Quote (EndlessSky @ Mar 12 2020 10:19pm)
Plagues have a source in nature. I'm not sure we know the evolutionary history of this virus yet. Was it natural evolution or modified in a lab somehow? Was there any history of the virus before this year? Did it actually exist in nature or otherwise beforehand? How are we so sure it started in Wuhan? Did it just spread there because of the population density. Similar viruses were found this year in bats and pangolins - but which species gave it to the other first, us or them?
I kind of wish I was a virologist so I could understand more about the virus itself and its structure. The genome sequence of the COVID-19 virus is actually publicly available now - although I'm not sure how they maintain the data, a retrovirus mutates almost constantly.
Yes, plagues have a source in nature. They come from other animals, and a market where humans are in close contact with livestock is an ideal environment. It's why we had constant plagues of some form or another prior to the separation of animal herds from human populations.
"Similar viruses were found this year in bats and pangolins" because coronavirus is a subgroup of known respiratory viruses, several of which already are known to infect humans. This is just a new mutation.
I haven't seen anything fishy about this virus. Like you said, it's an RNA virus and mutates. Sometimes you get a mutation that allows viruses to jump species, and what gives an animal a cough gives a human a debilitating illness. It's just the way of things.
This isn't a "why now" thing, it used to happen all the time. It's just that it happens a lot less now because we've separated livestock from humans, but there are some areas where livestock and humans still have close contact and those are the places where these major diseases are likely to emerge from.
This post was edited by Thor123422 on Mar 12 2020 09:30pm