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New studies confirm that COVID-19 virus occurred naturally

The New York Times reports today on a pair of studies that conclude with high certainty that the COVID-19 virus originated at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, not at the nearby Wuhan virology lab. Here's an annotated map that provides a simple look at how the virus initially spread:

I think it's possible that we'll never have 100% assurance of where the virus originated, but the evidence continues to point toward a natural source, not an engineered one. This is just one more nail in the coffin of the lab release theory.

68 thoughts on “New studies confirm that COVID-19 virus occurred naturally

  1. golack

    The problem with conspiracies is that every thing used to debunk them is just further proof of how widespread and insidious the conspiracy really is...
    I read a short story way back in high school. It was about attacking bureaucracy--but applies to conspiracy theories, or anything ending in racy. It's akin to attacking a giant marshmallow (and this was pre Ghost Busters). You'll just end up being all sticky, at best, or completely swallowed up in it at worst.

    There is still more investigative work to do. I wouldn't be surprised if there were/are precursor Covid/SARS viruses transmitted among humans at low levels and the transformation into SARS-CoV2 was in humans, e.g. someone had the precursor virus and a cold at the same time.

    1. xi-willikers

      To be honest I’m not sure how much this proves anyways. We’ve been told over and over that the virus:

      1) has a dormant period of a few days before you become infectious

      2) spreads easily in public, crowded places

      The fact that the initial spread was in a public, crowded place and not the another potential place of first infection isn’t that surprising to me

      I don’t think it’s conspiracy thinking to conclude that we won’t ever know for sure and that is by design from the Chinese. It would be very embarrassing for them

      1. Crissa

        How would you ever disprove the conspiracy theory, though?

        It's not like the other side of town doesn't have markets and gatherings of people.

  2. gvahut

    I'm sure the "grassy knoll" contingent of the conspiracy-minded and paranoid will furiously try to keep the coffin open. Ironically it's their reason to live.

  3. Silver

    Well, the map of initial cases doesn't contradict the possibility that the virus was created in the lab and then planted at the market. Still wide open for speculation, if you are so inclined. Doesn't help much against hardcore conspiracy theorists.

  4. George Salt

    The lab leak conspiracy theory was cooked up by Mike Pompeo. He spent the winter of 2021 peddling the conspiracy theory to various media outlets. He finally succeeded when the Wall Street Journal ran with the story, which was based in part on dubious intelligence provided by staffers for GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee.

    1. MontyTheClipArtMongoose

      Well, that would explain the sudden weightloss.

      My employers at the People's Liberation Army don't play when it comes to using radiation poisoning on our enemies.

  5. Joseph Harbin

    ...a pair of studies that conclude with high certainty that the COVID-19 virus originated at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan...

    That's not what the article says. Look no further than the headline and first sentence. The Times article says the studies point to the seafood market as the origin of the pandemic, not the origin of the virus.

    The question of how the virus first got to the market is as unresolved as it was before. Did the virus arrive in animal hosts and then spill over to the human population at the market (either once or twice)? If there were samples of the virus taken from the animal population, that would be strong evidence in support of that theory. But based on the article, there are no genetic samples of the virus taken from animals at the market. The studies use virus samples taken from people and surfaces, not animals. There seems to be some very important missing data if you want to claim the virus originated in wild animals and transferred to humans at the market.

    But some outside scientists who have been hesitant to endorse the market origin hypothesis said they remained unconvinced. Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said in an interview that there remained a glaring absence of direct evidence that animals at the market had themselves been infected with the coronavirus.

    “I think what they’re arguing could be true,” Dr. Bloom said of the new studies. “But I don’t think the quality of the data is sufficient to say that any of these scenarios are true with confidence.”

    Without knowing how the virus first got to the market, you still have two theories. One, that the virus originated in animals and spilled over to humans at the market. Two, that the virus originated some other way -- for example, at the nearby lab, where a worker was infected, then visited the market where they spread the virus to the public at large.

    The evidence is lacking for theory #2, but it's still lacking for theory #1 also.

    Politics and motivated reasoning seem to be driving a lot of this debate, even in the science community. I think the fairest thing we can say about the origin of the virus is that we don't know.

      1. Joseph Harbin

        Oh DBAF* you know perfectly well that if Kevin meant something else he could have used different words instead of changing what the NYT article says. I don't know if he was sloppy or mischievous but his headline and description of the article are wrong. My guess is that he wanted to hype the news as conclusive of a point that the studies do not claim to make.

        The "news" of the studies is hardly surprising. The prevailing theory for most people had been that the virus first spread at the seafood market. The article confirms that theory.

        The "debate" has been about where the virus came from. On that, the studies provide nothing conclusive at all.

