4 ms·

Maybe because they are not easy to find? How long did it take to find SARS reservoir?

• weaksauce 4y ago
  looked it up and it seems they found the source of SARS from 2002-2004 in 2017 so a bit over a decade.
  • baja_blast 4y ago
    Not true, it took them a few months. In this paper published in 2003: > "Civet cats, a raccoon dog, and a ferret badger in an animal market in Gunagdong, China, were infected with a coronavirus identical to the one that causes SARS in humans save for an extra 29-nucleotide sequence" which demonstrated that these animals had a very close ancestral virus circulating within their populations. Source: https://zenodo.org/record/3949022#.Y9hn9uzMJqs https://zenodo.org/record/3949022#.Y9hn9uzMJqs. You're mistaking ancestral origin with proximal origin. It took a decade to find the bat virus that infected the civet cats, but the intermediate host responsible for the spillover was found within months.
  • stolsvik 4y ago
    Source?