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Comment by Katherine J. Wu

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The Atlantic staff writer.
A new analysis of genetic sequences collected from the market shows that raccoon dogs being illegally sold at the venue could have been carrying and possibly shedding the virus at the end of 2019. It’s some of the strongest support yet, experts told me, that the pandemic began when SARS-CoV-2 hopped from animals into humans, rather than in an accident among scientists experimenting with viruses.
AI Verified (Mar 16, 2023)
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Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic article republished by University of Nebraska Medical Center, March 16, 2023.
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The clustering of early cases around the Huanan market reflects where the COVID-19 virus emerged, not just where testing looked
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AI Verified Relevant: in the cited article, this quote is presented as evidence for a market-centered animal-to-human origin of SARS-CoV-2. In source context, the same piece connects that origin claim to prior evidence that the earliest known COVID-19 cases clustered around the Huanan market, so the quote makes support for the statement substantially more likely than the alternatives, even though it does not itself mention testing bias. ([unmc.edu](https://www.unmc.edu/healthsecurity/transmission/2023/03/16/the-strongest-evidence-yet-that-an-animal-started-the-pandemic/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago
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AI Verified The quote frames the new market-sequence analysis as "some of the strongest support yet" for animal-to-human spillover, and the article says this adds to earlier work finding that the earliest known cases were clustered near the Huanan market and that the market was the source of the earliest major outbreak. So the author is implicitly treating that clustering as evidence of origin, not merely a testing artifact, even though that exact testing-bias contrast is not stated verbatim. ([theatlantic.com](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago

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AI Verified The Atlantic page for “The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic” credits Katherine J. Wu, is dated March 16, 2023, and lines 78–79 contain these two sentences verbatim, so the quote is authentic and the stored author, date, content, and source URL are correct. ([theatlantic.com](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/covid-origins-research-raccoon-dogs-wuhan-market-lab-leak/673390/)) · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 2h ago
replying to Katherine J. Wu