Wuhan Market Samples Contained Covid and Animal Mixtures, Report Says

[jgo]

Source: New York Times

On Jan. 12, 2020, Chinese investigators combing a market for clues about the outbreak of a mysterious new illness in the city of Wuhan swabbed a cart. It was the kind typically used for transporting animal cages, and it came back positive for the coronavirus.

Three years later, a team of international experts has sifted through the genetic contents of that swab, which were quietly uploaded to an international database and made public only this year. In a report released on Monday night, the scientists described in detail for the first time evidence from the swab that they say strengthens the case that illegally traded wild animals ignited the coronavirus pandemic.

Finding genetic footprints from animals in the same place as genetic material from the virus does not prove that the animals themselves were infected. But some scientists who reviewed the report said that the dominance of genetic material from animals — and especially raccoon dogs — suggested that species known to be able to spread the coronavirus were indeed carrying infections at the market in late 2019.

That scenario, they said, was consistent with the virus spilling into humans from market animals and touching off the pandemic, a set of circumstances similar to the one that gave rise to the first SARS outbreak in China two decades earlier.


Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/science/covid-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market.html

[underpants]

1. Well that should settle that then

[Zeitghost]

38. Not really

The article even admits that...

[OAITW r.2.0]

2. No shocker to me.

Americans would be surprised about the Chinese diet. I was....it was never a fun experience going out to eat with my Chinese friends.

[HUAJIAO]

8. My experiences eating out, or in, in China were very different from yours, I guess.

Last edited Wed Mar 22, 2023, 09:51 AM - Edit history (1)

Some of the best dishes I have had anywhere in the world-- in Guangzhou, Xiamen, Tsingdao, Xi'an, Shanghai, Chongqing, Guilin and so on...'

ON EDIT: HOW could I forget Chengdu??

[IronLionZion]

10. And Sichuan if you like tingly peppercorns

enough to have it as your username

[HUAJIAO]

27. LOL right !!!

Actually Chengdu, which I forgot to list(shame on me) is in Sichuan.

[IronLionZion]

29. Love a good hot pot or some spicy noodles

and then see the pandas at the Chengdu panda breeding center

[Tomconroy]

3. More from the article:

"Even if an animal had been infected, however, it would not be clear that it had spread the virus to people. Someone infected with the virus could have gotten a market animal sick. And only by swabbing animals directly could scientists prove whether they had been carrying the virus, a step that was precluded by the market being cleared of animals soon after the outbreak began."


People should read the entire article. It's interesting. And NO, the issue of origins remains unsettled.

[C Moon]

13. Thank you! I wish the poster would note that.

[jgo]

28. fyi - the opening poster can only post 4 paragraphs

[Bucky]

4. What's interesting is this potentially locates the spread from both the wet market AND the lab.

If the lab brought the virus in for study, then both locales may have contributed to the spread of the virus. Even transporting the infected samples to the lab may have given the virus plenty of opportunities to move to new hosts

These debates between wet market vs lab origin might be the equivalent of an eclipse debate being between those who say "the moon moved in front of the sun" and those who say "the sun moved behind the moon."

[RockRaven]

7. If you are referring to the swabs collected in mid-Jan mentioned in the lede, then fussing about

any lab leak due to their collection or subsequent sloppy handling makes no sense because there were infected patients in regional hospitals in mid-December.

There's a reason it was called COVID-19. This virus was being passed around in the community for a month that we know of before those samples were taken.

How much longer was it circulating before that that we don't know of? I... don't know, obviously.

[stopdiggin]

11. yes. this testing was done after

the outbreak had become apparent - and also after the government had begun to have some ideas on its origin. The early clusters (centered very near the wet market) - remain very hard to overlook. (although we're certainly willing to give it a go .. )

[orleans]

19. what's the connection of why it is named as it is and you bolding "19" ?? i don't get it. nt

[wishstar]

22. Because it was named Coronavirus Disease 2019 due to starting in 2019, shortened to Covid19

So since it apparently started in 2019, the finding of Covid present at the market in 2020 isn't very good evidence of it having originated at the market since the disease was already spreading around elsewhere in 2019.

