Subject: Re: Covid, its origins, research going forward
I get my Epidemiology information from a private online group composed of over 5000 doctors, scientists, a few statisticians, and a few non-contributing bozos like me who sneaked in because we were in multiple clinical trials.

"New research published in the journal Cell provides further support that COVID-19 did not originate from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, but rather through natural transmission from animals—similar to how the original SARS virus emerged in 2002. The study shows that the virus’s spread across China to Wuhan mirrors the time and geographic patterns seen during the first SARS outbreak, which the researchers argue strongly undermines the need for a lab-based explanation.

According to the researchers, including Joel Wertheim from the University of California San Diego, there is nothing unusual or inexplicable about how SARS-CoV-2 reached Wuhan. Previous studies have already linked early COVID-19 cases to the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan—a location known for selling wild animals, where traces of the virus have also been found in those animals. Additional studies have identified two separate viral lineages circulating early in the outbreak, and another has genetically traced the virus to multiple animals at the market.

This new research suggests that the virus may have originated in western China or northern Laos, but it likely reached Wuhan via the wildlife trade—legal or illegal—because the distance is too great for the virus to have traveled solely through bat-to-human transmission. This pattern closely resembles how the original SARS virus spread through animal markets.
The scientists emphasize that zoonotic spillover—when pathogens jump from animals to humans—is a recurring pattern in the emergence of pandemics. Although some details, such as the exact intermediate animal host between bats and humans, are still unknown, the researchers believe they are getting closer to identifying it within the next couple of years.

The study provides strong scientific evidence that SARS-CoV-2 followed a natural path of animal-to-human transmission, and that there is no need to invoke a lab leak hypothesis to explain its emergence in Wuhan.

https://www.cell.com/cell/full...(25)00353-8...
https://www.discovermagazine.c......