Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Insertnamehere]

@InbetweenDreams  About 99% of people think the same thing about our government. 

In any case, given the varying protocols for when people should be tested for the virus and the availability of tests, I think most countries are seriously under-reporting their cases.  






Ok, for anyone interested I managed to do a little summary, with links to papers if you want to spend your quarantine time reading about it hehe. 

About this pre-apocalyptic 2020: it seems, we should have known SARS-CoV 2 was coming eventually. 


The story starts back in late 2002 when a novel coronavirus was isolated from people with atypical pneumonia cases that started in the Guangdong province, China. It later named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The virus was SARS-CoV.

The new virus was unrelated to other previously known human coronaviruses (Rota et al., 2003) 

The virus has several almost identical relatives that were isolated from various animals (Guan et al., 2003)

Bats are reservoirs of many highly mutable SARS-Cov-like viruses (Li et al., 2005) (Lau et al., 2005).

A review draws some conclusions based on previous evidence and summarizes the main points on SARS-Cov (Wang et al., 2006)

Namely, the evidence points out to a likely zoonotic event in which a bat SARS-CoV-like virus made the jump to humans via intermediary animals such as civets. These animals came in contact with humans in food markets in China where they are commercialized.




Then came MERS-CoV in 2012. Serious pneumonia cases were reported in Saudi Arabia which where soon found to be due to yet another novel coronavirus.

Serological and immunological evidence indicates that camel populations in the Middle East had been exposed to/infected by the MERS virus or a very closely related virus. (Reusken et al., 2013)

While a direct ancestor to MERS-CoV remained elusive, again, genetic evidence points out to bat populations as the initial reservoir of closely related viruses. (Wang et al., 2014).

These are but two of many similar studies, but the idea remains the same. A zoonotic event, or several, took place. From bat to an animal species widely in contact with human populations. 



Now Mr SARS-CoV 2 is repeating the story, as far as studies have shown. Bats --> animals --> humans.



So what are we learning about this?
 
Nothing new. Domesticating and breeding cattle, poultry, swine and others, has historically given us measles, smallpox, influenza, etc, etc.

HIV made the jump to humans from the SIV infecting closely related primates in Africa.

And so on. 


The thing is, these events, except for various strains of influenza, are limited. Measles, for instance, made the jump in the XII century and the current infecting strain has been around since the early XX century. (Furuse et al., 2010)


In the past 20 years, however, there have been 3 different but related coronaviruses which have most likely come from reservoirs in bats due to contact with, for example bat feces and animals that are in turn either consumed or used by human populations. These viral stocks in bat are highly mutable which would explain the frequency of these events. And while both SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV had higher mortality rates, they didn't spread nearly as much as SARS-CoV 2 has, and because of that it has killed orders of magnitude more people than the previous two. 

So:

1) 3 zoonotic events ( or more) in 20 years for closely related viruses from it would seem a common source is way too frequent. 

2) It wasn't a good idea to cut funding for a SARS vaccine because "hey thanks but we don't need it anymore". We could have been one or two steps ahead. 

3) It's time to further study bat populations and animals commercialized in food markets and otherwise animals in close contact with human groups, in China and all neighbours, as China seems to be a hotbed for zoonosis of coronaviruses.

Even a small sample size on a couple limited studies could give an idea of coronaviruses closely related to SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-Cov 2 circulating in animal populations, which might help to be a few miles ahead of the next zoonotic event that is bound to happen no matter what we do.

Oh and here, plenty of open access material about the new virus here

https://www.nejm.org/coronavirus?cid=DM8...=165326853