Seems plausible. idk, most serious business experts still seem to think the wet market is the obvious prime suspect.
The earliest case of SARS was in Foshan, about 1,000 km from the remote bat cave in Yunnan province they think is the source. Many of the early SARS cases were animal touchers.
Patient 1 had the earliest case, identified by retrospective case searching. He lived with his wife and four children in Foshan city and became ill on November 16, 2002. He had not traveled outside Foshan in the 2 weeks before his illness and had no contact history, but he had prepared food including chicken, domestic cat, and snake.
Patient 2 lived in Heyuan but worked as a restaurant chef in Shenzhen. His work was mainly stir-frying and did not involve killing animals.
Patient 4 worked as a chef in a Zhongshan township restaurant, where he prepared steamed dishes and had contact with snakes, civet cats, foxes, and rats.
Patient 5, from Guangzhou, had no history of animal contact other than with a pet guinea pig that died a month before his symptoms began.
Patient 7, from Zhaoqing, was the only female index case. She traveled to Guangzhou 2 weeks before becoming ill, although she could not recollect contact with anyone with symptoms of SARS. She worked at a market but did not sell animals.
The index patient in the neighboring province of Guangxi was a 26-year-old man, who infected several family members. He worked as a driver for a wild animal dealer and returned home to Guangxi after becoming ill on January 8, 2003. The dealer supplied Guangdong markets with wild animals from Guangxi, other Chinese provinces, and Vietnam.
Furthermore,
The reservoir is still unknown, but SARS-CoV has been isolated from Himalayan palm civets (Paguma larvata), and evidence of infection has been found in a raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides), a Chinese ferret-badger (Melogale moschata), and humans working at a live animal market in Shenzen municipality (14).
Seroprevalence of immunoglobulin (Ig) G antibody to SARS-CoV is substantially higher among traders of live animals (13.0%) in Guangzhou municipality than among healthy controls (1.2%), and the highest prevalence of antibody is among those who traded primarily masked palm civets (72.7%) (15).
Two of the seven index patients were restaurant chefs; food handlers (who handle, kill, or butcher animals) were overrepresented among early-onset cases with no contact history (including the first reported death, in a snake seller); and patients with early onset were more likely than patients with late onset to live near an agricultural produce market (where live wild animals are generally offered for sale).
However, none of the early patients were commercial farmers nor was living near a farm associated with increased risk, findings that suggest a wild animal rather than a livestock or poultry source. Although trade in wildlife is now illegal in China, a range of mammalian, avian, and reptile species can still be found in some produce markets, and a black market in these species probably exists. Many such animals come from outside Guangdong Province, often through Guangxi Province to the west, and may originate in Vietnam or other parts of Southeast Asia. The observation that the index patient in Guangxi Province was a wild animal trader who supplied Guangdong markets offers some circumstantial evidence for such a link.
The key takeaway seems to be that they didn’t learn a god damned thing.
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Cardinal fucking rule: always leave yourself an out.
in b4 the lock!
This is a nice thread you’ve got here. It would be a shame if something were to happen it.