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Ralph Baric's Attorney's avatar

Maybe it's a cheap point to make, but the CIA, the FBI, and intelligence agencies writ large aren't largely comprised of rebels, self-styled or otherwise.

There are intel lab leakers, data-oriented lab leakers, academic ones, activist ones, crazy ones, bat-shit crazy ones, MAGA ones, and Jamie Metzl. Conversely, the other side is a small academic niche and the rationalist autists they've persuaded.

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zach hensel's avatar

Xinfadi is a particularly odd choice as an example for a reason to be skeptical of a market as the origin of an outbreak. Published evidence and analysis that I'm aware concludes it's an animal industry source at the market -- albeit a frozen one that wasn't infected itself.

I'm a little skeptical of that conclusion but I haven't looked closely enough at the data to say more than that.

In general, these examples are problematic because they almost all (maybe all?) take place during the first wave of the pandemic and its response, in countries were much of the economy and other parts of society had a dramatically reduced density and when infection control was dramatically increased in healthcare. The food industry isn't capable of reducing density to the same degree as other industries; people need to eat and food is cheap. Lots of food market anecdotes after early 2020; few market anecdotes in the beginning of 2020 when SARS-CoV-2 was first introduced around the world.

It's not a status quo situation like Wuhan was at the end of 2019. For that, you need to look at large SARS and MERS outbreaks for a comparison of where somewhat similar viruses spread disproportionately. The answer is that beyond the earliest days of the outbreak, spread is most rapid in the healthcare system.

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