Michael Worobey joins TWiV to explain evidence that SARS-CoV-2 emerged via the wildlife trade and that the Huanan market was the unambiguous epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Kathy Spindler, and Brianne Barker
Guest: Michael Worobey
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Download TWiV 876 (128 MB .mp3, 107 min)
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Links for this episode
- Early COVID-19 cases in Wuhan (TWiV 833) 11:20
- Huanan market was epicenter of COVID-19 (Zenodo) 11:33, 22:54, 27:47
- Two spillover events launched COVID-19 pandemic (Zenodo) 35:09
- Robert Malone and Peter McCullough: A litany of untruths (Decoding the Gurus) 1:34:02
- Timestamps by Jolene. Thanks!
Weekly Picks 1:26:55
Brianne – Kartchner Caverns (info from Wikipedia here)
Kathy – Laminar flow and turbulent flow
Rich – Wikipedia
Vincent – The Human Lake by Carl Zimmer
Listener Picks
Brad – NASASpaceflight
Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees
Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv
The only real evidence I can see is the steadfast refusal of cooperation from the Chinese authorities, the creation and spread of false evidence and rumours, the distruction of evidence from the early days of the outbreak, the deaths and disappearances of people connected to the origins of Covid 19 – and so on and so forth!
What does all that say to you?
Two things:
Cover-up!
Or being extremely naive to believe otherwise..
The whole thing says that no-one wanted to be the official upon whose desk the lack of enforcement around the markets landed. All you needed is a few folks with a bit of power trying to duck the problem for the problem to completely blow out. The US had similar problems, where the orange mandarin stocked the response with spineless muppets.
The podcast that listener Brad is looking for is “Debunk the Funk.”
And another absolute banger of a show, at least for us non-biologist listeners
Thank you for this presentation. I was surprised by the claim that the tMRCA of SARS-CoV-2 was Dec 10, 2019, the day when the earliest market case has been documented. A collection of 10 separate studies have dates ranging from mid-Oct to Mid-Nov. The earliest date I have seen is actually from an 83,688 genome study and reports a tMRCA of Aug 16, 2019 with a 20 day 95% CI:
Xia X. Dating the Common Ancestor from an NCBI Tree of 83688 High-Quality and Full-Length SARS-CoV-2 Genomes. Viruses. 2021 Sep 8;13(9):1790. doi: 10.3390/v13091790. PMID: 34578371; PMCID: PMC8472983.
If the first market case is weeks or months after ‘Patient Zero’ how can the market data inform the origin?