Coronavirus week 87: It marches on — from Huanan Market? And into wingnut stupidity

That's the theme of David Dayen's piece at Prospect. "It marches on." COVID, if you personalize it, doesn't care that many people are tired of lockdowns. It marches on. He notes that more than the Black Lives Matter protests, in some ways, the anti-restrictions protests (sorry, but they weren't "lockdowns, and framing itself is an issue)

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Now, the main piece:

A new piece at Science claims that we can determine pretty well that Huanan Market was the epicenter of the outbreak. Couple of notes on that. First, even if so, that doesn't mean that WIV's lax protocols still didn't have an indirect hand in this, including experimentation inside the lab leading to a leak which infected wet-market animals. Second, and speaking of, this is a raccoon dog. Per photo at left, yes, it does look kind of like a raccoon, but per the second half of the name, it's a canid most closely related to foxes. And, per the likes of Alina Chan in her new book, if so, it still doesn't make Xi Jinping Thought any more trustworthy on this issue.

Per Tablet Mag, there's additional reason to say this piee does NOT close the door on WIV. It notes that Richard Ebright Tweeted that workers at Chinese labs were known to sell test animals to wet markets.  In this case, no, not a lab leak, but still, HUGE lab sloppiness.

Michael Worobey, the author of the Science piece, says he considered a lab leak in the past, openly. That said, his wet market statement is by-him admittedly based on Chinese research. Alina Chan, who's written a book about everything problematic with China on the issue, and being Chinese-American, undercuts the racism angle, says Worobey has only one piece of the puzzle.

I agree.

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Now, the rest of the roundup.

Dayan also talks about the Great Resignation in a longer piece; he analogizes COVID to the first big hit of the plague in Europe in the 1300s and how the dramatic cuts in workforce due to plague deaths liberated and empowered the still living.

Balloon Juice has a good roundup of omicron news and stupidity along with general COVID news, stupidity and conspiracy theory reports. One interesting fact is that many early omicron cases reported in Botswana were from European diplomats traveling there. Full story here. Friendly reminder that Angela Merkel is more of a capitalist, bad side, than Status Quo Joe. Also from that roundup? Whenever wingnuts claim that they support the science on this issue, remind them that Missouri's governor blocked the release to the public of a study by his own state's Department of Health and Senior Services that showed mask mandates work. And in international wingnut news, Brazil's Supreme Court has officially OKed a probe into President Jair Bolsinaro's repeated claim that vaccines cause AIDS.

Zeynep Tufekci has an open-thread type update, extracted from Tweets. The main thing she's right on is that it's too soon to tell about severity. She also reminds that antibodies are only one part of the immune system, something some in the science community kind of overlooked last week when attacking BioNTech's cofounder for saying their Pfizer and other vaccines will likely still offer a decent amount of protection. Go read the whole thing, though. Several thoughts there.

Omicron cases look to grow rapidly in the UK.

Reinfection appears fairly high in the previously infected; and so far, as with Delta, infection severity is worse in those with infectious immunity than with the vaccinated, per Katelyn Jetalina.

COVID antivaxxerism and the claim that we just need better nutrition or some "supplements" tain't so new after all. Learn about America's big polio antivaxxer.