“Not only is there no correlation between raccoon dog and virus genetic material, but even the only sample with both raccoon dog and virus was likely cross-contaminated during the sample processing,” said molecular biologist Alina Chan.
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.
Working with the bigger database, Bloom processed an astonishing three terabytes of data from the Huanan Market — genetic sequences from the same swabs taken in early 2020 that Worobey and his collaborators thought pointed to raccoon dogs. In other words, the Chinese researchers who had been the first to study the swabs, and had concluded that humans carried the virus to the market, appeared to have been correct all along.
of Johns Hopkins was the sole respondent. He sent Yahoo News an insulting email in response to questions raised by the new study.From the start, skeptics maintained that there were scant grounds for the assertion that raccoon dogs were the pandemic’s intermediate species, if the only evidence for that claim was the presence of viral and animal DNA in the same market stall.
In his paper, Bloom argues that his study does not contradict the raccoon dog hypothesis but, rather, merely points out the near impossibility of using the market swabs to reach any meaningful conclusion about viral origins.
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