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0 pointspcrh3y ago0 comments

You state below that the requirement for cases to be linked to the market was removed after only a few days. Is it possible that all 120 "unlinked" cases were in fact identified within those few days?

Removal of a claim of "dispositive" evidence isn't weakening the case; there could be further incontrovertible evidence that would make the present evidence no longer dispositive.

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ayjchan3y ago· 2 in thread

By the time the case definition requirement for a link to the market was removed (Jan 18, 2020), nearly 200 cases had been confirmed. This is not including the number of cases that were suspected/clinically diagnosed.

The 174 cases with onset in Dec 2019 considered by Worobey et al. include both confirmed cases and clinically diagnosed cases. Therefore, most, if not all, of these cases had been identified using the criteria that the patients had to either be linked to the market or, if unlinked to the market, have been identified at hospitals near the market or in the neighborhood of the market.

See: https://archive.ph/LVU6z

ayjchan3y ago

Re: weakening of their claim, not only did Worobey et al. have to remove these instances of unscientific language, but they also had to insert a new study limitations section and this clarification in their article:

“However, the observation that the preponderance of early cases were linked to the Huanan market does not establish that the pandemic originated there.”

pcrhOP3y ago

"Study limitations" is standard language in epidemiological papers, so that's not a surprise, nor a condemnation.

Further, to my knowledge it is known that "case zero" (i.e. the zoonotic event) did not occur at the Wuhan market, specifically because there was already sequence divergence in early cases.

However, that doesn't prevent the market from being the main source of the outbreak. There's no evidence for any other source.

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