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A quick thread about the evidence base for this claim about Ebola, which is perhaps troubling (1/4) https://twitter.com/OIEAnimalHealth/status/1265998821466742785
The 2014 outbreak in West Africa, the largest to date, was traced back to human-bat contact without any link to wildlife trade. Many scientists find the evidence for this incomplete, but it's probably impossible to know now. (2/4) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/bat-filled-tree-may-have-been-ground-zero-ebola-epidemic
Some (not all) outbreaks since 1976 were linked to human consumption of wildlife, especially wild primates or bats as a primary food source. This is not the big, international wildlife trade with a criminal underworld side that conservationists mean (3/4) https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1005780
The more we blur these lines, the harder it will be to keep the public accurately informed about particular issues with SARS-CoV-2: e.g., no scientific evidence suggests a spillover in Huanan market, or in fact implicates the wildlife trade in SARS-CoV-2's spillover. (4/4)
