Ridgeway - Questions after 4/20 Class

Ridgeway - Questions after 4/20 Class

by Chanse Ridgeway -

In our zoom class, we covered how it could have/came about. From a bat to more likely a pangolin. What I would like to learn from this class, or from my own research from this block, would be exactly how COVID-19 came about. I have heard many things from when I first heard about it, the first time I heard about it however, was that it was man-made in a lab. Which is difficult because yes that could be the case, but so can everything else that is being said about corona right? There's still a lot of information a lot of people don't know about COVID yet, but this piece right here is what I would like to know first I think.

PSA: I briefly covered this in my Personal History assignment

Re: Ridgeway - Questions after 4/20 Class

by Barbara Christie-Pope -

We are definitely going to talk about this and there are a couple of websites and a paper that you will read that discuss this.  In essence, for the virus to have been manufactured in a lab, there would have had to be starting material.  The idea is that the original SARS virus could be genetically edited to build SARS-CoV-2.  But that assumes that someone had to know where to modify the original virus and what that modification would have to be.  Our original course was supposed to be on gene-editing which is what this would have been.  But you have to know what gene to edit and this could not have been predicted to make SARS-CoV-2.  If someone had 300 years to do this, maybe.  Or, maybe, nature and evolution did it.  

Regarding bats:  we will read an article, Give Bats a Break.