Wuhan market was epicentre of pandemic’s start, studies suggest

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00584-8

by lgvln • 4 years ago

55 36 4 years ago

modernpink2• 4 years ago

Note that this is based on studies by Chinese-only researchers in state-backed institutions [1] that has not yet been peer reviewed. Occam's Razor says that the Wuhan Institute of Virology known for studying coronaviruses must have played a part.

[1] https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1370392/v1

OscarCunningham• 4 years ago

It's kind of strange that China would be biased about this. Why is it worse for them if the pandemic escaped from a lab rather from the animal markets they were repeatedly warned might cause a pandemic? They bear all the blame either way.

modernpink2• 4 years ago

I suppose they would think it better to be thought of worse for bad eating habits than it is to be incompetent at abiding by international standards for conducting science, or even to have maliciously released a bioweapon.

alevskaya3• 4 years ago

Occam's razor does not mean every coincidence is meaningful - that's just pareidolia. The simplest scenario is that this viral pandemic is like every other one in known history - including the last coronavirus pandemic - a zoonotic crossover. Something that most professional biologists like myself has have been trying to stress.

peakaboo• 4 years ago

The difference is - humans now has the capability to create viruses. And it's obvious that covid is created by humans. You just need to look at its generic code to figure that out.

walkhour• 4 years ago

I wish this was better explained to the public like myself.

Every now and then someone comes along and says: "there's no evidence the virus was engineered in a lab". But what would the evidence look like?

For example, is it possible to replicate a zoonotic crossover in a lab so that both hypothesis (zoonotic and lab leak) are equally probable?

The simplest scenario is that this viral pandemic is like every other one in known history - including the last coronavirus pandemic - a zoonotic crossover.

Do you however give a positive probability to a lab leak? In what range does the probability lie according to most biologist? Is it more 20%, 2% or 0.2% that the lab leak is the correct hypothesis?

floitsch• 4 years ago

Occam's razor states: "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity".

Given that viruses have multiple times spread from animals to humans this would be the simplest explanation, favored by Occam's razor.

That said, the scientific community has not ruled out a lab leak.

The Atlantic generally has very good articles on where the investigation stand, and how different people interpret the probabilities/coincidences.

For example https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/lab-leak...

Given that China is not really interested in any conclusion on this topic (except if the virus was imported from a different country) we will probably never know.

twoslide• 4 years ago

Your comment is factully incorrect. The article cites three studies, only one of which (Gao et al) is based in a Chinese institution. The other two have lead authors at University of Arizona [1] and UC San Diego [2].

Note that [1] is specifically titled "The Huanan market was the epicenter of SARS-CoV-2 emergence"

Mischaracterizing the evidence and/or article really doesn't strengthen the "Occam's razor" argument.

[1] https://zenodo.org/record/6299600 [2] https://zenodo.org/record/6291628

YeGoblynQueenne2• 4 years ago

You have linked to only one of the three preprints and used it to claim that all three preprints are from Chinese labs.

These are the author names from the three preprints:

The Huanan market was the epicenter of SARS-CoV-2 emergence

Authors: Michael Worobey; Joshua I. Levy; Lorena M. Malpica Serrano; Alexander Crits-Christoph; Jonathan E. Pekar; Stephen A. Goldstein; Angela L. Rasmussen; Moritz U. G. Kraemer; Chris Newman; Marion P. G. Koopmans; Marc A. Suchard; Joel O. Wertheim; Philippe Lemey; David L. Robertson; Robert F. Garry; Edward C. Holmes; Andrew Rambaut; Kristian G. Andersen

Online: https://zenodo.org/record/6299600

SARS-CoV-2 emergence very likely resulted from at least two zoonotic events

Authors: Pekar, Jonathan E.; Magee, Andrew; Parker, Edyth; Moshiri, Niema; Izhikevich, Katherine; Havens, Jennifer L.; Gangavarapu, Karthik; Malpica Serrano, Lorena M.; Crits-Christoph, Alexander; Matteson, Nathaniel L.; Zeller, Mark; Levy, Joshua I.; Wang, Jade C.; Hughes, Scott; Lee, Jungmin; Park, Heedo; Park, Man-Seong; Ching Zi Yan, Katherine; Tzer Pin Lin, Raymond; Mat Isa, Mohd Noor; Muhammad Noor, Yusuf; Vasylyeva, Tetyana I.; Garry, Robert F.; Holmes, Edward C.; Rambaut, Andrew; Suchard, Marc A.; Andersen, Kristian G.; Worobey, Michael; Wertheim, Joel O.

