This whole coronavirus thing is starting to feel like something out of a poorly written, slow-burn horror movie, isn’t it?
First we have a virus that jumps from bats to humans at wildlife market in the second most secretive country on the planet, (behind North Korea): China. The immediate work being done to cover up the virus’s spread would soon lead to an explosion in cases and, eventually the global pandemic that we find ourselves in today.
Then, it spreads silently through the population at first, with asymptomatic carriers just strutting around, going about their business for two weeks, all while slinging COVID-19 all over everything.
Now, with the United States predicting a loss of 100,000 to 200,000 lives, we are just discovering that a laboratory specializing in bat borne coronavirus was operating just a few miles away from the very wildlife market where the outbreak was believed to have begun.
Chinese government researchers isolated more than 2,000 animal viruses, including deadly bat coronaviruses, and carried out scientific work on them just three miles from a wild animal market identified as the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Several Chinese state media outlets in recent months touted the virus research and lionized in particular a key researcher in Wuhan, Tian Junhua, as a leader in bat virus work.
The coronavirus strain now infecting hundreds of thousands of people globally mutated from bats believed to have infected animals and people at a wild animal market in Wuhan. The exact origin of the virus, however, remains a mystery.
Unsurprisingly, the news prompted renewed concerns about China’s reaction to the outbreak, and what sort of reparations may be in order after the world vanquishes their viral villain.
