CharonY Posted March 17, 2023 Posted March 17, 2023 New analysis of SARS-CoV-2 positive swabs indicated heavy presence of racoon dog DNA, suggesting that those (illegally) sold animals adds weight to the suggestion of the market as a possible spillover source. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/
StringJunky Posted March 17, 2023 Posted March 17, 2023 I'm sure there will be plenty who handwave it away because it doesn't suit their purposes.
exchemist Posted March 17, 2023 Posted March 17, 2023 1 hour ago, CharonY said: New analysis of SARS-CoV-2 positive swabs indicated heavy presence of racoon dog DNA, suggesting that those (illegally) sold animals adds weight to the suggestion of the market as a possible spillover source. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/ There is an account of what has been found here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/17/covid-19-origins-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-data. which is not behind a paywall. It seems the international team has found evidence from details of DNA sequences, uploaded by the Chinese analysts who sequenced the Covid +ve swabs in question to an international database called Gisaid. These sequences have since been taken down without explanation by the Chinese, but not before they have been copied. So the mystery now is why the Chinese researchers originally claimed there was no animal DNA, and why they seem now to be covering the fact there was in fact animal DNA after all. One might think that the Chinese authorities would be very keen to claim the virus came from animals and not from a leak from one of their own labs. It is also not clear to me at least, exactly what these swabs were, i.e. from where and when they were taken. I start to wonder if there is a disinformation game of some kind going on.
CharonY Posted March 17, 2023 Author Posted March 17, 2023 5 minutes ago, exchemist said: It is also not clear to me at least, exactly what these swabs were, i.e. from where and when they were taken. There were several initiatives from the Chinese CDC to look for sources in 2020 and they took various samples from the market itself, including animals. Why they have been released and then removed is anyone's guess at this point. Whether they found animal DNA, well that depends on which traces have been found and matched to racoon dog, if they looked for wrong markers (or not at all) they may have not found it in the first place. I.e. it could simply be sloppy work, which is not unheard of in high-throughput sequencing, and considering under which pressures the initial analyses were done. The issue with authoritarian and non-transparent government is that it is often really difficult to distinguish malice from incompetence (also note that during that time of initial sampling lab-leaks were not high on list of likely scenarios yet).
CharonY Posted March 21, 2023 Author Posted March 21, 2023 Here is the report on the analyses: https://zenodo.org/record/7754299 with a preface from the authors, discussing the unusual situation. In addition to potential pressure from the Chinese government, there is also the possibility of issues with data sharing. In an ideal system, open data sharing in science would be the norm. The issue is that it puts researchers with heavy data generation components at a distinct disadvantage and I think that worldwide there is no funding system that I am aware of that really takes that into account.
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