Conspiracy theorists need little more than suspicion, some cherry-picked facts and vibrant imaginations to spin tales about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.... Researchers need to check every fact as they ferret out the story, piece by piece. University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey offers a down payment on such sleuthing in this week’s edition of the journal Science.... Drawn from medical journal articles, the work of World Health Organization investigators, media rep

Dr Michael Worobey, an expert in virus evolution at the University of Arizona, made his way through heaps of public accounts of the first COVID-19 cases, interviews with early patients and journal articles.... He claims the World Health Organisation( WHO) inquiry had made a mistake in its ordering.... Dr Worobey claims that instead of the WHO’s original patient zero – who lived far away from the Wuhan wet market – the first known case was actually a seafood vendor. Now, more than a dozen leadi

MELBOURNE( BLOOMBERG)-Early Covid-19 cases traced to markets in Wuhan, China, mirror the initial spread of Sars 17 years earlier, scientists said in a paper that concludes that an animal contagion is the most likely explanation for the pandemic's genesis. The epidemiological history of Sars-CoV-2 is comparable to previous animal market-associated outbreaks of coronaviruses and offers a simple route for human exposure, Dr Edward Holmes, Dr Andrew Rambaut and 19 other researchers said Wednesday( J

Members of a World Health Organization team are seen through a window wearing protective gear during a field visit to the Hubei Animal Disease Control and Prevention Center in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province, on Feb.... Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who contributed to the article, had signed a letter with other scientists last spring saying both theories were viable.... " The lab leak idea is almost certainly a huge distraction that's taking fo

10, 2021 file photo, World Health Organization team member Peter Ben Embarek speaks to journalists as he arrives at the airport at the end of their WHO mission to investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province.... In recent weeks, however, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has acknowledged it was" premature" to rule out a possible lab leak as the source of COVID-19, saying last month that he was asking China to be more transparent about the ea

SHANGHAI( REUTERS)-The virus that causes Covid-19 could have started spreading in China as early as October 2019, two months before the first case was identified in the central city of Wuhan, a new study showed on Friday( June 25). Researchers from Britain’s University of Kent used methods from conservation science to estimate that SARS-CoV-2 first appeared from early October to mid-November 2019, according to a paper published in the PLOS Pathogens journal. The most likely date for the virus’s

Fauci faces increasing questions on Wuhan lab, gain-of-function research Fox News' Greg Palkot on Dr.... Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, was published Thursday in the journal Science.... The new study comes amid swirling questions regarding the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, a topic that has bitterly divided the country for months....

There is now a division among intelligence officials as to which scenario for viral origin is more likely. The new paper, which was posted online on Wednesday but has yet to be published in a scientific journal, was written by a team of 21 virologists.... It included species like civets and raccoon dogs that can act as intermediate hosts for coronaviruses.Dr.... Worobey called that study “ a game-changing paper.” He also pointed to the timing of the earliest cases of Covid in Wuhan....

It indicated that the 241 sequences had been collected by a scientist named Fu Aisi at Renmin Hospital in Wuhan. Searching medical literature, Dr Bloom eventually found another study posted online in March 2020 by Fu and colleagues, describing a new experimental test for Sars-CoV-2.... Instead, they publishedonly some mutations in the viruses. But a number of clues indicated to Dr Bloom that the samples were the source of the 241 missing sequences.... The papers included no explanation as to w

Butchered dogs displayed for sale at a stall inside a meat market during the local dog meat festival, in Yulin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China.... There’s blood because of people chopping them up, ” PeterDaszak, president ofEcoHealthAlliance, which works to protect wildlife and public health from emerging diseases, told theAssociated Presslast month.... Vendors sell fish and poultry at an outdoor wet market in Shanghai's northern district of Zhabei....