Bats have been the origin for many other epidemics, such as the deadly Ebola and Marburg agents and the rare Hendra, Nipah, and St. Louis encephalitis viruses. It’s not known exactly why bats are such a prolific source of human pathogens, but they have haunted our species in other ways for a very long time as objects of mythology associated with de

What the public learned only in pieces over the next few days was that researchers at Imperial College London had spent the week of March 9 making terrifying predictions to British, European, and American leaders.

Thus knowing the exact genome of Sars-Cov-2 enabled the scientists to model the structure of the entire virus—and most important, the spike proteins that stuck to its surface. They almost immediately realized that the novel coronavirus was a serious threat. Its spike proteins merged with a receptor found on the surface of many human cells. The rece

Essentially, the natural origins theory went something like this: Lots of coronaviruses exist. They regularly mutate and trade pieces of their genomes with each other. An intermediate host will be found sooner or later, even if some of the obvious candidates haven’t panned out.