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New studies bolster theory coronavirus emerged from the wild (apnews.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Two new studies provide more evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a Wuhan, China market where live animals were sold – further bolstering the theory that the virus emerged in the wild rather than escaping from a Chinese lab.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

@a-man-from-earth Did you read the article? The evidence cited there seems more compelling to me than the suspicious-but-circumstantial evidence that supports a lab leak; cases statistically clustered around the part of the wet market that sold the suspect animals, and genetic similarity to a bat strain of covid.

Still, it's possible, I just no longer believe it's probable. This quote from the article sums it up:

“Have we disproven the lab leak theory? No, we have not,” Andersen said. “But I think what’s really important here is there are possible scenarios and there are plausible scenarios and it’s really important to understand that possible does not mean equally likely.” ...

“Both of these two studies really provide compelling evidence for the natural origin hypothesis,” said Aliota, who wasn’t involved in either study. Since sampling an animal that was at the market is impossible, “this is maybe as close to a smoking gun as you could get.”