A virus that shares a whopping 96% of the genome with the novel corona virus, sars-coV-2, which is responsible for the current Covid-19 epidemic has been found on a bat caught in Yunnan Province. A crucial protein on its membrane, the spike protein or S protein, is however too different to consider it as the immediate ancestor. A section of this protein, the S1 section, serves as the receptor-binding domain of the virus, i.e. the key of the mechanism that allows the virus to enter a cell.
The search began for an intermediary host that could have mediated between the bat virus and the sars-CoV-2. The South China Agricultural University SCAU claimed that they found a 99% match with a virus on a pangolin. This was a mistake. The actual match is only around 90% which makes a direct evolutionary jump impossible. But what was the 99% about? The structures of the receptor-binding domain of both viruses were nearly identical.
So we have two viruses. One that matches almost 100% of the entire genome of the sars-coV-2 and a second virus that has a genome section producing the exact key protein for the virus surface.
In 2015 doctor Zheng-Li Shi of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, P4 security laboratory, published a research paper that describes this exact key protein transfer between similar viruses.
The pangolin that carried the almost perfectly matching S protein was not caught in the wild. It was obtained from an unnamed institute which implies that pangolins were used as test animals in China.
The idea that test animals, being very expensive, could have been sold on the black market is harshly dismissed in our media. The WHO is also obsessed with appeasing the Chinese. The reason might be that they have to keep their face in the light that the viruses might have been (possibly involuntarily) produced weapons of mass destruction.
sources:
[The research paper] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4797993/
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00548-w
https://www.sinobiological.com/2019-ncov-antigen-reagents.html
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/coronavirus-pangolins-may-have-spread-the-disease-to-humans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin
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