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For those interested they found SARS in a bat cave (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 )but i

For those interested they found SARS in a bat cave (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9 )but it took five years of hunting. Something similar will probably happen with Covid here in the future. Like 9/11 conspiracies, it’s more comforting to think someone is in charge and in control when terrible things happen then that terrible things can happen from random and weak sources.

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goatlover 3y ago
A lab leak would mean there was a lack of proper control.
- 6510 3y ago
  A historic first.... or wait..
- Izkata 3y ago
  They're extremely common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity... And keep in mind these are only the ones we know about.
tripletao 3y ago
You've misunderstood the article that you linked. Scientists found SARS-1 in civet cats and raccoon dogs within about a year of the first human outbreaks. We believe these are the animals that first transmitted SARS-1 to humans. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5241a2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5241a2.htm Much later, Dr. Zhengli Shi found viruses related to SARS-1 in bats. These bat viruses are more distant genetically from the human samples than the civet and racoon dog viruses were; but they're significant because of the prevalence and diversity of such viruses. This suggests that SARS-1 evolved mostly in bats (the reservoir hosts), then spilled to civets and racoon dogs (the proximal hosts) and evolved a little more, then spilled to humans. SARS-CoV-2 is close enough genetically to SARS-1 that we knew immediately that the reservoir host was bats. The proximal host still hasn't been found, despite the much greater effort to search. This doesn't mean SARS-CoV-2 is necessarily unnatural, since the exact zoonotic transmission path is still unknown for other viruses that are certainly of natural origin (e.g. Ebola). It's different from both SARS-1 and MERS, though.

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goatlover 3y ago

A lab leak would mean there was a lack of proper control.

6510 3y ago
A historic first.... or wait..
Izkata 3y ago
They're extremely common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_laboratory_biosecurity... And keep in mind these are only the ones we know about.

tripletao 3y ago

You've misunderstood the article that you linked. Scientists found SARS-1 in civet cats and raccoon dogs within about a year of the first human outbreaks. We believe these are the animals that first transmitted SARS-1 to humans. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5241a2.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5241a2.htm Much later, Dr. Zhengli Shi found viruses related to SARS-1 in bats. These bat viruses are more distant genetically from the human samples than the civet and racoon dog viruses were; but they're significant because of the prevalence and diversity of such viruses. This suggests that SARS-1 evolved mostly in bats (the reservoir hosts), then spilled to civets and racoon dogs (the proximal hosts) and evolved a little more, then spilled to humans. SARS-CoV-2 is close enough genetically to SARS-1 that we knew immediately that the reservoir host was bats. The proximal host still hasn't been found, despite the much greater effort to search. This doesn't mean SARS-CoV-2 is necessarily unnatural, since the exact zoonotic transmission path is still unknown for other viruses that are certainly of natural origin (e.g. Ebola). It's different from both SARS-1 and MERS, though.