Leading scientists set out case for natural origins of COVID-19, against lab leak | liammannix
And animal viruses jump into humans much more often than we expect. Surveys of villagers living near bat caves show they have antibodies to coronaviruses unknown to medicine.
The animal origins of Ebola, hepatitis C and polio have yet to be found, the authors write, while it took more than a decade to find the bats likely behind SARS.Viruses have leaked from labs in the past, including SARS; a failed vaccine trial likely caused the 1977 influenza pandemic.Crucially, there is no data to suggest the Wuhan Institute of Virology had SARS-CoV-2, or any virus close enough to evolve into it, to be able to leak it.
However, the viral lineage leading up to SARS-CoV-2 is poorly traced, the paper’s authors argue, and there’s every chance a virus with a furin cleavage site is out there. Such furin sites are commonplace on other coronaviruses, where they evolved naturally.