Coronaviruses closely related to the pandemic virus discovered in Japan and Cambodia

[geovalin]

The viruses, both found in bats stored in laboratory freezers, are the first SARS-CoV-2 relatives to be found outside China.

 

Two lab freezers in Asia have yielded surprising discoveries. Researchers have told Nature they have found a coronavirus that is closely related to SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the pandemic, in horseshoe bats stored in a freezer in Cambodia. Meanwhile, a team in Japan has reported the discovery of another closely related coronavirus — also found in frozen bat droppings.

 

The viruses are the first known relatives of SARS-CoV-2 to be found outside China, which supports the World Health Organization’s search across Asia for the pandemic’s animal origin. Strong evidence suggests that SARS-CoV-2 originated in horseshoe bats, but whether it passed directly from bats to people, or through an intermediate host, remains a mystery.

 

read more https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03217-0

[Deli]

OK, but who eats bats and spreads the virus ? The Chinese.  Definitely not dirty farang.

[Sheryl]

Actually it is not only Chinese who eat bats. There are roadside venders selling bat meat in parts of Thailand and Cambodia.

 

In the case of COVID there is speculation that it crossed into humans from pangolins, who are considered a delicacy and often eaten in China (and becoming endangered as a result). COVID infection has been documented in captive pangolins. Presumably somehow gets from the bats to them.

 

SARS and MERS also crossed from wildlife into humans and for that matter so did HIV and Ebola.

 

The message is clear: stop wildlife trafficking!!!

 

Otherwise this is but the beginning. There are thousands more viruses we have no immunity to in horshoe bats alone.

[Proboscis]

1 hour ago, Deli said:

OK, but who eats bats and spreads the virus ? The Chinese.  Definitely not dirty farang.

But the prevailing scientific view is that no one got the virus from eating bats. It is that bats passed the virus on to at least one intermediary species through which humans got it.

 

As in the case with Spanish Flu back in the early part of the 20th century, the Americans who first contracted the flu virus were most likely the workers at the turkey farm, not the consumers of the turkeys. Those Americans wearing uniforms then brought it over to Europe during WW1.

 

Similarly, the intermediary species that caught the covid-19 virus from bats in Asia (does not even have to be caught in China) then went on to infect humans. Although the first known human to human infection was observed in December 2019, it is believed that this virus or a version of it was around for much longer. For instance, a separate study on cancer carried out in the Summer of 2019 found that remnants of covid-19 were found in 14% of the samples, and that study was an Italian one!

 

So simplistic throwing around of racist claims, such as your implication that we would not have covid-19 if Chinese people did not eat bats, is unhelpful, wrong and racist.

[AKJeff]

Although I agree that it is too simplistic to just blame the pandemic on the eating of bats, it is also true that the consumption of many wild fauna tends to spread diseases. I would hope this cultural culinary choice would change in these modern times.  Also, the 1918 flu probably didn't come from America. Here is just one story published in 2014 by a Canadian historian that traces the possible origin of the 1918 pandemic.   

 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanish-flu-1918-china-origins-pandemic-science-health/

 

Edited November 24, 2020 by AKJeff

[placnx]

4 hours ago, Sheryl said:

Actually it is not only Chinese who at bats. There are roadside venders selling bat meat in parts of Thailand and Cambodia.

 

In the case of COVID there is speculation that it crossed into humans from pangolins, who are considered a delicacy and often eaten in China (and becoming endangered as a result). COVID infection has been documented in captive pangolins. Presumably somehow gets from the bats to them.

 

SARS and MERS also crossed from wildlife into humans and for that matter so did HIV and Ebola.

 

The message is clear: stop wildlife trafficking!!!

 

Otherwise this is but the beginning. There are thousands more viruses we have no immunity to in horshoe bats alone.

But are Thais and Khmers eating horseshoe bats? I have seen comments that these bats are not sold in food markets, rather that the larger fruit bats are eaten, in China anyway. It is not necessary that the virus passed through an intermediate species. At the beginning of the pandemic when the Wuhan market was claimed as the source, there was talk of intermediate species. For now, the initial transmission to humans has not been reported, whether or not it is known.

[placnx]

11 minutes ago, AKJeff said:

Although I agree with the point you are making, the 1918 flu probably didn't come from America. Here is just one story published in 2014 by a Canadian historian that traces the origin of the 1918 pandemic.   

 

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanish-flu-1918-china-origins-pandemic-science-health/

For a while the source of the 1918 pandemic has been assumed to have been China, due to cultural and environmental factors. The idea of a source in the US must be a conspiracy theory!

 

The genome of the 1918 flu has been reconstructed from frozen Eskimos, but that probably happened after the National Geographic article from 2014.