There’s one entity that is best poised to answer one of the most important scientific questions of our time: How did the Covid-19 pandemic originate? And it’s not the virologists scouring genetic data from live animal wet markets in search of a zoonotic spillover, nor is it the lab leak proponents debating furin cleavage sites and battling over translations of old emails.
It’s the Chinese government — and that, more than any other fact, is why it looks increasingly unlikely that we’ll ever find an answer that all parties can agree on to the question of what caused the worst pandemic in a century.
That’s one main takeaway from several media reports published over the past day about a new analysis of genetic data taken from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, where the first human cases of Covid-19 emerged more than three years ago. The analysis, first reported by the Atlantic, shows that raccoon dogs that were being illegally sold in the market may have been carrying the novel coronavirus at the end of 2019.
A zoonotic origin — meaning from animals, which is how nearly all emerging diseases first spread to humans — demands that scientists identify the equivalent of an animal species “patient zero,” where the new virus can incubate and evolve before passing to humans.
If it is true that raccoon dogs kept in close quarters with human beings were infected and shedding the virus before people first started getting sick, it “really strengthens the case for a natural origin” of the pandemic, as the Emory University virologist Seema Lakdawala told the Atlantic.
But it wouldn’t be a Covid origin story without ongoing mysteries both scientific and political. Even if raccoon dogs were carrying the virus at that time, they may not be the original animal reservoir. In the 2003 SARS-1 outbreak, scientists originally pointed the finger at civet cats, only to later discover that the true reservoir was horseshoe bats.
The new…
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