I did not “dismiss” the SARS-CoV-2 lab origin theory; I said it was “difficult if not impossible to conclusively rule out” such origin.
However, promoting such theories in the absence of good evidence helps people whose motivations are even more dubious than those of Chinese authorities. And it puts one in the company of those who habitually ascribe epidemics of newly emergent diseases to sinister human manipulation.
It’s not “promoting” anything to take account of the facts. The proximity to the lab IS good evidence. As discussed extensively upthread, given the number of large Chinese cities, the number of wet markets, the large geographical area over which the relevant animals might come into contact - the probability that this is coincidence is perhaps of the order of 1%. In order to conclusively dismiss this circumstantial evidence as coincidence, we need clear direct evidence with p<1% of exactly what happened. It’s unlikely we’ll ever get that.
I can’t help that. Pretending that evidence does not exist does not promote a reality-based view of the world.
But again, it’s important to note that all that needs to be explained is the unlikely proximity to the lab. This does not require any “conspiracy”, and certainly not any sinister lab manipulation of viruses. It does not even require any “leak”. It could simply be some worker associated with the Wuhan lab who got infected in the field and unwittingly brought the disease back to Wuhan.
Lab leaks are a real thing and an ever-present problem. They’ve happened numerous times in the past and it is purely through the good luck of not involving such a easily-spread virus that we avoided a similar pandemic.
Lab leaks theories are not purely the plaything of the CT nuts.
In this case the circumstantial evidence at face value is enough to keep it in play until the weight of good evidence suggests otherwise.
To completely rule out such a possibility (as the WHO and Chinese government sought to do) without good reason, before any indepedent investigation has been held, and in the light of known, self-interested obstruction by an organisation that stood to be dammed by such a finding, that’s where the real problem lies.
They supposedly banned them after the original SARS pandemic in 2003. Clearly the ban hasn’t been enforced. Supposedly, they have cracked down on this but I’m not convinced.
Some posters seem to have descended into the realm of “Prove me wrong!”. The way science works is that the obligation to prove something rests on those making the claim.
It would be interesting to know the formula by which you derived that figure. 
What I find frustrating about the “proximity of the lab” refrain, is that the Huanan market is even more proximate, and vendors who sold live mammals were most proximate to cases from the market.
“But this is a lab that specifically studies corona viruses,” to which the response is “but these are animals that are known to carry corona virus.”
And around and around it goes.
One fun rebuttal to the market theory I saw on twitter was that the lab might not be close to the market, but that the Chinese CDC is close to the market, so the virus came from the lab, but it was first spread by inspectors from the CCDC who started the spread near the market.
LOL. One of these is BSL-4 facility while the other holds and slaughters animals in facilities with minimal biohazard precautions followed by selling the meat to customers in a crowded market area.
Here’s what the Wuhan market looked like:
My understanding is that this is incorrect, specifically that neither bats nor pangolins were sold in that wet market.
A paper linked above, reports
multiple mammalian species that are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 – and thus plausible intermediate hosts of its progenitor viruses – were sold live at the Huanan market in November of 2019
They go on to say
Raccoon dogs are noteworthy among the live mammal species traded at the Huanan market in November 2019 because they were associated with the emergence of SARS-CoV-1 (26) and have been shown to be both susceptible to infection with SARS-CoV-2 and capable of transmitting the virus (12–14).
700 some samples were taken from the market by the CCDC. Of the 33 samples reported positive for SARS-CoV-2 by the WHO, 31 of those came from an area of the market where live animals were sold. 5 positive samples (tied for the most of any single stall) came from a stall known to sell live animals. The stall it was tied with? The one beside it.
The specific sites found positive in that stall included a metal cage, two carts used to transport cages with animals in them, and a hair/feather remover.
So, as @Tfletch1 points out, in one case the virus has been positively found in areas associated with lots of species of animals that are potential carriers. In the other case you have people guessing that the virus might have been in a sealed vial, in a locked freezer.
They do seem intertwined, but to me, this could go both ways. I mean, I recall folks from the lab did go to the market fairly frequently…as did a lot of other people. So…was it the animals in the lab infecting workers who went to the market, or animals from the market that infected people in the market? We will never know because the Chinese stopped any sort of investigation and destroyed much of the evidence. At one point they were denying that this was a wet market in fact, or that there were live animals. The story on this has shifted so many times, and there has been such a ridiculous level of whitewash applied that it’s hard to know what to think.
I find the evidence presented that this thing had an animal origin pretty compelling, but the lack of actually finding said animal makes it hard to say anything definitively. Said animal probably was one of the millions in various wet markets in Asia, but we will never really know. It is a bit of a coincidence that one of the labs that were investigating corona-virus that had a history of poor safety practices just happened to be next to the market where this virus totally didn’t originate from because it really originated in the US or Italy, or Turkey, or France or…well, I’ve lost track of all the places the Chinese claimed it actually originated…let’s just go with the US and Fort Detrick. So, it’s all really moot, as not only wasn’t it an animal in the wet market, but it wasn’t even in China.
They’re 20km apart, on opposite sides of the Yangtze River. So “next to” really needs to be “in the same city as”.
