A senior World Health Organization expert expressed skepticism in 2020 that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a wet market, according to a U.S. State Department cable obtained by U.S. Right to Know.
The November 20, 2020 cable provides a window into the views of a high-ranking WHO expert about the pandemic’s origin, and contrasts with the certainty of some Western virologists that the pandemic crossed over from wildlife at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China. This so-called “wet-market” sold farmed and exotic imported animals and animal products, some of which are known carriers of coronaviruses.
The Huanan market has become a focal point in the controversy over the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Many proponents of the hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 arose naturally say early cases emanated from its wildlife stalls. Hypotheses involving other natural sources or the city’s nearby coronavirus labs have largely been dismissed or ignored.
But the cable reports that Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme and a top aide to Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was not convinced by the wet market hypothesis.
Ryan indicated that there could be other “original sources of the virus” outside of the market, according to a summary of his statements relayed in the cable from the U.S. Mission in Geneva.
“Many of the first cases of COVID-19 … were not associated with the market itself,” the summary of Ryan’s statements reads. ”There was likely human-to-human transmission prior to the identification of the cluster at the market.”
via usrtk.org
While this appears to be a fact, it is inconsistent with the proto-emergence of the forthcoming Scientific consensus, and therefore can be dismissed.