"Where Did the COVID-19 Coronavirus Come From?"
A review published in the December 2019 issue of the journal
Infectious Disease Clinics of North America concluded:
“The SARS epidemic demonstrated that novel highly pathogenic,
highly disease-causing viruses crossing the animal-human barrier remain
a major threat to global health security.”
Little did the authors know that by the date of publication,
just such a virus was brewing.
“It will not be surprising if new coronaviruses emerge
in the near future,” read another review a few months before.
“It is highly likely that future SARS- or MERS-like
coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats,
and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China.”
These warnings aren't new, dating back more than a decade.
“The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-like
coronaviruses in bats, together with the culture of eating
exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb.”
A time bomb that just went off.
Now I hope you can understand how Dr. Li’s “7 SARS cases
confirmed" forewarning was so ominous.
That’s why I did the last video about SARS, because it gives some context.
It wasn’t the SARS coronavirus he found, though, the cause of SARS,
severe acute respiratory syndrome, but instead a virus
that would come to be known as SARS coronavirus 2,
the cause of COVID-19, short for coronavirus disease 2019.
Before it became known as SARS-CoV-2, though, it was just
the “Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus.”
According to the director of the Chinese CDC, ground zero
for the COVID-19 pandemic was the Hua’nan Market in Wuhan, China,
where most of the first human cases could be traced back.
Described as the largest wholesale seafood market in Central China,
the Hua’nan Market reportedly also sold 75 species of wild animals.
If you want to see what that part of the market looked like,
you can go to bit.ly/HuananMarket, but I’m not going to show
the photos because some may find them disturbing.
Although there are fish coronaviruses, 90% of the samples
that turned up positive for the virus were found in the section
of the half-million square-foot seafood market where those photos
were taken, the part that trafficked in exotic animals sold for food.
The fact that the genetic sequences of the viruses obtained
from some of the earliest human victims were 99.9% identical,
despite the rapid mutation rate of coronaviruses,
suggests the current pandemic originated within
a very short period from a single source.
Although there have been documented reports of the original SARS coronavirus
escaping from laboratories, the fact that the COVID-19 coronavirus
was optimized for binding to human cells in a novel way,
suggests that the new pandemic we now face was not made
in some laboratory but rather through natural means, though to lock in
the necessary mutations the “animal host would probably
have to have a high population density.”
The new coronavirus appears to share a common ancestor
with the original SARS virus, for which it's about 80% identical,
but it’s more than 95% identical with a coronavirus found in a bat in 2013.
The current thinking is that the COVID-19 virus originated in bats,
but then jumped to humans only after passing through an intermediate host.
The pandemic emerged in winter, after all,
when most bat species in Wuhan are hibernating,
and no bats were reportedly found at the Hua’nan Market.
There were labs in the proximity of the market where bat viruses
might have escaped, but the virus was found
in environmental samples taken directly from the market.
Unfortunately, the market was closed and cleared
before the animals themselves were tested,
complicating the forensic search for the source.
In the case of SARS the intermediate host between bats
and human-to-human transmission was the civet.
In MERS it was camels.
What was the intermediate host for COVID-19?
The leading candidate for the stepping-stone civet
of the current outbreak is the pangolin.
Also known as scaly anteaters, pangolins
look like a cross between a sloth and a pinecone.
But between the demand for their meat as a delicacy and their scales
for use in traditional Chinese medicine,
pangolins are the most trafficked mammal in the world.
Pangolins are served in high-end restaurants in China.
Once the order is placed, the animal may be hammered until
it is unconscious and then slaughtered in front of the customers
as a guarantee of the meat’s freshness.
The blood is drained and usually given to the customer
to bring home or used to make pangolin blood fried rice.
Corona viruses from two separate batches
of diseased pangolins being smuggled
into China were found to be about 90% identical with the COVID-19 virus.
Not only is the pangolin the only other mammal found to be infected
with SARS-CoV-2-like viruses, but the critical receptor binding
region of the pangolin coronavirus spike protein
is virtually identical to the human strain.
Work is still underway, but whichever the animal was, that one meal,
that one medicine may have ended up costing humanity
a few trillion dollars and a few million lives.
Given the role exotic animal trafficking appears to have played
in the current global health crisis, some in the international
scientific community have called for a ban on the sale
of wild animals and a closure of live animal markets.
Even infectious disease experts within Wuhan started calling
for “completely eradicating wildlife trading.”
On January 26, 2020, the Chinese government responded,
announcing a total ban on the trade and sale of wild animal meat,
reportedly shutting down or quarantining almost 20,000 wildlife farms
across seven Chinese provinces, though the ban is only set to be temporary.
After the SARS outbreak in 2003, Chinese officials enacted
a similar ban on the trade of civet cats, but within months,
the ban was lifted and the animals were back on the menu.
Much of the wildlife trade was already illegal in China
in the first place, with flaunted bans dating back more than a decade.
The Chinese pangolin, for example, is officially
considered a critically endangered species.
That’s part of the draw, though, as a serving of “extra rare” meat
may project prestige and wealth.
A thriving black market already exists, and it could
potentially be driven further underground by government action.
“The ultimate solution,” wrote a group of Chinese scientists,
“lies in changing people’s minds about what is delicious,
trendy, prestigious, or healthy to eat.”
Having spent the bulk of my professional life trying to get
people to eat more healthfully to prevent chronic disease,
I can certainly relate.
In the unlikely event the current ban
was to be made permanent and was enforced effectively,
there remains a glaring loophole: the ban exempts the use
of wild animals for traditional Chinese medicine.
So, while it’s currently illegal to eat pangolin meat,
it’s not illegal to eat other pangolin parts.
How ironic that the pandemic appears to have arisen in a market
selling remedies purported to promote immunity and longevity.
Pangolin blood is said to “promote…circulation.”
For only about $30 a pound, anyone can go online and buy
Chinese bat feces to treat their eye disorders.
While the drying of excrement would presumably inactivate coronavirus,
the trade and handling of live and recently killed bats for their use
in traditional remedies could infect people directly or, certainly,
introduce opportunities for cross- infection with susceptible animal hosts.
Now it's easy for xenophobic Westerners to condemn cultures
consuming rhino horns, tiger bones, and pangolin scales,
or 21st century manifestations such as mukbangs,
livestreaming broadcasts of people eating bat soup and the like.
But, as I discuss in my new book, the last pandemic,
the 2009 H1N1 swine flu virus, arose not from some backwater
wet market in Asia, but rather was largely made-in-the-USA
from industrial pig operations in the United States.
So, for the emergence of SARS-CoV-3, we may need
look no further than our own plates.