> Changes in the environment are driving displaced species of animals into new habitats, allowing them to mix with other species or potential hosts.<p>Outside of reactionary comments about banning eating bats and banning "wet markets", I wish there was more serious discussion about how intensive animal farming in general could lead to another pandemic and what we're going to do about it. We're just going to continue as normal until a pandemic kicks off from cows, pigs or chickens?<p>On top of just the number of animals treated with antibiotics being kept in close proximity to help a virus mutate, there's also the animal waste produced, the land required and the contributions to climate change that are destroying the environment and displacing species.
Alina Chan looks from a scientific perspektive at the lableak hypothesis and it's unresolved as far as I know: <a href="https://twitter.com/Ayjchan" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/Ayjchan</a><p>Bascially we don't know and probably won't know. The conflict of interest with the WHO mission is pretty clear.<p>Beyond any politicization of the issue it's interesting to learn about the possibilities and risks in that research area.
> Scientist have long suspected that the rate of new infectious diseases could accelerate, especially in developing countries where human and animal interaction is increasing.<p>I don't know any "Scientist" making this claim, and I work at a research University. Humans have always lived in direct contact with animals. We evolved from the Natural world living with animals in the forest, desert, and grassland. What has changed is that there are more people and we are more interconnected than ever. So in the past, if someone were exposed to a novel coronavirus, the infection wouldn't leave the village, but now it spreads across the globe in a matter of months.
Not really related, other than bat dispersion models, but I always found this fascinating:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb</a>
It seems that the route of infection is through large amounts of the virus being inhaled. What this article does not explain is how this route of transmission can occur from bats to humans. Did it perhaps start when someone went into a bat cave? Otherwise it seems unlikely to me that an infected bat can transmit this particular virus.
Discussion five days ago of this Reuters article on HN: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26325442" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26325442</a>
beautiful site. but this notion, that covid-19 came from bats is tricky. origin tracing a virus is tricky, specially one year too late. and the wuhan wet market didn't house bats. origins of covid-19 could be from anything whether the virus leaked from a lab, due to lax security policies. some other carrier animal or human we will never figure out etc.
The question news media and “investigative journalism” if it exists anymore needs to ask is how come this particular outbreak/ transmission from bats didn’t happen before 2019. The “wet markets” exist all over China and people consumed bats before 2019.
Maybe we should consider getting rid of esp problematic species of bats that are host to the most pathogens. I personally don't see much value in the species. They are like the mosquitos of the mammal world.