Online: https://zenodo.org/record/6291628

Surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in the environment and animal samples of the Huanan Seafood Market

Authors: William J. Liu, Peipei Liu, Wenwen Lei, Zhiyuan Jia, Xiaozhou He, Linlin Liu Weifeng Shi, Yun Tan, Shumei Zou, Xiang Zhao, Gary Wong, Ji Wang, Feng Wang, Gang Wang, Kun Qin, Rongbao Gao, Jie Zhang, Min Li, Wenling Xiao, Yuanyuan Guo, Ziqian Xu, Yingze Zhao, Jingdong Song, Jing Zhang, Wei Zhen, Wenting Zhou, Beiwei Ye, Juan Song, Mengjie Yang, Weimin Zhou, Yuhai Bi, Kun Cai, Dayan Wang, Wenjie Tan, Jun Han, Wenbo Xu, George F. Gao, Guizhen Wu

Online: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1370392/v1

In the linked pdfs you can see the affiliations of the preprints. The first two are researchers from universities in the US, UK, Australia and EU countries. The last one is researchers from Chinese institutes.

Bottom line: the article is not based on studies by "Chinese-only researchers in state-backed institutions" as you say.

Also, please don't abuse Occam's Razor as a tool to shut down curious discussion.

odiroot• 4 years ago

I'd recommend people to read Matt Ridley's book before trusting these "studies". https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58647975-viral

alevskaya3• 4 years ago

Alina chan's original "evidence" put ridiculous weight on a few SNPs before we really had a lot of data or understanding of sars-cov-2 evolution (esp. it's enormously broad mammalian host range). It looks ridiculous in retrospect... and the rest of that book is conspiratorial storytelling without much in the way of evidence to back any of those fever dreams up.

denton-scratch• 4 years ago

I wish people would stop using the word "epicentre" when the appropriate word is "centre". An epicentre is a point on the earth's surface vertically above the centre of an earthquake.

I think writers use the word "epicentre" when they're not sure if the location in question is the centre, or not; it seems to be used to mean "handwavy centre".

_Wintermute• 4 years ago

it seems to be used to mean "handwavy centre".

The "epi-" prefix is typically used to mean "near" or "close-to", so it seems like a good use of the word.

wrp• 4 years ago

My take on Worobey, et al. and Pekar, et al. is that the most significant thing to consider is that two strains of SARS-CoV-2 emerged at the same place in November-December 2019, Lineage A and Lineage B.

Worobey makes strong claims based on geographic data, but I can see weaknesses in that. The genetic evidence for multiple crossovers provides a stronger indication of animal origin.

wokwokwok• 4 years ago

Someone writes up a bunch of tweets Omnicron is a lab leak too: 576 points.

Three studies suggest it originated from the Wuhan markets: 28 points.

Mmm.

This came up recently, and I think it's high relevant to some of the folk posting here:

https://jaydaigle.net/blog/replication-crisis-math/

A lot of psychology results that don’t replicate look a little different from this perspective. Does standing in a power pose for a few seconds make you feel more confident? Probably! It sure feels like it does (seriously, stand up and give it a try right now); and it would be weird if it made you feel worse.
Does it affect you enough, for a long enough time, to matter much?
Probably not. That would also be weird.

Papers like these are uncontroversial, because they are probably right.

If they were all wrong, it would be weird. Surprising. TED talk worthy.

Not impossible... but, probably not.

lgvln2• 4 years ago

OP here. I have been monitoring this post on and off and it seems like a significant number of people are flagging it. It went onto the front page at least twice (both times ranked in the 10s) and disappeared from there. As of now, it is back on and ranked 103.

I recognize that there are some questions regarding the papers (they are not peer reviewed yet) but the response to it on HN is both puzzling and troubling.

bediger4000• 4 years ago

How is the response on HN puzzling and troubling?

I mean, HN got more polarized during 2016-2020. The issue in question is really, really important to people on one of the poles, and thus becomes an issue to people on the other pole.

jokethrowaway2• 4 years ago

This is likely China covering up their tracks.

What do you think it's the more likely source? The Wuhan coronavirus research center doing gain of function research with American money or a the nearby fish market? If you think it's the local fish market, what's the probability that it would have happened in that specific fish market next to a coronavirus research center vs any other fish market in China?

Besides, people are bored of COVID and care only about Ukraine. That explains the delta in points.

Fatnino• 4 years ago

It is telling how "wet market", meaning a place where live food is sold, becomes "fish market" when filtered through fact-free sources.

amscanne• 4 years ago

Three studies suggest it originated from the Wuhan markets: 28 points.

That’s not what the studies suggest. They suggest that it was an important amplification point. Whether or not it originated there is an additional inference. It’s certainly possible, but alternative hypotheses are not dismissed by the market being an amplification point. A busy market is a likely amplification point, regardless of what is being sold.

I think that failure to find the virus in any wet market animal or in the wild (from the studies) starts to become its own kind of weak evidence as well. So two things are true: wet market was a likely amplification point and the lack of corroborating evidence for zoonotic origin is troubling. (Though I think its probably the most likely explanation, I don’t think studies like this actually add any new level of certainty and the same reasons to be suspicious remain.)

janto2• 4 years ago

Indeed.

