exposed to community transmission.
A dog could have transmitted the disease.
raccoon dogs are the top choice because they can transmit the novel coronaviruses very efficiently and they were sold at a wet market.
A journal article in Parasitology Research from the University of Veterinary states that the concern for scientists studying zoonotic diseases is caused by the fact that the same family of dogs and other canines as the raccoon dogs are also concerned.
Scientists studying zoonotic diseases are concerned about the Raccoon dogs.
The coronaviruses are highly susceptible to Raccoon dogs and may have been an intermediate source of the outbreak in 2004. It is believed that history may have repeated itself with the new disease.
The transmission of an animal to a human is more complex than being an example of human fostering zoonotic disease.
He said that the government might have played a role in the situation by encouraging farming of some of these species as a way to dig themselves out of poverty. It's not just a case that we're cutting down rainforests.
The wet market is not where the epidemic began, according to some scientists.
The analysis is interesting and worth doing, but it has some limitations that are not being explained in the paper, said a researcher who signed a letter calling for an investigation into the origins of the swine flu. I think that what he's doing is just one piece of a huge puzzle.
There are three main reasons to investigate the origins of the novel coronaviruses, according to Chan, who has consistently called for further investigation.
Chan has maintained that a lab leak is plausible. The first COVID-19 cases were identified in the Wuhan area, as well as scientists at the China's Wuhan Institute of Virology studying novel coronaviruses.
The day after his paper was published, he posted translations of patient records and patient interviews and wrote a thread explaining his research.
There are so many early cases linked to Huanan Market that you can't explain them. He wrote in the thread that most of the cases were linked to the market.
He said that his article does not cover every important detail, not by a long shot, and that he was active in questions and answers from his followers. One follower asked if discovering that the outbreak started in late September or early October would affect his analysis.
The model I have done with my colleagues suggests an index case as early as October. "But Sept cases would change my analysis, yes."
The US Intelligence Community says it's one of two plausible hypotheses.
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