Oh yeah, did China ever lie about what was going on in the market. They’ve said “no animals were sold there in 2019” even though there is tons of contrary evidence from before the pandemic. They went in and cleaned things up at the market, but the also took samples, and those samples show SARS-CoV-2.
No. There are 2 labs, both were working on covid research. The high-level lab is the one that is ‘20km apart, on opposite sides of the Yangtze River’, the other lower level lab is like 2 blocks away, from memory. I really wish people would stop saying this, but it seems unlikely.
They have lied about every aspect of this. It’s why this is still a controversy after all this time because we still don’t know…and never will.
Yes, they also did that. But they also destroyed some non-zero amount of data, blocked attempts at the time and later to do an independent study, and have changed the story on this numerous times and in numerous ways.
Anyway, I think all of this has been said and re-said who knows how many times. And if you are frustrated, then imagine how everyone else on both sides of this also feels?
Are you convinced that China has fully shared all of the evidence and samples taken with the rest of the world?
The problem with that is that racoon dogs and other mammals have no special significance. There are any number of animals which can carry the virus. Tigers in zoos have been infected. Many deer in the US are infected. Etc. etc. etc.
The significance of the market being near the lab is that the lab is unique in being a possible source of infection. So it’s significant that the pandemic just happened to break out near the lab. If you want to counter that by making a comparable argument about the market’s animals, then you need to find something comparably significant. Which is why the initial suggestions were that bats - thought to be the ultimate source of the virus - or possibly pangolins - thought to be a possible intermediate host - were sold in that market. Once you reduce it to “mammals which can possibly carry the virus”, then you’re making an argument for plausibility, but not showing anything significant which would argue for that scenario.
They destroyed evidence before lots of it could be collected. Easier to not share something if you destroy it instead of collecting it. They have shared hundreds of samples from the market.
That alone is quite significant. As you say, we know SARS-CoV-2 can infect lots of different types of animals. There were lots of different types of animals at the market. None of those animals had to be the original source of the virus, just the one that carried it to the market.
Is actually finding the virus in samples collected at the market, in areas occupied by animals, significant? If not, why not?
Sure, maybe China is lying about the samples, maybe they know it was a lab mistake so are framing the market. That doesn’t explain why cases from before this was recognized as a pandemic are centered on the market, and even within specific sections of the market that sold live mammals.
If it originated in a lab leak, then you’d expect to see those early cases centered around lab employees and the people they visited, but that’s not what has been found.
Again, as has been said over and over, a lab leak is a legitimate hypothesis, but so far the accumulated evidence simply does not point that way. Please bring up any verified direct evidence of a lab leak with the same significance as finding the virus in samples collected from animal cages at the market.
so the answer appears to be no, they haven’t fully shared the evidence.
There are animals all over China and all over the world. If you make as broad a category as “animals which can carry the virus” then that particular market is not so unique and hence significant.
Devil is in the details here. Question is what percentage of the area covered by that market could be defined as “an area of the market where live animals were sold”. It sounds like there were live animals sold all over the place there, and it was a crowded market with stalls close together, so it’s possible that a very high percentage of that market fits that description.
Except that it is the center of the initial outbreak, and is a place where people come into close contact with lots of wild animals they normally would not encounter.
Where I live you can catch hantavirus from close contact with wild mice, plague from close contact with prairie dogs, and West Nile from close contact with infected mosquitos. If there is a hantavirus outbreak related to a store selling wild mice, nobody would be surprised.
Read the linked preprint, it’s all answered in there. Some parts of the market specialized in wild mammal sales, others did not. The positive samples were concentrated in the western side where live mammals were sold. Cases were also more likely in people who had been to the wild animal side. Positive environmental samples were frequently found on animal related surfaces, such as inside cages.
None of that is a smoking gun, but each piece is just piling up more and more evidence that the introduction SARS-CoV-2 into Wuhan was from wild animals sold at the Huanan market. How did it get into those wild animals? Did it originate in those wild animals, or were they just carriers? Is there a safe way to handle and sell wild animals?
All of that simply indicates that the virus spread there. Not that the crossover event took place there.
Your analogy to the American southwest fails because there is no where in the world in which SAR-CoV-2 is endemic in an animal population. Either an animal in the wet market was infected in the wild before capture, a person or animal infected with the novel virus entered the market and started the spread there, or the novel virus mutated in the wet market itself. These samples do nothing at all to point at any one of those possibilities specifically.
I believe that several very similar viruses are endemic among bats that live nearby. In fact, the lab was collecting bat viruses. But a lot of those animals were collected near where the bats live, too
An agglomeration of wild animals from all across the countryside is a natural place to encounter a novel virus. So is a lab that collects viruses. Both are obvious, natural places to investigate. My understanding is that having investigated both, there’s more data linking the outbreak to the market than to the lab.
No, my we’ll never know for certain, because China destroyed too much evidence. But the market is where Occam’s razor points.
And at the end of the day, it’s not terribly important which it was. It was an accident either way (there’s a LOT of evidence for “natural virus accidentally spread”.) Both the lab and the market could have better safeguards, as it happens. So… 