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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Stoyan, Dietrich, Chiu, Sung Nok
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.10106
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Table of Contents:
  • In a recent prominent study Worobey et al.\ (2022, Science, 377, pp.\ 951--9) purported to demonstrate statistically that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was the epicenter of the early COVID-19 epidemic. We show that this statistical conclusion is invalid on two grounds: (1) The assumption that a centroid of early case locations or another simply constructed point is the origin of an epidemic is unproved. (2) A Monte Carlo test used to conclude that no other location than the seafood market can be the origin is flawed. Hence, the question of the origin of the pandemic has not been answered by their statistical analysis.