[DiogenesKynikos]

The scientific consensus is that the virus spilled over from wild animals sold at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. There's strong evidence to back this up.

There's zero evidence that the virus has anything to do with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and in fact relatively strong evidence that they didn't have or even know about the virus before it spilled over.

[wegfawefgawefg]

Oh really? I guess we just have different facts then. Got any links for me?

[DiogenesKynikos]

This is the definitive study that shows the epicenter of the Wuhan outbreak was the Huanan Seafood Market: Worobey et al. (2022), in the journal Science [0]. This is a study that discusses the genetic evidence that there were multiple spillovers at the market: Pekar et al. (2022), also in the journal Science [1].

The above two findings are completely inconsistent with the idea of a lab leak. Why would a lab leak cause an outbreak at a market that sells wild animals, of all places? And how would it cause two different lineages of virus to emerge at that market?

If you know how the original SARS spilled over, in wild animal markets in a major Chinese city (Guangzhou, far away from where the bats that carry SARS live), the Wuhan Seafood Market spillover looks nearly identical - just 17 years later.

Meanwhile, no evidence at all has emerged that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had anything to do with the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. Scientists at the WIV were regularly publishing and giving talks about exactly what they were working on, and they never mentioned anything closely related to SARS-CoV-2. They were working with viruses much closer to the original SARS, which is what most people back then were interested in. After SARS-CoV-2 emerged, you could actually go back and look into the WIV's publications to find the most closely related virus. It's called RaTG13, and it was published by scientists at the WIV all the way back in 2014. However, it's way too distantly related to SARS-CoV-2 to be the progenitor virus, and in fact, more closely related viruses have since been found by a French team in Laos. Basically, all the evidence about who knew what when, the genetics of more closely related viruses that have been discovered since the pandemic began argue positively that the WIV had nothing to do with the origins of the pandemic. This is in addition to the strong evidence that the initial outbreak was not at WIV, but rather at a wild animal market (which is exactly what you'd expect for a natural spillover).

None of this has made its way into the American public's consciousness, though.

0. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715 1. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8337