        People confused one thing for another. People capable of reading and thinking know that perfectly well. Why don't you?

        *Don't be a fuckwad.

        1. aldoushickman

          Don't be an asshole. The wording of the headline of a nytimes article is evidence of exactly nothing, so your fixation on a supposed distinction between the origin of the pandemic as opposed the the origin of the virus that caused the pandemic is just semantic wankery.

          You can readily click through to the studies the nytimes is reporting on; both studies make pretty clear that they are talking about where the virus came from:

          Worobey et al.: "[T]hese analyses provide dispositive evidence for the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 via the live wildlife trade"

          Pekar et al.: "ARS-CoV-2 emergence likely resulted from multiple zoonotic events."

          1. xi-willikers

            I don’t think this is convincing evidence. Proving that a busy locale near the virology place is where the virus first *spread* isn’t really news. We want evidence of how it got there in the first place

            “News on the Unabomber: new studies have confirmed that the bomb did *indeed* go off in the mailbox”

            1. aldoushickman

              I'm not claiming it's proof--I'm just pointing out that Joey H here is being a pedantic jerk.

              And anyway, one of the two studies specifically notes that the virus probably came from a zoonotic source, which is indeed "evidence of how it got there in the first place."

              Now, is it absolute confirmation that the virus wasn't a lab leak of a secret bioweapon made to look just like a zoonotic event? Probably not, but we're pretty unlikely to get an absolute level of confirmation about it one way or the other.

          2. Joseph Harbin

            If you think there's no distinction between the origin of the pandemic and the origin of the virus, then you're either a) scientifically illiterate, or b) the wanker who's an asshole. Take your pick.

            The animal origin theory has been around for more than two years. It might be true. It would be good to know. More studies should be done. Because these two non-published, non-peer-reviewed studies don't prove it. For the most part, they tell us what we already knew or assumed:

            1) the first known spread of the virus was at the seafood market
            2) samples of two lineages of the virus from the market are in some ways consistent with how the virus may have been passed in two separate interspecies transmissions.

            But evidence that's consistent with a theory is not evidence proving a theory. Especially when competing theories still provide a possible explanation for what happened.

            Notewothy: a) there are no samples showing presence of the virus in animals; b) no identification of which animals carried the virus and spread it to humans.

            There is dissent within the scientific community about the claims of the studies. To wit:

            Dr. Bloom, though, questioned the idea that there had been two separate spillovers. He noted that the Lineage A sample from the market was collected some time after the virus had begun spreading in humans, raising the possibility that it had been brought into the market.

            He said that the two lineages also differed by only two mutations, and that one could have evolved from the other as the virus was passed from person to person.

            “I am especially unconvinced by the conclusion that there must have necessarily been two different spillovers in the Huanan Seafood Market,” Dr. Bloom said.

            The new studies do not pinpoint exactly which animals spread the coronavirus in the Huanan market. But Dr. Worobey and his colleagues said that it might be possible to investigate the mystery further by analyzing the genetic data collected by Chinese researchers. In addition to viral genes, it might also include genes of the mammals that carried them.

            1. aldoushickman

              "If you think there's no distinction between the origin of the pandemic and the origin of the virus, then you're . . . scientifically illiterate"

              Oh, I recognize that there is a difference in what those terms mean. I'm just suggesting that the way you're getting all bent out of shape about the distinction based on language in a _headline_ of all things is foolishly argumentative, bad faith, or pathological. Take *your* pick.

            2. Vog46

              Joseph
              And just like THAT this story shows up:
              https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/28/deer-human-covid-transmission-possible-canada

              {snip}
              Canadian researchers believe they have found the first-ever instance of a deer passing the coronavirus to a human, warning that broader surveillance of wildlife is needed to prevent further mutations from developing and spreading undetected.

              In a paper published last week, but not yet peer reviewed, scientists say at least one case of Covid-19 in humans can be traced to a strain of the virus found in hunted deer.

              Biologists have previously found white tail deer populations infected with Covid in northeastern regions of the United States, as well as central provinces of Canada. While deer aren’t typically seen as a species that can easily pass on the virus to humans, experts had nonetheless speculated that transmission was possible.
              {snip}

              Of course this doesn't prove or disprove the theory.

              But it sure as hell explains why Rep Lauren Boebert wants to invade Canada !!!!!(To liberate Canadians from the findings of scientific research)

          3. memyselfandi

            Neither quote is saying that the virus jumped from animals to humans at the market. We know that a human had the virus before visiting the market and was a super spreader at the market.

  6. D_Ohrk_E1

    These two papers include a couple of researchers (Worobey and Rasmussen) who have, from the start, advocated the same position of natural zoonotic transmission from a wet market.

