Thread by @FLAHAULT

1/16 - “Hundreds of caves are spread throughout the mountains of Enshi, an agricultural corner of China's Hubei province. Tenglong, or "flying dragon," is one of China's largest karst cave systems, spanning 37 miles of passages that contain numerous bats.”
washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?…

2/16-“Nearby are small farms that collectively housed hundreds of thousands of wild mammals such as civets,ferret badgers and raccoon dogs before the pandemic, farm licenses show animals that scientists say can be intermediate hosts for viruses to cross over from bats to humans.”

3/16 - “The World Health Organization has requested access to China's wildlife farming areas such as Enshi, calling it a key step in the search for the origins of the coronavirus. Beijing has denied the requests.”

4/16 - “The Washington Post made a rare trip in September to Enshi, six hours' drive west of Wuhan. A reporter observed human traffic into Enshi caves, including domestic tourism, spelunking and villagers. Defunct wildlife farms sat as close as one mile from the entrances.”

5/16 - “Scientists briefed on The Post's reporting said it documents a plausible pathway for how a coronavirus could have spread from bats to other animals, then to Wuhan's markets.”

6/16 - “Western Hubei is home to at least seven types of horseshoe bats, according to the Trop Botan Garden, a research institute under the Chinese Acad of Sciences. One type, Rhinolophus affinis, has been found farther south in China carrying a virus 96% identical to #SARSCoV2.”

7/16 - “In the rolling land near the caves, Enshi officials for years promoted wildlife farming to alleviate poverty. Enshi accounted for 17% of Hubei wildlife farms shut down in the pandemic. Authorities estimated that the 290 shuttered Enshi farms had 450K to 780,000 animals.”

8/16 - “We really need to find out more about what viruses are circulating in those bats" in the Enshi caves, said M. Worobey, Univ. of Arizona. "That kind of proximity of farmed animals and bats that could be carrying coronaviruses is exactly the kind of thing we worry about."

9/16 - “Beijing has rebuffed international calls for more details on supply chains of live wildlife leading to Wuhan markets, even as local officials shut down wildlife farms — possibly coming across some of the information the WHO seeks.”

10/16 - “According to the natural-transmission theory, the virus could have been passed directly to a human who wandered into a cave — perhaps a villager, a hunter or a scientist. It also could have been transmitted first to an intermediate host like a civet, for instance.”

11/16 - “A second theory posits that the outbreak could have stemmed from a lab accident; China's most advanced coronavirus research lab is based in Wuhan. A separate team at the Wuhan CDC is known to have searched bat caves in Hubei for new diseases in 2019.”

12/16 - “Some scientists are pushing for a more vigorous search for an intermediate host, which, if found, would be strong evidence for natural transmission. Other coronaviruses like SARS and MERS were carried by intermediate hosts: civets and camels, respectively.”

13/16 - “Wildlife captively bred in Enshi before the pandemic included potential intermediate hosts such as palm civets, raccoon dogs, porcupines, wild boars, hedgehogs, rodents, ferret badgers, ocelots, muntjac deer and flying squirrels, official business registries show.”

14/16 - “On Dec. 23, 2019 — eight days before Wuhan announced a mysterious pneumonia — the Enshi forestry bureau ordered a halt of live wildlife sales at wet markets in the prefecture, the state-run Hubei Daily reported in February 2020.”

15/16 - “Humans have long encountered bats at Tenglong Cave, according to local residents and news reports. [In] 1988, the Belgian-Chinese Karst and Caves Association reported "intensive utilisation" of the cave by local residents, including digging out bat dung for fertilizer.”

16/16 - “Tourists and adventurers continue to visit. At the entrance to Tenglong's lower cave, where the Qing River surges toward the Yangtze River, local spelunkers geared up on a recent day, fastening helmets, snaking ropes over their shoulders, packing waterproof bags.”