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The Conversation
Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, The University of Edinburgh

Did COVID come from an animal market? Here’s what the new evidence really tells us

Covid-19 United States Pandemic Wuhan Wuhan Institute of Virology

The argument about the origins of COVID has always been heated, and nowadays it feels more like a brawl than a scientific debate.

Some say that ground zero for the pandemic was a live animal market in Wuhan, China. Others argue that SARS-CoV-2 (the coronavirus that causes COVID) leaked from a nearby laboratory that was studying similar viruses. Both are plausible scenarios.

Proponents of the market hypothesis have been aggressively vocal in recent weeks. In August, an anonymous editorial in a leading medical journal talked about the “hubris needed to underpin alternative hypotheses” and “fanciful ideas … more in keeping with popular movies”.

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