> “there was no reason to expect this even 6 months ago.”
You might want to re-think that perception.
I've recently heard Ralph Baric, an epidemiology Professor from UNC School of Medicine[0]. He's arguably one of the world's foremost experts on the topic — which makes it easy to at least listen to the man, you'd think... Have a look at his publications:
- Dec 2015 ⇒ A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence.[1]
- Mar 2016 ⇒ SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence.[2]
Few sentences from the abstract of the latter:
> Outbreaks from zoonotic sources represent a threat to both human disease as well as the global economy. Despite a wealth of metagenomics studies, methods to leverage these datasets to identify future threats are underdeveloped. [...] Focusing on the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like viruses, the results indicate that the WIV1-coronavirus (CoV) cluster has the ability to directly infect and may undergo limited transmission in human populations.
I mean... What more is there to say?
You may listen to a (great but rather technical) podcast[3] featuring him, among other experts, and there's even a layman-friendly companion post made by a listener[4] (whom I fully credit and thank for sharing the knowledge).
You might want to re-think that perception.
I've recently heard Ralph Baric, an epidemiology Professor from UNC School of Medicine[0]. He's arguably one of the world's foremost experts on the topic — which makes it easy to at least listen to the man, you'd think... Have a look at his publications:
- Dec 2015 ⇒ A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence.[1]
- Mar 2016 ⇒ SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence.[2]
Few sentences from the abstract of the latter:
> Outbreaks from zoonotic sources represent a threat to both human disease as well as the global economy. Despite a wealth of metagenomics studies, methods to leverage these datasets to identify future threats are underdeveloped. [...] Focusing on the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like viruses, the results indicate that the WIV1-coronavirus (CoV) cluster has the ability to directly infect and may undergo limited transmission in human populations.
I mean... What more is there to say?
You may listen to a (great but rather technical) podcast[3] featuring him, among other experts, and there's even a layman-friendly companion post made by a listener[4] (whom I fully credit and thank for sharing the knowledge).
____
[0]: https://www.med.unc.edu/microimm/directory/ralph-baric-phd-1...
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26552008
[2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26976607
[3]: http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-591/
[4]: https://medium.com/@hpcngmoh/you-will-be-hard-pressed-to-fin...