Changing the title of this article did it a disservice, as its no longer clear that this was a research paper arguing the importance of studying bat-origin coronaviruses in China from January 2019, well before SARS-CoV-2 made its appearance. The paper also covers a theory of why bats can be long-term carriers of coronaviruses without showing symptoms of disease:<p>"It is hypothesized that flight provided the selection pressure for coexistence with viruses, while the migratory ability of bats has particular relevance in the context of disease transmission [16]. Indeed, bats were linked to a few highly pathogenic human diseases, supporting this hypothesis. Some of these well characterized bat viruses, including bat lyssaviruses (Rabies virus), henipaviruses (Nipah virus and Hendra virus), CoVs (SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SADS-CoV), and filoviruses (Marburg virus, Ebola virus, and Mengla virus), pose a great threat to human health [16,17]. A comprehensive analysis of mammalian host–virus relationships demonstrated that bats harbor a significantly higher proportion of zoonotic viruses than other mammalian orders [18]. Viruses from most of the viral families can be found in bats [16]."