A lab-leak-side statistical critique operating at finer spatial grain than Stoyan & Chiu’s city-scale analysis: it examines case and wildlife-stall locations within the Huanan market itself. Argues the earliest market-associated case was not located at or near a wildlife stall, that the spatial distribution of cases within the market is consistent with a random (Poisson point process) pattern uncorrelated with wildlife-stall locations, and that no statistically significant correlation exists between case density and wildlife-stall density. Concludes the market more plausibly functioned as a human-to-human superspreader site (given its crowding and conditions) than as the site of a genuine zoonotic spillover event.
relevance_note: the most spatially fine-grained lab-leak-side critique of the within-market clustering (as opposed to city-wide market-vs-population distance); the authors’ lab-leak advocacy elsewhere means its statistical claims should be checked on their own merits rather than deferred to.