Good luck telling the rich and powerful they shouldn't eat this what they believed is the most tonic and upscale meat of late.
Remember that girl who paid 6.5 million dollars to get into Stanford last year? Her dad's listed company sells billions of dollars of TCM every year that claims to cure thrombus because the ingredients used (earthworm, scorpion and leech) are adept at digging things. Yes TCMs don't need to go through any FDA-like process or trial to prove anything, coz it's national treasure.
Pangolin meat and scales are prized in TCM coz you know, it dig rocks.
There’s only a limited number of wealthy people even in China, so making it a 10x difficult and expensive it will still reduce, you know by China and Vietnam actually making an effort to reduce the trade in wildlife, it could help regardless.
The worst ones are the unsanitary wet markets in the middle of dense urban areas, getting rid of those is the first step.
Meanwhile Xi Jinping is still promoting Chinese medicine in conjunction with standard medicine, even during the pandemic.
The wildlife “ban” that China enacted conveniently doesn’t include medicine, only for food consumption. There’s little chance the animals being brought into the country legally won’t have their meat sold on the blackmarket, just so they can get some scales or individual organs.
EDIT: sorry, I've misread the title, looking at the actual report
https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab...
it seems that US still has (well, had in 2019) way more millionaires - 18 million. It's only in top 10% wealthiest people that China overtook US
Still, 4 million people eating pangolins would provide enough opportunities for interesting zoonotic jumps
This is kind of an off-the-wall idea, but... what about creating artificial meat substitutes for these prized exotic animals?
Couldn't Beyond Meat create a pretty close facsimile to pangolin or bat or snake or whatever? Obviously this wouldn't eliminate 100% of demand. Particularly among those eating the animals for their magical properties, instead of their taste. But even if artificial versions of exotic meats could cut consumption by 20-30%, the corresponding risk of zoonotic virus transmission should fall linearly along with that.
It's valueded because it's wild and natural, they don't care about the costs, many of the eaters show off this dish on social media coz they are rich and powerful, and won't be punished for eating endangered animals.
And it's not that exotic meats are all delicious so people prize them, what flavor do shark fins/cubilose have? It's the supposed power they got.
Emphasis should be put on the fact that it's both an endangered and internationally protected specie (from which China is a signatory [1]). It had nothing to do in those markets in the first place.
So does that mean that the sale of pangolins at the market in Wuhan was entirely illegal? If so this seems like a huge enforcement issue if endangered animals could be openly sold at a market.
It was entirely illegal and remains so. It is a huge enforcement issue, and hopefully this encourages the Chinese Gov't to crack down on these wildlife markets, but it didn't happen after SARS-CoV-1 (which IIRC also came out of a wildlife meat market in China) so I don't hold out a lot of hope.
Well it says related viruses... so I'm not sure there has to be a connection between Pangolins and the market directly. Although that's probabbly a good route to investigate.
This article actually says nothing new. It does not draw a direct Covid-19 evolution path from pangolins to humans. That pangolins and bats carry coronaviruses is well known. That these viruses are related is well known, but it's still not clear that pangolins are the source for Covid-19. Very misleading headline on no new information.
Since we already know the virus shared up to 96% of the same DNA as horseshoe bat virus collected by Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2003 from a cave 600 miles away ... why are researchers still agonizing over all these alternative theories? The only place near Wuhan the virus existed prior to the outbreak was at the institute of virology. And the first places the outbreak occurred were in the immediate neighborhood of the institute. I'm really genuinely curious why bigtime news outlets keep talking about Vietnamese pangolins.
> why are researchers still agonizing over all these alternative theories?
The evidence currently implicates a virus that jumped from pangolins to bats and then bats to humans (EDIT: bats to pangolins and then pangolins to humans [1]).
Understanding that transmission mechanism is crucial to reducing the odds of it happening again.
It could also help curtail the sales of specific animals in wet markets that are higher risk. Although as usual, this is looking back rather than looking forward.
Please don't parrot conspiracy theories. The virus shares almost 100% of its identity with known pangolin viruses.
> The discovery of multiple lineages of pangolin coronavirus and their similarity to SARS-CoV-2 suggests that pangolins should be considered as possible hosts in the emergence of novel coronaviruses and should be removed from wet markets to prevent zoonotic transmission.
