From TPM Reader KR …

The two studies, published last year in Science, are highly technical but Dr. Steve Novella  breaks down at Science Based Medicine.  Taken together they are a “body blow”, he says, to the lab leak hypothesis.

The first study used genetic analysis of the virus in the earliest cases to trace their origin and spread. You can use genetic analysis to trace spread as the virus mutates rapidly, splitting off into branching subtypes identifiable by genetic markers. This analysis finds that there were very likely two distinct spillover events, not just one, although they happened close together in space and time – in Wuhan in late November and early December 2019. The authors conclude:

We covered quite a bit of the horse-pill propaganda being peddled as a COVID cure by many in anti-vax circles and by some members of the Trump White House at the time when hydroxychloroquine first emerged as a word that people knew how to pronounce. It provided some dark comedic relief as an absurd storyline to chase during an otherwise very bleak and scary time. (Hydroxychloroquine, you’ll recall, would eventually be replaced in the vaccine-skeptic imagination by an actual livestock pill, ivermectin.)