Look who was so unhappy about the conclusions of the just released SAGO report on COVID-19 origins:
👉🏻 China, Russia and Cambodia (a vassal state of China).
Carlos Morel, the reliable friend of Daszak (also part of his $1.3 billion Global Virome Project) resigned 2 weeks ago.
The SAGO reports key findings are:
1️⃣ The market could just as well have been a superspreader event,
2️⃣ No infected animal at the market,
3️⃣ Ascertainment bias fully possible in early data,
4️⃣ Early data clearly only tip of the iceberg.
5️⃣ Data is missing on all sides.
Politely, they still maintain that the weight of 'available' evidence 'suggests' a zoonosis,
Since they also keep repeating that the available data is very sparse, I am not sure what the 'weight of available evidence' really is. Sounds really light-weight.
But here is their 'most compelling evidence' :
⑴ The market was selling animals susceptible to SARS-CoV-2.
⑵ The market, which may well have been a superspreader event, contained SARS-CoV-2 in its environmental swabs.
That's it..
@gadboit @thackerpd @R_H_Ebright
The second argument is empty:
There were no more positive samples (in proportion to all samples, + and -) at the animal stalls. 🤡
The first argument is hardly surprising:
100s of markets in China were still selling farmed animals (some legally), supplemented by wild caught and definitely not legal ones. Especially in the south of China.
It would have been surprising if the Wuhan market did NOT sell some.
In the end, the report eviscerates the market papers.
Bad day for Worobey et al, Pekar et al, Holmes, Dabarre, and all the pushers of the zoonosis certitudes.
The zoonotic crew is trying to put a brave face on it, but you can feel their pain.
@PeterDaszak
Gilles Demaneuf
@gdemaneuf
Pointy Head. Opinions, analyses and views expressed are purely mine and should not in any way be characterised as representing any institution or company.