[orleans]

34. thanks. nt

[RockRaven]

5. BuT tHe FbI aNd DePaRtMeNt Of EnErGy SaId It WaS a LaB lEaK!!!!!1!!!

I don't understand! How can the venerable Bureau be wrong?!?! This has never happened before!!!

Obvious

[IronLionZion]

33. FBI is only wrong when they arrest Trump supporters

Both of those reports were with "low confidence"

[eggplant]

6. Ok, so the theory about bats was wrong?

[Mosby]

9. That was SARS

The earlier animal that was suspected to have spread covid to humans was the pangolin.

[canuckledragger]

15. I saw that movie too.

[orleans]

20. the early story (or earliest) was that it came from a

pangolin at the wet market.

i remember this b/c i had never heard of a pangolin before

[BumRushDaShow]

23. That is what was suspected and posted quite a bit about on DU too

since there was a market demand for pangolin scales by some countries and both the animals and their scales were being marketed.





They seem to remind me a bit of armadillos, porcupines, and hedgehogs because of that rolling up into a ball thing they do to protect their undersides...

[womanofthehills]

12. Christian Anderson is promoting this

His early emails show he thought it was a lab leak but wrote the opposite a few days later.

[Warpy]

14. I'm really not surprised

Asian markets are still very much like what our markets were 100 years ago before Upton Sinclair wrote a gutwrenching little number called "The Jungle." The stories about the meat industry were spot on and led directly to things like the FDA and USDA inspections of meatpacking houses. If you haven't read this book, please do so, it had a lot to say about how people were treated before the reforms of the New Deal and it was appalling and not just through contaminated and/or adulterated food.

It's a wonderful description of the unregulated "free" market. It seems the invisible hand fairy needs a lot of help.

[DENVERPOPS]

17. Jungle

In our 8th grade social studies, the teacher had mandatory reading of several books......this was in 63?

We had to Read: The Jungle, Animal Farm, 1984, and the Ugly American. In class, civics was pounded into our brains.
I have forgotten more about our government and its workings, and the Constitution than any of my friends will ever know.

Interestingly, our teacher was a hard core Republican, and was nearly suspended for having us read those books......

I still have my original copies of Animal Farm, 1984, and the Jungle on my bookshelf.

Trump's fucked up shit made me get Animal Farm off the shelf and re-read it. WOW.....it could have been used as a script for the Republicans/Trumps actions during those four years.

You don't need to worry about the Repub voters ever reading either of them, especially 1984 it requires a much higher educational level, as does the Ugly American and the Jungle.

That same year, in that same teacher's class, he walked in with a blank stare on his face, and white as a sheet. He faced the class and didn't say anything for maybe a minute......the classroom was totally silent with everyone looking at him. He said that JFK had just been assassinated..........

[Warpy]

35. It was on our "recommended" reading list, which I always found more interesting

than the crap we were required to read, so I read all of that too, and about at the same time you did. One required book that might have done us some good was "The Hidden Persuaders" by Vance Packard. Smart kids learned how to deconstruct propaganda and not to take anything at face value. Dullards just went "huh?" and grew up to buy anything with "New, Improved!" on the label with a significant hike in price.

We learned of the assassination over the school intercom, there was a radio in the office. Three weeks later, someone in my family was murdered. 1963 is not a year I'd ever want to revisit.

[DENVERPOPS]

40. The stuff you mentioned

was covered in another class, can't remember it. ALL of the kids in schools should know that information, esp in todays world.

They covered politicians, false advertising, misleading advertising, testimonials, money stuff, etc

I cannot believe the amount of totally false advertising used today by the corporations. The FTC used to control that very stringently, but Reagan and others since have neutered that organization......

The most egregious is the Dental organizations advertising "one day implants"............purely ludicrous bullshit.........even for just one tooth, let alone full implants.........

[IronLionZion]

42. The public weren't too worried about the workers or animals after The Jungle

they just wanted safe delicious meat to eat.

