Slack / Private Message Drop — page 829

Super-interesting Eddie - learning a lot! [2021-05-17 19:06:00] [Robert Garry] Reminds me I need to find some African Batpeople. And snake hunters too - I'm pretty sure the rock pythons have reptarenaviruses. Kristian once volunteered to help IIRC (some rock pythons get to be 10 meters). [2021-05-17 19:20:35] [Eddie Holmes] Amazing what you learn when you actually ask an expert. Certainly plenty of opportunities for transmission during the colder months. [2021-05-17 20:51:34] [Kristian Andersen] Very interesting - although I didn't quite get what time period we're talking about for all the activity above? Is all of this craziness happening around November? Would be great to specifically get a sense of whether October - November are "special" when it comes to bats moving around, getting into new territories, etc. Pretty darn clear piece of the puzzle if the answer is yes... Also, Eddie - any insights on how "special" Wuhan may be? Do we know anything about how many wet markets? How many people frequent wet markets? Where does all of this rank compared to other cities? Forgetting about WIV right now, if we think about the most risky cities in China for coronavirus outbreaks, how high up on that list is Wuhan? [2021-05-17 20:57:41] [Eddie Holmes] I asked her about Nov-Jan. I don't we can say 'special' exactly. I've also been trying find about the wet markets. It's not easy. [2021-05-18 01:23:12] [Eddie Holmes] Ok. 1. Had a chat to a few colleagues in China and the view is that there is nothing special about Wuhan in terms of the number and size of the wet markets BUT the city is hugely well connected and is famous for that (it's known as the River City). You can get there from anywhere in 6 hours on a train. So, people would animals in from all over China to markets in Wuhan, and the animals they sell there are basically a national mix. [2021-05-18 01:25:04] [Eddie Holmes] 2. I asked the journalist on the ground what he know and he sent me this answer. He's a bit all over the place, but what I get from this is whatever as going on within the Wuhan Institute of Virology, what goes outside its highly regulated doors was probably 100X more risky when it comes to disease emergence. [2021-05-18 01:25:09] [Eddie Holmes] "The story on "the boss" of Huanan and the other market is with the Guardian editors. Now working on the one about the zoo/wildlife rescue center/WIV. No one from WIV seems to want to talk about the relationship, so frustrating ... but people don't seem to want to talk about any of this. Can't get anyone from any of these places to talk. Finding out a lot of problematic things though. Just one for instance ... the rescue center had a monkey that became famous for escaping six times over the course of a few years. Terrible biosecurity. I walked along one side of their grounds and there are a couple spots where it would have been easy to get up in a tree and climb over the fence and barbed wire. That Yang Guoxiang who was on the China side of the WHO study team - I've found a few papers of his supporting Asiatic black bear use for bear bile extraction, another on some kind of artificial breeding related to mink. That "wildlife rescue center" also does hybridization experiments according to a Xinhua story I found, with 30 hybrids successful, though the only ones it mentioned were ducks. Back to your question ... Huanan didn't seem terribly huge compared to those I've seen in Guangdong. The Four Seasons market is very big, but only part of that devoted to meat/aquatic/poultry. There were no live mammals there when I went but a lady