PolitiFact article claiming COVID-19 pandemic was not caused by people eating bats

[teo123]

Therefore, "patient zero" almost certainly did not contract COVID-19 by consuming a bat.

What do you think about that claim?
To me it seems the vast majority of experts, regardless of their political orientation or the position on veganism, claim otherwise. Even Ben Shapiro, who is very right-wing and somewhat anti-vegan, claimed that any suggestion that COVID-19 was not caused by eating bats is ridiculous, and usually connected with "anti-racism": https://youtu.be/Vmnke3cWwps (he made a few other such videos saying very similar things). PolitiFact seems to be very non-mainstream here.
I also believe it is unfair not to mention the fact that a pandemic of a bacterium resistant to antibiotics can only occur due to factory farming. And such a pandemic would be way worse than COVID-19. And, unless we stop with factory farming, it is bound to happen sooner or later.

[teo123]

It seems to me that PolitiFact suffers from the unbiased bias here. Veganism is considered, at least in the USA, to be a far-left ideology, and PolitiFact wants to make it look like it is criticizing far-left and far-right equally. But that is unfair, as far-right spreads misinformation significantly more often than the far-left does.

[teo123]

What, nobody here thought about it?

[Jamie in Chile]

I did think about it. But, to be honest, I have nothing useful to say!

[Vegan ecologist]

The article is not saying that COVID-19 was not caused by people eating animals. What the article does say is that the eaten animal that caused the spread to humans was not a bat, but rather a different intermediary. What that intermediary animal was is up for debate in the scientific community. The most likely cause of spread from that intermediary was consumption. Politifact does not suggest otherwise. In the end, does it matter whether the spreader was a bat as opposed to some other wild animal? The article also debunks that all major disease outbreaks reach humans through the consumption of animal products. However, it still acknowledges that most are caused that way. This article is by no means a setback to the core of the vegan arguments about the pandemic.

[teo123]

The article is not saying that COVID-19 was not caused by people eating animals. What the article does say is that the eaten animal that caused the spread to humans was not a bat, but rather a different intermediary. What that intermediary animal was is up for debate in the scientific community. The most likely cause of spread from that intermediary was consumption. Politifact does not suggest otherwise. In the end, does it matter whether the spreader was a bat as opposed to some other wild animal? The article also debunks that all major disease outbreaks reach humans through the consumption of animal products. However, it still acknowledges that most are caused that way. This article is by no means a setback to the core of the vegan arguments about the pandemic.

I don't think that's what's implied. I think they mean there is no evidence the current COVID-19 pandemic came from specifically eating meat, as opposed to, for example, transmission from a sneezing wild animal to a human who happened to be near-by. And that claim sounds rather unreasonable to me. I mean, as far as I understand it, the COVID-19 virus that attacks humans can and does infect bats, so supposing there to have been an intermediary host sounds... fairly unreasonable to me. Especially since we know for certain that wet market in Wuhan sometimes sold bats. Now, admittedly, it is a bit odd that many people who were at the Wuhan wet market at that time claim to be unaware of the bats sold there... but using that as an argument is a typical argument from ignorance.

[brimstoneSalad]

I don't think that's what's implied. I think they mean there is no evidence the current COVID-19 pandemic came from specifically eating meat, as opposed to, for example, transmission from a sneezing wild animal to a human who happened to be near-by.

This can also be due to the practice of eating meat, which is the most likely reason a person is near a sneezing wild animal.

And that claim sounds rather unreasonable to me. I mean, as far as I understand it, the COVID-19 virus that attacks humans can and does infect bats, so supposing there to have been an intermediary host sounds... fairly unreasonable to me.

The question is how much exposure humans have to bats vs those intermediate hosts. There's a lower probability for a second jump, but if the exposure is higher that raises the probability again to compensate for that.

e.g. 1% chance of a jump from bat to human, 1% jump from bat to pangolin, 1% jump from pangolin to human.
That would be 1% vs. 0.01%.