[NullTuples]

16. It should be noted that in mid-2019 the GOP recalled our scientists embedded in China's CDC

We had scientists working alongside China's scientists in their version of the CDC, put there for the explicit purpose of early warning & planet-wide management, should a pandemic happen. One of those international cooperative efforts the GOP & Trump shut down as soon as they had the chance.

One has to wonder how the last few years might have been different.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-cdc-exclusiv/exclusive-u-s-slashed-cdc-staff-inside-china-prior-to-coronavirus-outbreak-idUSKBN21C3N5

[NBachers]

18. How possible is it that animals experimented on in the lab were taken to market after they were

dispensed with from the lab?

Animals used in lab trials in the rest of the world are usually euthanized and cremated. Could low-level Wuhan employees have made money by selling the experimental animals at the wet market, instead of cremating them?

[Tomconroy]

21. Anything is possible. No one has found an actual infected

animal in the wild infected with the exact virus.
The Chinese themselves apparently blame it on imported frozen seafood.

[Blues Heron]

25. your just going to walk out of a bio lab with a monkey on your shoulder?

I cant believe that.

[IronLionZion]

26. The lab's official line is that it goes the other way

the lab studies viruses in the local animals nearby and would collect samples from the market vendors, not sending infecting animals outside.

[Warpy]

36. That is highly unlikely

Animal studies would have been a very small part of the lab's work, most virology is done on tissue samples.

The US found absolutely no evidence that the virus was anything but naturally occurring. If it had been due to sloppy lab conditions, TFG would have shouted it louder than he already did, and Fauci would have been his best buddy.

People in that lab were paid well enough to go to the market for a piece of pork or chicken, not so poorly that they had to take lab mice home for dinner or sell them to someone else. Also remember that cooking kills the virus.

Nope, either SARS CoV-1 was in the rural population, spreading slowly and mutating into SARS CoV-2 or there was an animal intermediary. They know from swabs of the carts that something that was slaughtered and sold at that market was carrying it. They just don't know what it was yet.

Until we do, trying to point fingers at that lab by coming up with unlikely scenarios isn't doing the effort any good.

[roamer65]

45. [phone]

Damn good question that needs to be asked.

[twodogsbarking]

24. One thing I know about COVID. I am still living.

Either I never got it or got it and didn't know.

[IronLionZion]

32. I got it last month and it was super mild for me

I thought it was a cold until I took a test. But I'm vaxxed to the max

[IronLionZion]

31. Raccoon dogs look like fine animals in the fox family

I would think they're too cute to eat.

[Warpy]

37. That's because they are very closely related to foxes

and only distantly related to wolves and dogs. They're not related to raccoons in any way.

[IronLionZion]

39. We probably shouldn't eat them

they get their name from looking similar to raccoons

[Warpy]

41. The wisecrack northern Chinese make about people in the south

is that they'll eat anything with four legs except the table. I heard that one more than once.

As for the raccoon dogs, biologists think they evolved similar physical characteristics because they occupy pretty much the same ecological niche but on a different continent. I've always been amazed by the close resemblance.

[IronLionZion]

43. China is a difficult place for vegetarians

meat is in everything, even their vegetables.

I like many of the Cantonese dim sum options and northern Bao or Beijing Duck. But I have no interest in exotic animals.

[Warpy]

44. I prefer the exotic veg, myself, they can have my share of civet cat

but I greatly appreciate the way meat is used as just another flavoring, not the main event. The main event is the grain, the veg and meat used to flavor it, not drown it. It's a much healthier way to eat than the slab o cow and spuds and nothing else but dessert.

I confess I balked at the steamed chicken feet in a dim sum restaurant in Boston (it's a texture thing, they don't taste like much), but I loved pretty much everything I had and waddled out happy.

I had vegetarian friends who went there on a work/study program and they threw in the veggie towel after about the first month of trying to source soy products other than tofu and the various sauces and they didn't do well with no heavy protein in their diet. Japan is easier in that regard, I think, they have many more soy based proteins readily available.