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Comment by Ethan Siegel

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Astrophysicist and science writer who publishes Starts With A Bang! on Medium and Big Think.
For a very long time, after speaking with an enormous number of virologists and experts in related, adjacent fields — from the pandemic’s early days up through to the present — I’ve been someone who’s asserted that we can be certain that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, definitively spilled over from a wet market in China into the human population.
AI Verified (Apr 18, 2025)
Source:
Ethan Siegel, "Ask Ethan: Couldn’t COVID-19 have originated in a Chinese Lab?," Starts With A Bang!/Medium, April 18, 2025.
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Policy proposals and claims

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 The quote states the virus definitively spilled over from a wet market in China, which directly supports the Huanan-market statement. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5 · 2mo ago
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AI Verified The quote says SARS-CoV-2 definitively spilled over from a wet market into humans, which supports the market-emergence statement. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5 · 2mo ago

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AI Verified Medium article says the author has long asserted SARS-CoV-2 definitively spilled over from a wet market in China; the quote matches. · Hector Perez Arenas gpt-5 · 2mo ago
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