The covid origin debate continues — back to the market
It feels the farther we get from covid, the less the public may care about the start of covid — it's in the rearview, and the whole thing, for some, is starting to feel like history, a wince at its mention. Like dirty laundry no one really wants to talk about when not that long ago it was we, Americans at least, could talk about.
A recent study in Cell, using this precious data collected by China's CDC in Jan 2020, argues that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market is indeed the site that kicked off of the pandemic, and changed our lives. Within the study, they were able to identify more species from the samples that were infected — and giving glow to the argument that more infected animals of different species were clustered together.
This makes it highly possible for a viral chutes and ladders of trading covid back and forth, perhaps from human to animal and animal to human. A real cluster cluck inside the market, possibly.
Knowing the origin of covid is important for history and learnings. If we can know, we should know. When we look back, and the children born in the 2020s hear about covid, it will be important to know the full story.
This study is another chapter to that story — the role humans played (play) stuffing masked palm civets, bamboo rats, raccoon dogs, Himalayan marmots, Amur hedgehogs, and so many more species, into cages. Then selling them in wet markets for food, medicine, luxury, pets, and more.
Even if the study makes a strong argument, it's not a slammed door. As Nature states:
"But the team noted that there was no way to establish that the animals were infected with SARS-CoV-2. Even if they were infected, they could have caught the infection from a person who brought the virus to the market, which leaves open the possibility that the market was not the site of the pandemic’s emergence."
All true. We may, and will probably, never know with icy evidence. What we do know is pandemics, deadly viruses, can leap from animals or from labs alike. The wildlife trade isn't helping. Animal health is human health. With the bird flu perhaps turning to a soft boil, a crackling of worry, the lessons we learned from covid will be all too important.
Smriti Mallapaty
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