The Not-China Virus

 

Racist attacks against people of Asian descent are up, including those targeting old ladies with sneak attacks and stabbings. You may ask, why now? 

It's undoubtedly because of the efforts or an orange racist (and ex-President) to label SARS-CoV-2 as the "China virus." He is so wrong about about so many things, it should come as no surprise that he's wrong about this, too.   

According to a recent report, researchers are now finding evidence that the virus detected in Wuhan in December 2019 had a progenitor that had been spreading worldwide well in advance of the Wuhan event. They determined this using tracing of relations of mutations called phylogeny.

“We have found progenitor genetic fingerprint in January 2020 and later in multiple coronavirus infections in China and the USA. The progenitor was spreading worldwide months before and after the first reported cases of COVID-19 in China,” said one researcher. Another added that the timeline suggests the progenitor was present in October 2019.

So what about Wuhan? “In essence, the events in December in Wuhan, China, represented the first superspreader event of a virus that had all the tools necessary to cause a worldwide pandemic right out of the box," said another researcher. 

In other words, the Wuhan event was caused by a mutation of a pre-existing version of the virus. It just happened to find a nice, crowded place to spread at that market in Wuhan. There is nothing particularly Chinese about it. It's not unlike superspreader events at bars in the U.S.

So it is not the "China virus." We have no idea where it started. It could be the USA virus, or the Montenegro virus, for all we know. Now people are suffering racist attacks because some asshole with a big mouth and a platform blamed the pandemic on a country where it looks like it probably didn't even start.

Header image based on one by Memed_Nurrohmad from Pixabay

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