Yup. But like you said many respiratory viruses do that. Does that make the flu virus many of us catch every year novel? How about the common cold? Is each spec

Yup. But like you said many respiratory viruses do that. Does that make the flu virus many of us catch every year novel? How about the common cold? Is each specific virus also novel? Why did we decide to throw out everything we knew about viruses for SARS-CoV-2? It's like society discovered "OMG I could catch a virus and die!". Not realizing that virtually nothing was new about SARS-CoV-2. It's just a respiratory virus like any other we've had passed through millions of generations of living beings. Oddly enough the "broader human species" managed to survive and thrive through all of them.