New coronavirus can spread between humans, but started in a wildlife market

The National Geographic article states the following:

> "[T]he highest prevalence of coronaviruses tend to be extruded by animals through feces, or guano in the case of bats. Coronaviruses not only spread via the air and the respiratory tract, but also if fecal matter comes in contact with another creature’s mouth. Bats aren’t exactly clean, so if one nibbles on a fruit, the food may get contaminated with fecal matter. If the fruit drops to the ground, then it can serve as a viral crossover point for farmed animals like civets." [2]

It seems more likely the virus jumped from the bat to another animal that ate something contaminated with bat guano infected with the virus. That animal was then traded at this market where the virus somehow spread to humans.

This lead me to find the following Wikipedia article on Civets[3]. This mentions how Civets are farmed and fed coffee cherries then the partly digested coffee beans are harvested from the Civets fecal matter. This is purely speculation, but this could be one way that the virus could have spread to humans. A Civet ate a coffee cherry that an infected horseshoe bat had contaminated with guano infected with the virus. The Civet was traded at this market and the virus spread to humans. Once again, this is pure speculation on my part but it shows how there are other mechanisms in which the virus could spread to humans without someone 'eating bats'.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xgqy3n/scientists-now-thi...

[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/01/new-coron...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civet#Coffee

It reminds me how much of the "panic!" signal I've been really starting to see explode in the last ~24h, which humans are highly sympathetically attuned to when they suddenly see it spreading everywhere around them, is just from a sheer mass of other idiots who actually don't know anything either coming online on the issue, and reflects internet meme virality, and only very indirectly the uptick in actual danger (ie, from having been loosely following the outbreak, prior to this latest popularization).

Still looks pretty fucking bad, though.

https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?RID=2PUA1EJK114&CMD...

Bat SARS-like coronavirus WIV1 has been known since at least 2013.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_SARS-like_coronavirus_WIV1

In 2019, CBC reported "Canadian government scientist under investigation trained staff at Level 4 lab in China"

> A Canadian government scientist at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg made at least five trips to China in 2017-18, including one to train scientists and technicians at China's newly certified Level 4 lab, which does research with the most deadly pathogens, according to travel documents obtained by CBC News.

> Xiangguo Qiu — who was escorted out of the Winnipeg lab in July amid an RCMP investigation into what's being described by Public Health Agency of Canada as a possible "policy breach" — was invited to go to the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences twice a year for two years, for up to two weeks each time.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/national-microbiolog...

> Canadian lab's shipment of Ebola, Henipah viruses to China raises questions. Shipment may be part of RCMP investigation into researchers evicted from National Microbiology Lab. Scientists at the National Microbiology Lab sent live Ebola and Henipah viruses to Beijing on an Air Canada flight March 31, and while the Public Health Agency of Canada says all federal policies were followed, there are questions about whether that shipment is part of an ongoing RCMP investigation. Ebola and Henipah are Level 4 pathogens, meaning they're some of the deadliest viruses in the world. They must be contained in a lab with the highest level of biosafety control, such as the one in Winnipeg.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/ebola-henipah-china-...

"Wuhan" is the center of this outbreak too. It's too much of a coincidence.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jan/24/virus-hit-w...

> Mr. Shoham, now with the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University in Israel, said the virology institute is the only declared site in China known as P4 for Pathogen Level 4, a status indicating it uses the strictest safety standards to prevent the spread of the most dangerous and exotic microbes being studied.

> The former Israeli military intelligence doctor also said suspicions were raised about the Wuhan Institute of Virology when a group of Chinese virologists working in Canada improperly sent samples to China of what he said were some of the deadliest viruses on earth, including the Ebola virus. In a July article in the journal Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Mr. Shoham said the Wuhan institute was one of four Chinese laboratories engaged in some aspects of the biological weapons development. He identified the secure Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory at the institute as engaged in research on the Ebola, Nipah, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses. The Wuhan virology institute is under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. But certain laboratories within it “have linkage with the PLA or BW-related elements within the Chinese defense establishment,” he said. In 1993, China declared a second facility, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, as one of eight biological warfare research facilities covered by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) which China joined in 1985.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7922379/Chinas-la...

> China built a lab to study SARS and Ebola in Wuhan - and US biosafety experts warned in 2017 that a virus could 'escape' the facility that's become key in fighting the outbreak

> The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is the only lab in China designated for studying dangerous pathogens like SARS and Ebola

> Ahead of its January 2018 opening, biosafety experts and scientists from the US expressed concerns that a virus could escape the lab

> In 2004, a SARS virus 'leaked' from a lab in Beijing

> Experts say the coronavirus that's infected more than 800 people mutated in animals and became capable of infecting humans at the Wuhan seafood market

> But a 2017 article warned of the unpredictability of lab animals that scientists at the Wuhan lab intended to inject with viruses