zlacker

>>datafl+(OP)
I think the media successfully conflated four separate questions:

a) Did it form in nature or in a lab?

b) Did it become more communicable via nature or via the lab?

c) Did it make it to humans through nature (or wet market) or via the lab?

d) If it came from the lab was it on purpose or an accident?

as simply "OMG IT CAME FROM A LAB" and then claimed it's all a conspiracy theory.

The media as a whole shot themselves in the foot on this one and we'll all be worse off for it.

>>caseys+3r1
I also think 'wet market' is still a conflation here - the first or earliest location that a cluster of the virus was identified, and the site of a significant evolutionary event, are not and were never likely to be the same.

We only are led to think that because the media repeated it so often.

Human-to-human transmission started (almost certainly) with one human, not one animal transmitting to multiple humans.