Issues in COVID-19 research and statistical analyses (Part XVVV) March 2, 2022
According to a February 28, 2022 recent article n U.S. News World based on several studies, the research is suggestive that the Wuhan China wet market was the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The article is largely based on two pre-print studies, meaning neither study has been peer-reviewed and formally published. The Worobey pre-print article (2022) findings suggested that using geospatial analyses that two early lineages of the Sars-Cov-2 virus was clearly associated with the Huanan Seafood Market and goes on to add that no other hypothesized origin narrative is supported by the data. The authors cite their table 1 of median distances and centroids with several p-values but do not list anywhere what statistical test was used except this buried within their methods section in the supplement, “Significance testing of the distance between the December centroids and the Huanan market compared to the null distributions was based on random samples (with replacement) of 1,000 points from the population density data (weighted) or the Weibo data (3), to represent plausible starting point of the COVID-19 epidemic