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Re:Pangolins found to carry viruses related to Covid-19 by mikeyouse on Thursday March 26, 2020 @12:54PM (#22695480)
This seems pretty outdated -- The Wuhan market and (proximity to the Disease Research center) has been IDed as the primary place where it spread, but is no longer considered the place where it originated. That's why we're still looking into the origins of this thing.

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.

Re:Pangolins found to carry viruses related to Covid-19 by fishmaster on Friday March 27, 2020 @07:58AM (#22702139)
It "is not derived from any previously used virus backbone 17". That is supposed to prove anything?