Does China suspect dogs were the source of the virus?

[Monomial]

A few weeks back there was a story that China had finally declared that dogs were pets and off the menu as a food source. I remember being mildly pleased at this news, and it seemed this was just a humanitarian act that was long overdue. I didn't think much more of it.

 

Recently though, I found this paper from the University of Ottawa:

 

https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msaa094/5819559

 

In the paper, he describes how the current virus has a very severe CpG deficiency, and that this kind of a deficiency in a virus requires a specific type of host environment. The environment needed to create the current strain must have a high expression of zinc finger antiviral proteins, or ZAPs.  It's a fascinating read and I don't want to spoil the adventure, but it turns out that canine tissue is the best match for these conditions and the current virus signature.

 

Which leads one to speculate (the author doesn't say this directly) that what happened in the present case is that a dog fed on a bat or was otherwise infected by a bat, and that dog's tissue then began replicating the specific coronavirus strain while imparting the required CpG deficiency. It is this virus with the severe CpG deficiency that is now infecting humans, and the obvious conclusion is that it came from a dog. Either it got to humans because the dog bit someone (control those strays, anyone?), or because someone ate the dog.

 

So it is an interesting coincidence that just a few weeks ago China finally banned the eating of dogs after many years of complaints. Did they already know or suspect what this paper uncovered?

 

 

[dimitriv]

There are already news sources saying that they again opened markets selling dogs and wild animals, markets that were closed a couple of weeks ago.

[Traubert]

No.

[spiekerjozef]

No the virology center was.

[ChouDoufu]

"china" did not ban the eating of dogs.

 

two cities, shenzhen and zhuhai, have banned eating dogs and cats.  whether that will stop anyone from DIY BBQ is another story.

 

i believe china did ban the sale and trade of wild animals, or are adding some restrictions on farming of wild animals for consumption.  don't know whether that affects sale/trade for traditional medicines.

 

at the same time they added permission to use bear bile to treat coronavirus.  one step forward, three steps back.

 

in other news, i did see an article that a canadian university published a study indicating that dogs were the link between bats and humans for corona.