Where Did Covid Come From? Investigator Foreshadows Fresh Clues

[UpInArms]

Scientists probing the origins of the coronavirus are wrapping up a lengthy investigation in China and have found “important clues” about a Wuhan seafood market’s role in the outbreak.

Peter Daszak, a New York-based zoologist assisting the World Health Organization-sponsored mission, said he anticipates the main findings will be released before his planned Feb. 10 departure. Speaking from the central city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 mushroomed in December 2019, Daszak said the 14-member group worked with experts in China and visited key hot spots and research centers to uncover “some real clues about what happened.”

Investigators want to know how the SARS-CoV-2 virus -- whose closest known relative came from bats 1,000 miles away -- spread explosively in Wuhan before causing the worst contagion in more than a century. Daszak said the investigation heralds a turning point in pandemic mitigation.

... snip ...

The lack of a clear pathway from bats to humans has stoked speculation -- refuted by Daszak and many other scientists -- that the virus might have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a maximum bio-containment laboratory studying bat-borne coronaviruses.

... snip ...

“We know now what we didn’t know then -- that for every sick case, there were others that were asymptomatic or difficult to distinguish from a cold or cough,” Daszak said. “And so it’s not unexpected that there would have been other cases other than ones that got into hospital. But how many others, when did this start? That’s the sort of thing we’re still working on.”

Viruses are passed along “convoluted rivers of emergence” and tracing that journey is complicated and will take “a really long time,” Daszak said. “What I have seen already tells me that there are some real clues about what happened, and I hope that we’ll be able to make a solid explanation of that by the end of this trip.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-07/where-did-covid-come-from-investigator-foreshadows-fresh-clues

[Squinch]

1. I thought I had read that it was surprisingly widespread in a few towns in Italy in September.

I can't find it now, but it was one of the articles that talk about those sewage studies.

And Italy was one of the first countries to have a blowup of cases.

[soothsayer]

2. Exactly, or was it December

[Squinch]

6. No, it was September. Here's the article.

https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-italy-timing-idUSKBN27W1J2
It showed that four cases dating back to the first week of October were positive for antibodies, meaning they had got infected in September, Giovanni Apolone, a co-author of the study, told Reuters.

This whole thing could have started somewhere far from China.

[soothsayer]

7. Ah very good

[OnDoutside]

5. Northern Italy in the areas around the fashion industry in Milan.

What was posited at the time was there were a couple of hundred thousand Chinese migrants working in the clothes factories/sweat shops, who went home during the Christmas/New Year period. A lot came from the Wuhan region. So they unknowingly brought it back, and because many lived in cramped conditions, Covid quickly spread. An added problem was that many people from around Europe, headed to Northern Italy in late January and early February for Ski holidays. This all helped spread it around Europe and then onwards to the New York gateway.

[bamagal62]

3. A waste of my time.

Basically, we still have no idea and we won’t know for a long time.

[NCDem47]

4. ...and it will be FURTHER politicized to death to advance agendas.

Fueling conspiracies for decades.