It's also a problem that the studies are presented in ways where it is easily interpreted as about "the epicenter". The title (and content) should not have been "Wuhan market was epicentre of pandemic’s start, studies suggest", but rather, as you suggest, an amplification point. I guess that, because wording it in this way would equally support a lab hypothesis, it was unacceptable to (at least) the final person responsible. I am disappointed this gets past the reviewers or that it was introduced by editors. What is a reasonable conclusion to be drawn about Nature and their scientific competency? Should we just let it go?

pizza234• 4 years ago

I find it very interesting that this in in conflict with the report as described in the book "Viral".

Article:

They also examined the locations of the positive samples collected in the market, as reported in the WHO study

Book:

Eventually, when international experts convened by the WHO were granted permission by China to visit Wuhan and arrived in early 2021, they were given a detailed run-down on what had been found in the market. The China-WHO joint report published on 30 March 2021 revealed that the Chinese CDC inspectors had visited the market about thirty times from 1 January before a final clean up on 2 March 2020. In addition to animal products and frozen goods, samples had been taken from doors, stalls, transport carts, trash cans, toilets, sewage, ventilation systems, stray cats and other animal vectors such as mice. Two other nearby markets had also been sampled.
This China-WHO report revealed a different picture from that given by media reports. The market was called a seafood market for a reason: most of the stalls were selling seafood and freshwater aquatic products. Crocodiles were being sold alive. Snakes and salamanders were being slaughtered on the spot for sale. From sales records in December 2019, just ten stalls were selling meat or products from birds and mammals, including chickens, ducks, geese, pheasants and doves; and deer, badgers, rabbits, bamboo rats, porcupines and hedgehogs. According to the market authorities, all of these animals were from licensed farms and no illegal trade in wildlife was detected.
The authorities tested 457 samples from 188 animals spanning 18 species. They all proved negative for SARS-CoV-2 genetic material. This included 27 stray cats (a species that is susceptible to the virus), which were presumably living free in or around the market, as well as 52 rabbits and hares, 16 hedgehogs, ten mice, seven dogs, six muntjac deer, six badgers, six bamboo rats, a number of pigs, five chickens, three giant salamanders, two wild boar, two crocodiles, two soft-shelled turtles, two fish, one sheep and one weasel. They tested 616 animals of ten species from the suppliers to the market and found no sign of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material.
A total of 923 environmental samples were tested, meaning samples from countertops, door handles, toilets, sewage and the like. By mapping the samples that came back positive for virus genetic material to the stalls in the market, the China-WHO team were able to assess what products the vendors at those affected stalls were selling. Of the twenty-one impacted vendors, sixteen were selling ‘cold-chain products’ – delivered and sold in frozen form – out of eighty-seven vendors selling such products whose stalls were sampled; thirteen out of seventy-three selling aquatic products; six out of fifty-six for seafood; eight of thirty-seven for poultry; five of thirty-six for livestock; and two of eight selling vegetables. Only one out of nine vendors selling wildlife products was linked to a positive market environmental sample, and he or she had also been selling cold-chain products, aquatic products, poultry and livestock products.
Needless to say, this was a vital slug of information to emerge after so many months of speculation worldwide that the wildlife trade was bound to be the culprit. There was, after the back and forth by the Chinese CDC director and a year of waiting, no evidence that the virus had emerged in the Huanan seafood market via the wildlife trade. The epidemiological data, the genetic data and the positive environmental samples from the market were consistent with a scenario in which a sick person brought the virus into the market, where it became amplified in a poorly ventilated and crowded space. On the role of the Huanan seafood market, the China-WHO joint team stated that: ‘No firm conclusion therefore about the role of the Huanan market in the origin of the outbreak, or how the infection was introduced into the market, can currently be drawn.’

jacknews• 4 years ago

This seems to be interesting timing, with the current geopolitical situation, that Nature are now even acknowledging this kind of claim.

eggy• 4 years ago

I lived in Macao, China for 6-plus years, and I have been to wet markets. Isn't this simply a model of spread with other contributing factors to find an origin? The other point is that the Wuhan Huanan Haixian Seafood Market is close enough to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, 26 min. 19.6 km, that I can picture lab personnel stopping by the market to pick up premade lunches, or raw food for cooking later at home. If they had an unnoticed mishap at the lab, and were carrying the COVID virus, this would explain how it took off at the market where many people congregate. The fact that bats and pangolins were not sold there per an Oxford University study, and all of the animals they tested around the WIV and far from it, did not have the SARS-CoV-2 virus, kind of points to a potential modeling error or wrong conclusion. This and the 292 pages finally released by the NIH that are so redacted to be totally useless, certainly raises the stink level. What are they redacting? Hey, if they did nothing wrong they should have nothing to hide, right. I am now a vegetarian, but I used to go to the wet market and choose a live chicken, and have it butchered to bring home. They were pretty messy places, and would by no means pass around here, although you take your chances with street food anywhere, I guess.

Wuhan market was epicentre of pandemic’s start, studies suggest

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