The evidence currently implicates a virus that jumped from pangolins to bats and then bats to humans (EDIT: bats to pangolins and then pangolins to humans [1]).
Understanding that transmission mechanism is crucial to reducing the odds of it happening again.
[1] https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-bio...
The theory being, bats are natures reservoir of the parent virus, and SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 both descended from it, through an intermediate host.
You’re correct [1]. Thank you.
[1] https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-bio...
Exotic animals in wet markets are not consumed by the majority of the population; this is mostly driven by the Chinese rich. The industry has survived creating its first pandemic due to its lobbying power; let's see how it rides out the second one.
> The discovery of multiple lineages of pangolin coronavirus and their similarity to SARS-CoV-2 suggests that pangolins should be considered as possible hosts in the emergence of novel coronaviruses and should be removed from wet markets to prevent zoonotic transmission.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0
Edit: To clarify, these viruses have approximately 90% identity but in the (oft-suspected and brought up) ACE2-binding spike protein there is a ~97% sequence identity.
> In particular, SARS-CoV-2 exhibits very high sequence similarity to the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses in the receptor-binding domain (RBD; 97.4%) ... Indeed, the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2 possess identical amino acids at the five critical residues of the RBD.
There is another preprint that details more about betacoronavirus recombination.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.10.942748v1....
It's almost certainly the product of a recombination event between a pangolin and bat betacoronavirus, since recombination aggressively involves the spike protein in betacoronaviruses. Since we already have a bat virus with high identity (96%) and now a spike protein with very high identity (97%), both in the same phylogenetic tree with origins to SARS-CoV-2, it's reasonably to assume that this is the product of natural recombinant evolution.
Now, it might be the case that it's guided evolution in a Wuhan lab somewhere, but I don't really buy it. Nature is staggeringly good at producing new and innovating viruses, and I believe we will soon find more closely related ancestors to this virus.
We also know that China has previously had several terrifying biocontainment failures with virus labs. Things got out, including coronaviruses, but were stopped before spreading far and wide.
By the way, the very original conspiracy theory was eventually proven correct. Calling it a conspiracy theory was a great way to mock people who were pointing out the truth.
The first case IDed by the Lancet had no exposure to the seafood market, but many later cases did (pg 499):
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820...
A decent preprint from the US looking at the genetic origins:
http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/3...
> It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus. As noted above, the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is optimized for human ACE2 receptor binding with an efficient binding solution different to that which would have been predicted. Further, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one would expect that one of the several reverse genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would have been used. However, this is not the case as the genetic data shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone17. Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in a non-human animal host prior to zoonotic transfer, and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer. We also discuss whether selection during passage in culture could have given rise to the same observed features.
[0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/8/chimps-humans...
For context: The entire SARS-COV-2 genome is 29,811 nucleotides long. The human genome is around 3 billion base pairs.
It is one page long, not peer reviewed, and says "96% or 89% identical". If I were a journalist, I think I would at least want to have an expert review the citations for those numbers, and the evidence that this particular virus was present at those labs.
Humans and chimpanzees also share 96% of the same DNA – that's not as similar as it sounds.
The virologists there are very active publishers, and by all accounts among the very best in their field. And now they're pissed off. Here's a snippet from the institute's coronavirus lead, defending them from an onslaught of insane and stupid conspiracy theories:
> [Shi Zhengli] said on her social media account that she “guaranteed with her own life” that the outbreak had nothing to do with the lab but was a “nemesis for the barbaric habits and lifestyle of some people – like eating wild game including bats.”
Chinese researchers and doctors have generally been among those most willing to push back against the CCP's misinformation and censorship. Of all people, why in the FUCK would we want to muzzle these guys?
Why is that crazy? Unless you're suspecting the Chinese of designing a fairly dull viral weapon that they first released on their own people, I'm not sure why anyone would care to go through the doors.
Sweet jungle meat from a wet market is the likely source, as with many of these kinds of virii over the centuries.
It wouldn't have had to have been a deliberate release for SARS-CoV-2 to have come from there. Accidents happen, and there have been several accidental releases of the original SARS-CoV from Chinese labs. It's also not beyond the realm of possibilities that someone tasked with destroying animals that were research subjects decided to make a few extra yuan selling them to the wet market across the street instead.
I've never heard of any accidental escapes of SARS. Do you have a source for this claim?
> SARS has not re-emerged naturally, but there have been six escapes from virology labs: one each in Singapore and Taiwan, and four separate escapes at the same laboratory in Beijing.
https://thebulletin.org/2014/03/threatened-pandemics-and-lab...
Those accidents are fucking terrifying. I'm not sure whether to be more scared of that, or of wet markets and antibiotic-soaked factory swine/cattle/poultry farms. Humanity certainly isn't taking any of this seriously enough.
There are numerous reports of the wet market source not being the actual source. I've never said that the Chinese have released this virus on purpose, I did in fact imply though that the Chinese created this virus on purpose (how it got out in the wild is anybody's guess). Having countries creating bio-weapons in 2020 should be grounds for war, no matter if they release it or not.
Later edit: Now I saw that you said "dull viral weapon", what do you find so "dull" about a virus that has put the whole world economy on its knees in a matter of 4-5 weeks? Yes, it's not as gore-y as Ebola but it's an order of magnitude (at least) more effective in bringing us down as a species.
There is zero credible evidence that this virus was engineered in any way. What we do have is detailed genomic analysis done by actual virologists, comparing it with coronavirii from the vast pools in animal populations, that can trace its natural evolution [1]. This analysis and ongoing surveillance is how virologists and epidemiologists hope to predict future epidemics.
I don't think anyone suspects that it was a weapon. A totally non-selective weapon like this would be extremely stupid. But it still could have come from that lab, and such a theory should not be discarded for the time being.
>Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive titled: “Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus.” https://nypost.com/2020/02/22/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-coro...
shortly after.
Sure, if you think of it in terms of being a weapon, it's not an armageddon weapon, but very few madmen want those anyway.
First: the overall discussion is about where COVID-19 came from.
Second: this thread is discussing whether it's a natural mutation and subsequent transmission vs. somehow engineered by China. The OP made the comment that they don't understand why people are spending time looking at alternative theories because they believe it's assured that this came from a Chinese virology research lab.
Third: the comment parent to yours was a response to the OP saying the reason was because it fit the narrative of Mother Nature getting revenge on us for harming animals. This narrative was implied to be ridiculous; I suspect that most people in this thread do not believe 'Mother Nature' is an entity capable of taking deliberate actions like revenge. That comment was downvoted, probably because the commentariat here doesn't like sarcasm, but also maybe because they do not like to entertain nonsense. This kind of poisons the rest of the thread; here, there can be no legitimate meaningful followup comment to nonsense or in many cases sarcasm.
I think that your reply pointing out that we do mistreat animals ends up being seen as irrelevant and not contributing to the discussion. Whether or not we mistreat animals may be relevant to the 'Mother Nature' idea, but since that is seen as irrelevant to the actual discussion about COVID-19 origins, there's no point in posting the reply and thus the downvotes ensue.
[1] E.g., https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/17/coronavirus-start-chinese-lab...