Coronavirus
Out of context: Reply #2210
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- kingsteven4
Some incredible work on debunking conspiracies on the origins of the virus from the university of Edinburgh.
Most graphs you see will put RaTG13 bat virus at the center mapped to a strain from Wuhan indicating patient 0. The reality is that the bat virus is so far from what are thought to be the earliest human viruses, a tree built on the GISAID data for SARS-CoV2 from 2nd April should (at the very least) look like this:
This is from Andrew Rambaut (https://twitter.com/arambaut). The branch from bat to human represents about 1200 mutations. The bat virus is so far away from SARS-CoV-2 its branch could fit in almost anywhere (here he's rooting the tree to a US version of the virus). Of course he's not actually suggesting the virus is from the US, it's just a bit of tounge-in-cheek trolling against bio-weapon conspiracies. Other research in to the origins suggests that SARS-CoV2 actually split from RaTG13 bat virus 40-70 years ago!
Andrew Rambaut was also one of the authors of a letter on the origins of CoV-2 which aims to demonstrate that the virus couldn't have been developed in a lab as a bio-weapon, but gives 3 theories on its origins. To me this was a really interesting read because rather than attempting just to shut down conspiracy it actually opens up many different possibilities (all of which start in China):
1. Natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer
2. Natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer
3. Selection during passage (laboratory release of SARS-CoV-2)- I’ll put $100 on number 3.shapesalad
- thanks for this.MrAbominable