However, if there are only a hundred exposures to bats, and a hundred thousand exposures to pangolin, that changes.

1-(.99^100) vs. 1-(.9999^100000)

63% chance vs. 99.99%
(assuming I did that right, didn't double check)
(and that's if each pangolin was only exposed to one bat with covid in the wild, which they may have themselves had many exposures)


Scientists did not think exposure frequency was high enough for bats, I guess.
Also, some species transmit disease to humans more easily.

[teo123]

A related question: why don't viruses that jump from one specie to a distantly related one die out from inbreeding after a few generations?
Viruses co-evolve with the hosts, right? And virus equivalent of sexual reproduction is when two viruses infect the same cell, right? So, when a bat coronavirus receives a mutation that enables it to attack humans... it essentially enters an eco-system in which there is no organism of its specie. The coronavirus that lives in humans which is most closely related to COVID-19 is separated from COVID-19 by tens of millions of years, and "mating" with it will not produce viable offspring. So, one would expect COVID-19 to disappear due to inbreeding in a few generations, as the harmful genetic mutations in it accumulate. Where is the error in that reasoning?

[brimstoneSalad]

A related question: why don't viruses that jump from one specie to a distantly related one die out from inbreeding after a few generations?

1. Viruses don't work like multicellular organisms. As I explained before, they have far less genetic information and have far more progeny, which means among those there are many many many perfect clones. That means effectively no harmful genetic degradation from generation to generation. They do not *need* new genetic information. If one was effective then so will be its clones, of which it will produce many perfect copies.

Viruses co-evolve with the hosts, right?

2. They need to keep up with the host's immune system, but it takes a long time for a species to evolve to make the virus obsolete. Immunological adaptation is principally within an individual via acquired immunity. As long as there are new individuals being born who can be infected (do not have full immunity) the virus can survive for a very very long time with only clones and no new genetic information.

And virus equivalent of sexual reproduction is when two viruses infect the same cell, right? So, when a bat coronavirus receives a mutation that enables it to attack humans... it essentially enters an eco-system in which there is no organism of its specie. The coronavirus that lives in humans which is most closely related to COVID-19 is separated from COVID-19 by tens of millions of years, and "mating" with it will not produce viable offspring.

3. No. First, millions of years to a virus is nothing when they take information across individuals separated by over a billion. Viruses are very simple and they function very similarly. Second, your assumptions of millions of years of separation is false. Viruses diffuse across species much more frequently than you assume and the gene pool is very wide. Third, viruses don't even need other individuals of their respective types to get new genetic information, they can take it from the host cells, as well as other viruses of totally different types infecting the same cells. Finally, because of their simplicity and how many individuals are involved errors themselves are also far more likely to result in beneficial mutations so they don't even need to take genetic information from anywhere else.

So, one would expect COVID-19 to disappear due to inbreeding in a few generations, as the harmful genetic mutations in it accumulate.

I already explained to you in another thread why this was wrong. How do you expect me to answer your questions when you're disrespectful enough of my time to forget those answers in a matter of months?

Where is the error in that reasoning?

Your error is trying to reason about something empirical. It can be done by some, but clearly not by you. It leads you to incorrect beliefs 99% of the time -- like that the Earth is flat, bombs and airplanes don't exist, and prisons don't exist. Some of these things you apparently still even believe.

Stop trying to use reason to arrive at empirical conclusions. Instead, pick up a book on virology if you're curious about these things. Clearly experts do not believe your conclusion to be the case, so you should assume you are wrong and that you fundamentally misunderstand virology. Start with 101 and stop trying to jump ahead when you don't understand the first thing about viral evolution or replication.

[teo123]

I already explained to you in another thread why this was wrong.

This is not really the same question. I asked there how could RNA viruses, in general, deal with genetic mutations when they have no mechanism of correcting (DNA...) or mitigating (sexual reproduction) them. You explained to me they do have a mechanism for mitigating them, that two viruses infecting the same cell has the same effect as bacteria conjugating. But I noticed now this does not explain how viruses can jump between species.