We Will Forever Be Skeptical About the Origin of Covid-19
A concise update of what’s going on and what it would take to convince everyone.
Everyone wants an answer to the origin of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the culprit behind the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. It’s not just a want but a need as well. We need to know; otherwise, we may be repeating the same mistakes and playing dice roll.
Without knowing how a pathogen of pandemic potential came to be, we won’t know how to stop the next one. Sure, we can take more stringent precautions, but we won’t know if they are the correct ones to take. So this begs the question: Is the origin of SARS-CoV-2 or Covid-19 (refers to as ‘origin’ only hereafter) solvable?
The transition
Last year's prevailing origin hypothesis was a zoonotic source, namely a jump or spillover from bats (a natural source of coronaviruses) to humans, with or without an intermediate host. But because bat-human direct contact is rare, an intermediate animal host might have mediated the spillover.
This year, however, the landscape has shifted.
In a briefing on 30th March 2021, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization (WHO)…
