A team of scientists say it is "beyond reasonable doubt" the Covid pandemic started with infected animals.

A team of scientists say it is “beyond reasonable doubt” the Covid pandemic started with infected animals sold at a market, rather than a laboratory leak.

They were analysing hundreds of samples collected from Wuhan, China, in January 2020.

The results identify a shortlist of animals – including racoon dogs, civets and bamboo rats – as potential sources of the pandemic.

Despite even highlighting one market stall as a hotspot of both animals and coronavirus, the study cannot provide definitive proof.

The samples were collected by Chinese officials in the early stages of Covid and are one of the most scientifically valuable sources of information on the origins of the pandemic.

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Their analysis was published last year and the raw data made available to other scientists. Now a team in the US and France says they have performed even more advanced genetic analyses to peer deeper into Covid’s early days.

  • @Duamerthrax
    21•9 hours ago

    People have been saying for decades before covid that the wet markets were a ticking time bomb. There has probably been viral outbreaks in the past, but the local population could have died off before it spread.

    I think a lab leak of a natural virus is plausible, but irrelevant.

    • @Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In
      -2•8 hours ago

      I think lax saftey when experimenting with highly infectious coronaviruses is very relevant.

      Either improve the protocols or don’t experiment.

      • @Duamerthrax
        10•7 hours ago

        There’s a difference between lax safety and conspiracy to engineer a bioweapon. The main motivator of people pushing the Lab Leak conspiracy is that they want some villain to blame all this on.

        • @Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In
          6•5 hours ago

          Not bioweapons. Covid isn’t dangerous enough.

          The prime conspiracy theory target is Anthony Fauci because some EcoHealth Alliance / NIH coronaviruses bat funding went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

          But you don’t need to subscribe to the Fauci Supervillan theory to suspect an accidental lab leak. China has already had 3 (2004, 2016, 2020) in this list. Pointing this out is not sino bashing (look at the number of US incidents). Accidental lab leaks happen all too regularly.

        • RubberDuck
          2•4 hours ago

          Bioweapon is also a strawman in this case, he did not say that.

          In gain of function research more virulent strains are made to study and find cures against. So we have a better understanding of how these viruses mutate, what makes them tick and how we can disrupt that.

          Noone would intentionally set something like that loose.