What about allegations that a pangolin was involved? Would they have had pangolins in the lab as well or is the evidence about pangolin involvement dubious in the first place?
Edit: Wasn’t meant as a joke. My point is why did initial analyses conclude that the SARS-Cov-2 virus is adapted to receptors of animals other than bats, suggesting that it had an intermediary host, quite likely a pangolin. This contradicts the story of “bat researchers kept bat-only virus in a lab and accidentally released it.”
I think it’s probably a virus that was merely identified in pangolins, but whose primary host is probably not pangolins.
The pangolins they sequenced weren’t asymptomatic carriers at all; they were sad smuggled specimens that were dying of many different diseases simultaneously.
I looked into this semi-recently, and wrote up something here.
The pangolins were apprehended in Guangxi, which shares some of its border with Yunnan. Neither of these provinces are directly contiguous with Hubei (Wuhan’s province), fwiw. (map)
What about allegations that a pangolin was involved? Would they have had pangolins in the lab as well or is the evidence about pangolin involvement dubious in the first place?
Edit: Wasn’t meant as a joke. My point is why did initial analyses conclude that the SARS-Cov-2 virus is adapted to receptors of animals other than bats, suggesting that it had an intermediary host, quite likely a pangolin. This contradicts the story of “bat researchers kept bat-only virus in a lab and accidentally released it.”
I think it’s probably a virus that was merely identified in pangolins, but whose primary host is probably not pangolins.
The pangolins they sequenced weren’t asymptomatic carriers at all; they were sad smuggled specimens that were dying of many different diseases simultaneously.
I looked into this semi-recently, and wrote up something here.
The pangolins were apprehended in Guangxi, which shares some of its border with Yunnan. Neither of these provinces are directly contiguous with Hubei (Wuhan’s province), fwiw. (map)