You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Catherine Wu is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

She's been reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020,

and she's written in detail about the microbiology

of the virus, immunity, the vaccines.

But something she's avoided weighing in on

until now was the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself.

I had been paying attention to this debate,

but largely purposely staying out of it.

People had been voiling different ideas back and forth,

but largely without hard evidence.

And I kind of wanted to say out of it

until something really big broke.

And that something is an analysis of raw data.

Genetic samples taken from the Huanan seafood wholesale market

in Wuhan, China, the early epicenter

of the pandemic's beginnings.

And in March of this year, that data, that raw data,

was quietly posted to an open genomic database

by researchers affiliated with China's Center

for Disease Control and Prevention.

I think that is a wild part of this story

...