Thread by @Laurie_Garrett

BREAKING: Multinational team uses 3 different methods to determine where #SARSCoV2 came from: each leads to horseshoe bats found widely in Asia. The virus now causing a human #pandemic has been in bats "for decades," only now reaching people.
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nature.com/articles/s4156…

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Big implications from this peer-reviewed paper.
First, #COVID19 is not caused by a "China virus" that was "made in a Chinese lab," as some in the #Trump admin have claimed.
2nd, it may have jumped directly from a bat to a person, without intermediary animals.
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3rd, The 2003 SARS has also been connected to Asian horseshoe bats, and these mammals may carry many types of #coronaviruses.
4th, this shows "how difficult it will be to identify viruses with potential to cause major human outbreaks before they emerge."

Worth revisiting, in light of this, the @sciencecohen recent paper about Shi Zhengli -- China's "Bat Lady" -- who has been accused by Sec. of State Mike #Pompeo & others in #Trump admin of starting the epidemic with viruses in her Wuhan lab.
sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/t…

While the new @nature paper leaves unresolved the potential role of #pangolins as intermediaries, for #SARSCoV2 from bats-to-people, the researchers say the animals were not necessary to spark the current human catastrophe. The virus comes from a viral group in bats that...
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(continued) ...have a genetic characteristic that, "facilitated its jump to humans and may do so again," the scientists write, meaning SARS(2003) and #SARSCoV2 may be followed in the future by other #pandemic - potential viruses carried by horseshoe bats in Asia.