    Worobey is an author in both studies -- shock! /S

    As a matter of fact, these two "new" papers are partly just a restatement of what they wrote 9 months ago, but this time, split into two papers -- woo! /S

    The geolocation one is pure waste of time, IMO, because it adds very little to what the authors stated 9 months ago.

    The paper claiming two separate zoonotic events (that led to two lineages in SARS-CoV-2 in humans) is the only one that is interesting. It suggests that there was an animal reservoir at the market through phylogenic dating of a shared mutation and the rest of the other mutations were incidental (noise) to dating.

    While this paper has merit, the methodologies seem ripe for selection/confirmation bias and is presented as a paper full of reasoning to defend a position. If-this-then-that is one thing, but if-this-and-this-and-this-and-this-then-that is completely different level of reasoning. If one chain in the link of reasoning is flawed, the conclusion is weaker and potentially wrong.

    Naturally, the question remains, why not find dispositive evidence? They present the same list of species in the wet market -- are they suggesting that the reservoir at the wet market was sui generis and no such reservoir outside of the wet market exists by which they can do better phylogenic dating to the proximity to the two lineages? Or do the Chinese wish to stop all research on the origins of SARS-CoV-2 outside of the wet market? This doesn't have to be this difficult -- unless you're the CCP. /S

    (pardon my level of sarcasm)

    1. Rattus Norvegicus

      Actually Worobey initially seems to have felt that the lab leak hypothesis was worth studying. In fact he was one of the signatories of the letter urging government investigation of the possibility of a lab leak.

      1. D_Ohrk_E1

        It still is worth studying, but how do you study it? Absent any direct evidence via a sample from either government facility (Wuhan branch of the Chinese CDC and WIV), there is only one way, which is the same way one proves the wet market theory:

        Review all of the potential species reservoirs, by way of the list of wild animals that were at the wet market the prior 3 months.

  7. D_Ohrk_E1

    Oh, also, regardless of which theory, both require the identification of the host species. The wet market theorists have long had available a list of species present at the market during this period, so start there.

    Wouldn't it behoove the world to identify all possible reservoirs? Or nah, don't need this knowledge because zoonosis is too rare for the world to be concerned, especially the Chinese?

    1. Joseph Harbin

      From the Times article:
      "In their new study, Dr. Worobey and his colleagues present evidence that wild mammals that might have harbored the coronavirus were being sold in December 2019. But no wildlife was left at the market by the time Chinese researchers arrived in early 2020 to collect genetic samples." (My emphasis.)

      That seems like gaping hole in the argument that the virus originated in animals and transferred to humans at the market. It's a theory without actual evidence.

      Another important point:
      "The two reports have not yet been published in a scientific journal that would require undergoing peer review."

      (I'm not taking sides on what theory to believe. I'm comfortable saying no one knows. But a lot of people are arguing one side because they want the people on the other side to be wrong, and they're ignoring the fact that the scientific evidence doesn't prove either theory. Maybe more evidence will come in. Maybe not.)

      1. D_Ohrk_E1

        Even without sampling animals that were present at the time, it is possible to do a widespread random genetic sampling of the species that were present. Doing so gives us a view into other species that can serve as reservoirs but also add to the tree of the clade (or establish new clades). That is, after all, what the Bat Lady was doing in southern China caves, amirite?

        This is really important work, regardless of where it points to, as we've now had 3 new coronavirus breakouts in the last 15 years.

  8. cld

    My question is, hasn't it been shown that infection through the air out of doors is really low to non-existent?

    If you say someone at the lab became infected and wandered around the market, then it probably won't work.

    1. cld

      On the other hand,

      if someone worked on the cleaning staff at the clinic and also had a market stall that might form just enough concentration between them and the next stalls to do it.

      1. Joel

        Wait, so the virus can't be transmitted in open air between animals and humans at the market, but it can be transmitted in open air between humans infected at a research facility and humans at the market? Seriously?

        1. cld

          Those kind of outdoor market stalls often have little roofs or tarps over the top with sort of rudimentary sides to them, so, in the absence of a lot of wind, I think one or two infected persons' exhalations could
          puddle sufficiently within, yes.

          I don't recall exactly what the market at Wuhan actually looked like, though.

  9. dilbert dogbert

    Stupid to waste time arguing about where the virus originated.
    It is here and killing and maiming people. F'ing up the economy.
    Control the F'ing Virus then us armchair virologists can argue about origins.

    1. iamr4man

      I’m not sure why “where it originated” matters. Like you, I’m more interested in fixing the problem than laying blame.

