Animal instincts and the real origins of Covid-19

Before pointing the finger at the bat and the pangolin, let's ask ourselves, do we have proof of their guilt?

The more we study the source of the coronavirus, the less we seem to know of its origins, and the more frustrating it can get when a cure appears distant. Covid-19, the disease caused by the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus, has blitzed our stream of consciousness.
We are fearful while contemplating its spread and imagining the scenarios that could unfold while speculating on the origins of the disease. Doctors and medical professionals, meanwhile, attempt to break it down for us as they promote hand-washing and social-distancing routines. Distance is comforting in these difficult times, and the farther we move away from the original host of the virus, we are hopeful we will come up with solutions to combat its spread.
This is the new viral, the new normal of four months as we take cover and hunker down wishing that this pestilence disappears from our consciousness, our bodies, minds, and gadgets. Societies and countries have been convulsed because of this pandemic that is moving on its own terms.
What triggered it? Which animal spread it? Was there an intermediary host? Is the virus still mutating? We are (more or less) certain about where it began - a wet market in Wuhan, China where wild animals were being sold for human consumption. The market was shut and the city went into lockdown for two months. Wuhan is slowly reopening now and people are moving out of the city, the only positive news after months of tragedy and human suffering.
Let's admit it. The search for the animal host of this virus is proving more elusive than ever. It's a merry-go-round that is taking us nowhere as the world races to find a vaccine or a drug to stem its march. Till such a cure is found, countries are repurposing medicines originally developed for malaria, ebola, arthritis, and lupus in a bid to reduce fatalities. This coronavirus is relentless and has little respect for geographical boundaries. It remains a mystery four months after China informed the World Health Organization on December 31, 2019.
Our combined human and artificial intelligence is only helping us contact-trace people who have contracted the strain - but that's the easy part of this test of human resolve that has scant evidence on the animal(s) origin. The zoonotic origin of the virus is clear to some researchers, but the evidence is inconclusive, which is confusing and befuddling to a lay audience who just want to be purged off this pathogen.
Doubts arise about when and how it first appeared, though China reported cases of viral pneumonia in November last year. There was an attempt at a cover-up, according to some reports, but Beijing informed the WHO that asked countries to be prepared for disease of pandemic proportions.
But time is not on humanity's side as the toll continues to rise and countries go into lockdown. I shall not present the stark data that the reader has been bombarded with day after day for 100 days now. The enemy is hidden in plain sight, on surfaces, and airborne when we sneeze or cough.
So let's start at the very beginning - the origins of Covid-19. Many researchers are of the opinion that this coronavirus originated in bats. What we can say with a fair amount of certainty is that bats are the reservoirs of some 100 viruses. They may be immune to these germs but are capable of passing them on to humans. Sars, Mers, Ebola, and Nipaah have all been blamed on bats. The WHO thinks that this pandemic came from the horseshoe variety of bats.
Some bats are able to mount a robust antiviral response and also balance it with an anti-inflammation response, according to Cara Brook, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. "Our immune system would generate widespread inflammation if attempting this same antiviral strategy. But bats appear uniquely suited to avoiding the threat of immunopathology," she said in a study.
The virus causing Covid-19 may have spread from the faeces of this winged mammal, or after it was consumed by a human who purchased the animal from a wet market in Wuhan. The other hypothesis is that there was an intermediary host that passed the virus to people from the bat. In the early stages of the outbreak, fingers were even pointed at the snake, a cold-blooded reptile, and a delicacy in China. The slithery study lacked sufficient evidence and was shot down soon after it emerged in January.
The focus then turned to the pangolin, the only scaly mammal, a likely intermediary. Pangolins are ant-eaters and it is believed that the virus may have survived on their scales. Trade in these animals is forbidden as they face extinction. But pangolins were not listed on the inventory of animals at the Wuhan wet market before it closed down. That could be because it was illegal to sell them. Another statistical study that looked at the characteristic of virus claimed it had evolved to attach to human cells from some animals. The pangolin was one such animal, so were goats, sheep, cows and buffalo, even pigeons.
Perhaps, the coronavirus evolved within humans after Sars in the early 2000s. The bat-civet cat-human link was mentioned back then, but studies did not go further or the evidence was inconclusive. Wet markets and the sale of exotic animals rebounded in China after that outbreak was controlled and no effort was made to develop a vaccine for the disease.
Sars was a warning, but it foretold of a pandemic that we didn't take seriously till Covid-19 ravaged our lives. This coronavirus is the wild child of the Sars  virus that will need a new evidence-based approach to trace its origins and to confirm which animal caused its spread to humans. We will clutch at straws until that happens, swatting bats and sniping at the poor pangolin. - allan@khaleejtimes.com