But sure, the outbreak probably started in the Wuhan wetmarket, where they don't even sell bats. Let's keep believing that.
No bats? None at all?
That I would find hard to believe. In some corner or other of the hellish menagerie.
But even if not, a common theory is bats>...>pangolins>...>humans, and any of the (inc. missing) links could have occured at caging areas prior to the market. Even the first-in-human case, if that was a trader (or more than one) who passed on more than animals at the market after visiting the back-end wholesale source one prior morning.
Hard to prove. Especially given the early potentially key cases probably had higher mortality because it was before anyone even knew it was special and (coverups or not) needed more treatment than hot chicken soup. Or pangolin, maybe.
On the other side of the speculation spectrum, I've seen (baseless) suggestions that a given CCTV screenshot supposedly depicts a named Wuhan lab doctor stopping off at a train station halfway between her lab and another lace of work to drop off a piece of dry-ice in a bin. So says the commentary, though I went no further down that particular pangolin-hole. Maybe it's actually the station they say[1], maybe it's the person they say[2], and as for the bin-thing. It's a stupid nefarious plan. Who starts digging into bins (on stations - even if there's homeless in the area they'd probably stay away from the monitored concourse) or deliberately breathing in deep near them? If you were on a train with some infectious agent then do something with it
on the train... Casually smear it on the door button with your gloved hand when departing, or chuck a fragment of your time-releasing frozen pathogen into a handy blowing vent as you move along a carriage (normal behavior when you know your stop's station exit is near a different set of train doors from where your entry doors were, shuffle along casually picking your moments to stop by vents you like the look of) or leave things on seats that you know will be touched by the next person sitting there.
Instead of that, conspicuouly alight and reboard? Not necessarilly going to he flashed up as an immediate code-red to send the SWAT team for, but in a country where CCTV is not just their main broadcaster, and government-sanctioned plots would be far less clunky than this film-script of a contrived situation that's better for being watched by an audience with disbelief levitation skilks than having any practical benefits...
No, on the whole I think a (maybe) bat, in a given day being in amongst thousands of other bats and animals in a scene that is repeated day in/day out for years and years, is not so unlikely a source as some apparently intelligent people trying to work against the government using a stupid method
or a supremely controlling government sponsoring something underhand (on its own territory!) and yet failing to prevent key damning footage from surviving and leaking to the world at large.
There's many other intermediate explanations, too. Like starting off trying to create a false-false-flag operation (they have someone set to be the fall-girl, either the woman in the blurry footage or the person they were conveniently impersonating) to 'prove' external meddling on their citizens, then had to fudge things when the results went differently from how they hoped. But even that is more screenplay than actual spycraft, so don't take this as being 'my theory' and doubt heavily any such 'serious' claims that might arise elsewhere onnthis topic. I guarantee you I'm not part of a false-false-false-flag propaganda plot, or[3] my name name's not Jason Bourne...
(Edit: I include the
accidental release of Lab-virus to the outside world as an intermediate theory. Though 96% (was it?) genetic match is really not much at all, even at viral lengths. Many bits of a virus need to be very much like the bits of another virus (especially if of a family) to be viable and
not highly reconfigured. Given the whole ~60% or so 'match' between human and banana, by the popular meme, and that's across two major clades of life. And if a lab researcher went, along with many others who shop in Wuhan, to the Wet Market and got the first external step infection (of a sample mishandled after isolating from bats, maybe bought in their prior visit?) then it's virtually indistinguishable and unprovable either way.)
[1] 99% of those that would state it as fact wouldn't bother to check it was, and the 1% likely wouldn't say if they found it didn't match. And then if I spent time to check and found it false I'd be ignored, and if true then that just meant the 'source' wasn't lazy and using the first google search item for a station CCTV clip that they thought could be twisted, but found something
correctly located that could be twisted.
[2] Given the res, the doubts in [1], above, are even more pronounced.
[3] Normal-Or, not Exclusive-Or.
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Topic: Untamed Virus Containment Thread:COVID-19: Lurking Omni-Flu Edition (Read 496836 times)