A bunch of people (mainly on the Right) seem to think that the Covid lab leak theory has been shown to be true, when it hasn't at all.
A new study shows that the first origin story is still very much on the cards:
In a study published on Wednesday, a team of researchers compared the evolutionary story of SARS with that of Covid 17 years later. The researchers analyzed the genomes of the two coronaviruses that caused the pandemics, along with 248 related coronaviruses in bats and other mammals.
Jonathan Pekar, an evolutionary virologist at the University of Edinburgh and an author of the new study, said that the histories of the two coronaviruses followed parallel paths. “In my mind, they are extraordinarily similar,” he said.
In both cases, Dr. Pekar and his colleagues argue, a coronavirus jumped from bats to wild mammals in southwestern China. In a short period of time, wildlife traders took the infected animals hundreds of miles to city markets, and the virus wreaked havoc in humans.
“When you sell wildlife in the heart of cities, you’re going to have a pandemic every so often,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and an author of the new study.
You can read the details here.
The article ends:
Dr. Eloit and other scientists agreed that finding an intermediate form of SARS-CoV-2 in a wild mammal would make a compelling case for a natural spillover. Chinese authorities looked at some animals at the start of the pandemic and did not find the virus in them.
However, wildlife vendors at the Huanan market removed their animals from the stalls before scientists could study them. And once China put a stop to wildlife sales, farmers culled their animals.
“There’s a big missing piece, and you really can’t dance around it,” said Dr. Pond.
Stephen Goldstein, a geneticist at the University of Utah who was not involved in the new study, said that the research served as a warning about the risk of a future coronavirus pandemic. Wild mammals sold in markets anywhere in the region where SARS and Covid got their start could become a vehicle to a city hundreds of miles away. “The pieces of these viruses exist in all these places,” Dr. Goldstein said.
2 comments:
virologists have never been fans of the lab leak theory
I don't think that disqualifies the lab leak theory though, it's entirely possible that the intermediate version of the virus might have been in a lab.
That article that first gained traction propounding the lab leak theory in the New York newspaper - what was it? - outlined the variety of ways in which viruses were 'manufactured' in the lab, and of course some of it was completely artificial - gene splicing and what not. But some wasn't at all. Scientists would just place a virus from one species in a variety of environments and sometimes it would find a way to jump to a different species.
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