The raccoon dog did it: That was the explosive takeaway of a genomic analysis conducted in March by a trio of scientists who had scrutinized data from a market in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic was thought to have begun.
To the proponents of this lab leak hypothesis, searching for an intermediate species was futile at best, misdirection at worst. Making their case was difficult, however, with then-President Trump regularly launching vituperative attacks on China, baselessly suggesting that the virus was intentionally created as a bioweapon. Few scientists sought association, however indirect, with the likes of Alex Jones and other figures on the conspiratorial fringe.
Bloom’s analysis did not merely look at where coronavirus and animal genetic material commingled but also at how thorough that commingling had been. And while the Worobey group had only examined mammalian DNA, Bloom sifted through every strand of genetic material, regardless of whether it came from a chicken, a human or a cut of beef.
As for the raccoon dog, it was unquestionably innocent."There is a negative correlation between the abundance of SARS-CoV-2 and mitochondrial material from raccoon dogs,"The most viral material came from swabs with DNA from stalls where seafood such as catfish and largemouth bass were sold. In a crowded marketplace, there were myriad ways for the DNA of different species to end up in the same place, mixed in with genetic traces of the coronavirus.
“A careful analysis of these samples does not prove or disprove any particular scenario for how the virus entered the market,” Bloom told Yahoo News, “but does suggest that genetic analysis of the samples is not directly informative for answering that question.”From the start, the narrative of how the coronavirus originated was a media story, one shaped in large part by attitudes about Trump.
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