Edit: To clarify, these viruses have approximately 90% identity but in the (oft-suspected and brought up) ACE2-binding spike protein there is a ~97% sequence identity.
> In particular, SARS-CoV-2 exhibits very high sequence similarity to the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses in the receptor-binding domain (RBD; 97.4%) ... Indeed, the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2 possess identical amino acids at the five critical residues of the RBD.
There is another preprint that details more about betacoronavirus recombination.
It's almost certainly the product of a recombination event between a pangolin and bat betacoronavirus, since recombination aggressively involves the spike protein in betacoronaviruses. Since we already have a bat virus with high identity (96%) and now a spike protein with very high identity (97%), both in the same phylogenetic tree with origins to SARS-CoV-2, it's reasonably to assume that this is the product of natural recombinant evolution.
Now, it might be the case that it's guided evolution in a Wuhan lab somewhere, but I don't really buy it. Nature is staggeringly good at producing new and innovating viruses, and I believe we will soon find more closely related ancestors to this virus.
We know, from published scientific research in well-respected journals, that "guided evolution in a Wuhan lab somewhere" has been happening for many years.
We also know that China has previously had several terrifying biocontainment failures with virus labs. Things got out, including coronaviruses, but were stopped before spreading far and wide.
By the way, the very original conspiracy theory was eventually proven correct. Calling it a conspiracy theory was a great way to mock people who were pointing out the truth.
This seems pretty outdated -- The Wuhan market and (proximity to the Disease Research center) has been IDed as the primary place where it spread, but is no longer considered the place where it originated. That's why we're still looking into the origins of this thing.
The first case IDed by the Lancet had no exposure to the seafood market, but many later cases did (pg 499):
> It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus. As noted above, the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is optimized for human ACE2 receptor binding with an efficient binding solution different to that which would have been predicted. Further, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one would expect that one of the several reverse genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would have been used. However, this is not the case as the genetic data shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone17. Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in a non-human animal host prior to zoonotic transfer, and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer. We also discuss whether selection during passage in culture could have given rise to the same observed features.
Quantifying differences is really difficult and the commonly cited numbers are kinda iffy as a rigorous measurement (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-does-being-99...) in the sense that the public interprets them - 99% comes from looking at single base pair changes only. For the coronavirus, it's an RNA virus so it'll mutate a lot faster than DNA viruses or organisms like us. And the generation time is gong to be a lot faster to allow for a lot more divergence more quickly than longer generation times in mammals.
I think "we already know" is a little strong. Here's the only place I can find the paper they refer to: https://gofile.io/?c=D4zfxD
It is one page long, not peer reviewed, and says "96% or 89% identical". If I were a journalist, I think I would at least want to have an expert review the citations for those numbers, and the evidence that this particular virus was present at those labs.
It wouldn't be the first time something like this happened, either. Russia accidentally released Anthrax[1] from one of their facilities in the late 70's, and it killed over 100 people in the neighboring town. Of course they tried to cover it up, and the truth did not come out until much later.
I think it kind of is when it comes to spreading diseases, that's why us humans eating great apes has had disastrous consequences for our health as a species in the past (the same goes for us eating pig brains)
It would be like if a global pandemic was traced back to the U.S. 300 yards from Fort Detrick. Any rational person would take notice of this but instead it's labeled a conspiracy theory.
What is more crazy is that there is no international pressure for China to at least temporarily close down that research institute. The international community should have also demanded for immediate inspections on the institute's premises as soon as this virus started going worldwide, for crying out loud, we've had wars started because of some aerial photos of some metal tubes in the Iraqi desert but instead this is treated like "super-power business as usual".
I wish we could direct focus on those responsible, the smuggles and illegal (or legal) markets that enable this kinda of stuff - but without getting into heated "that's racist" arguments, because certain places traditionally value these animals so high.
There's actually a really nice documentary on Netflix about pangolins. It's mostly a black market for being able to eat them. They are mostly being poached/smuggled/etc.
"The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb. The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored."
Readit News
Remember that girl who paid 6.5 million dollars to get into Stanford last year? Her dad's listed company sells billions of dollars of TCM every year that claims to cure thrombus because the ingredients used (earthworm, scorpion and leech) are adept at digging things. Yes TCMs don't need to go through any FDA-like process or trial to prove anything, coz it's national treasure.