    2. AlHaqiqa

      Do you really mean this? It is beyond me how someone can think it doesn't matter whether this was a natural or man-made epidemic.
      If natural - better get out there and research & play with viruses to heart's content
      If man-made - re-evaluate how research is getting done & be careful who you give money to!

        1. iamr4man

          And as far as I know, it is only in the deepest of conspiracy theories that the virus is “man made”. The question is whether it accidentally leaked from the lab or is a mutation that came out of the wet market originally in some live animal. If it did come out of the lab the Chinese will never admit it. If it didn’t they will never be believed. So there is no way of ever actually knowing.

        2. aldoushickman

          This. None of the policy responses depend all that much on how this particular virus originated. We know that (1) animal reservoirs of unknown and potentially dangerous diseases exist, and we also know that (2) there are risks from virus research; we now also have a colossal reminder that pandemics are incredibly destructive, disruptive, and expensive. All that does is emphasize how important it is that we ramp up study of (1) and (2).

          It's interesting in an academic way to figure out where covid-19 came from, and I solidly support investigating, but very little hinges on what that investigation finds.

          Like, if it were the 19th century and a whole bunch of Chicago burned down, the rational thing to do would be to figure out how to build a much more fireproof Windy City served by a better fire department, not get into heated debates about whether or not it was this or that cow that kicked over a lantern.

      1. memyselfandi

        Sorry, but they're right. The claim that it is important that we find out the origin of this virus is complete garbage. The idea that we are going to learn that it's important to take safety precautions when working with infectious viruses because covid originated from a lab leak is unbelievably stupid. We already know that. And let's be clear, only deliberately lying scum republicans are claiming that it was a designed virus or a non accidental release. And if it did turn out that it was an accidental release, that doesn't change the fact that the orignal SARS and MERS jumped from animals, that Ebola is routinely jumping from animals, that AIDS jumped a half a dozen times from animals to humans.

  10. haddockbranzini

    Clearly the Illuminati just wants to distance China from Russia, so this "study" was just part of a deal to get Xi to condemn Putin.

  11. cld

    Well, two of my contributions just went to the land of magic disappearance.

    Somewhere in the multiverse there is a place where they have not, and that place is a better place.

  12. jvoe

    We are never going to 'know' and the researchers from that article 'know' we cannot know its biological origin at this point.

    A another plausible headline would be "A totalitarian state prevents accurate assessment of covid origin" since the Chinese did not test animals (or release data) from near the time of initial detection and imprisoned reporters/citizens reporting on the initial outbreak.

    But at this point it doesn't matter other than suing the Chinese government for negligence. Not even sure that is possible but they are worse than Putin. This, I am afraid, is going to be the recurring provable point.

    1. Spadesofgrey

      It's not man made idiot. It's structure and evolution are like OC43's journey in the 1890's. I think it came out of China a few years ago. Began mutating in a slowly ramping up nature. 2019's war games likely is where a further version reentered China.

  13. Pingback: Protestant Theologians Peddling Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories | cliffengelwirt

  14. J. Frank Parnell

    Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin both failed in clinical trials. Remdesivir and all the major vaccines passed clinical trials. Yet the Trump/Q/anti-vax people tell us hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin are highly effective while the vaccines and Remdesivir are killers. They know, they did their research on the internet.

    1. Spadesofgrey

      That is because they aren't anti-vax people nor do they care about Trump. Post smarter. Morons playing dialectical games are becoming boring.

  15. GenXer

    Definitely does not prove natural jump to humans. Imagine that a scientist at the Wuhan Institute gets accidentally infected by something they are working on. (That's what people mean by a lab leak - not that some liquid is literally dripping out of the lab into the streets.) While contagious, that scientist goes to the Wuhan seafood market and spreads it to others there.

    If it did originate from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute, there would only be a cluster around the lab if everyone who worked there also lived/shopped exclusively around the lab.

    1. memyselfandi

      Why did they only infect people at the wuhan sea food market and not to their fellow co-workers or the other markets they shopped at, or in their apartment building or on public transit?

  16. Vog46

    Sounds a bit like the climate change argument
    Climate changes naturally
    Humans are affecting how climate changes

    The PROBLEM with both of theses statements is that you can make a case for either one.
    Climate changes over CENTURIES.
    And we've NEVER had the amount of humans on the planet that we have now - NOR have we ever had such high uses of "fuel" that we have now to feed, clothe and keep comfortable THAT number of humans.

    We are in uncharted territory with both climate change and SARS-Covid

  17. memyselfandi

    Jiminy cricket, we've known since march of 2020 that the virus did not originate at that food market. That was simply the first super spreader event. We also know it didn't originate at the lab. But with a virus where 50% of the population don't show any symptoms and the majority who do have what appears to be the common cold, and which spreads asymptomatically, we are never going to find the first case.

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