Pangolin meat and scales are prized in TCM coz you know, it dig rocks.
regards, your friendly neighbourhood abbreviation hater.
The worst ones are the unsanitary wet markets in the middle of dense urban areas, getting rid of those is the first step.
Meanwhile Xi Jinping is still promoting Chinese medicine in conjunction with standard medicine, even during the pandemic.
The wildlife “ban” that China enacted conveniently doesn’t include medicine, only for food consumption. There’s little chance the animals being brought into the country legally won’t have their meat sold on the blackmarket, just so they can get some scales or individual organs.
You're thinking China from 50 years ago. There are at least 4.4 million millionaires in China! More than in the US
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/oct/21/china-overt...
EDIT: sorry, I've misread the title, looking at the actual report https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab... it seems that US still has (well, had in 2019) way more millionaires - 18 million. It's only in top 10% wealthiest people that China overtook US
Still, 4 million people eating pangolins would provide enough opportunities for interesting zoonotic jumps
Couldn't Beyond Meat create a pretty close facsimile to pangolin or bat or snake or whatever? Obviously this wouldn't eliminate 100% of demand. Particularly among those eating the animals for their magical properties, instead of their taste. But even if artificial versions of exotic meats could cut consumption by 20-30%, the corresponding risk of zoonotic virus transmission should fall linearly along with that.
And it's not that exotic meats are all delicious so people prize them, what flavor do shark fins/cubilose have? It's the supposed power they got.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CITES
[1] E.g., https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/17/coronavirus-start-chinese-lab...
The evidence currently implicates a virus that jumped from pangolins to bats and then bats to humans (EDIT: bats to pangolins and then pangolins to humans [1]).
Understanding that transmission mechanism is crucial to reducing the odds of it happening again.
[1] https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-bio...
The theory being, bats are natures reservoir of the parent virus, and SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 both descended from it, through an intermediate host.
> The discovery of multiple lineages of pangolin coronavirus and their similarity to SARS-CoV-2 suggests that pangolins should be considered as possible hosts in the emergence of novel coronaviruses and should be removed from wet markets to prevent zoonotic transmission.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0
Edit: To clarify, these viruses have approximately 90% identity but in the (oft-suspected and brought up) ACE2-binding spike protein there is a ~97% sequence identity.
> In particular, SARS-CoV-2 exhibits very high sequence similarity to the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses in the receptor-binding domain (RBD; 97.4%) ... Indeed, the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2 possess identical amino acids at the five critical residues of the RBD.
There is another preprint that details more about betacoronavirus recombination.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.10.942748v1....
It's almost certainly the product of a recombination event between a pangolin and bat betacoronavirus, since recombination aggressively involves the spike protein in betacoronaviruses. Since we already have a bat virus with high identity (96%) and now a spike protein with very high identity (97%), both in the same phylogenetic tree with origins to SARS-CoV-2, it's reasonably to assume that this is the product of natural recombinant evolution.
Now, it might be the case that it's guided evolution in a Wuhan lab somewhere, but I don't really buy it. Nature is staggeringly good at producing new and innovating viruses, and I believe we will soon find more closely related ancestors to this virus.
We also know that China has previously had several terrifying biocontainment failures with virus labs. Things got out, including coronaviruses, but were stopped before spreading far and wide.
By the way, the very original conspiracy theory was eventually proven correct. Calling it a conspiracy theory was a great way to mock people who were pointing out the truth.
The first case IDed by the Lancet had no exposure to the seafood market, but many later cases did (pg 499):
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820...
A decent preprint from the US looking at the genetic origins:
http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/3...
> It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus. As noted above, the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is optimized for human ACE2 receptor binding with an efficient binding solution different to that which would have been predicted. Further, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one would expect that one of the several reverse genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would have been used. However, this is not the case as the genetic data shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone17. Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in a non-human animal host prior to zoonotic transfer, and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer. We also discuss whether selection during passage in culture could have given rise to the same observed features.
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[0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/8/chimps-humans...
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It is one page long, not peer reviewed, and says "96% or 89% identical". If I were a journalist, I think I would at least want to have an expert review the citations for those numbers, and the evidence that this particular virus was present at those labs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
Humans and chimpanzees also share 96% of the same DNA – that's not as similar as it sounds.
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https://cmr.asm.org/content/20/4/660.abstract
A paper from 2007.