Yes, Bats Carry The Virus - BUT They Are Not The "Bad Guys"

Amidst continuing furor in the country, including  mounting protests against police nationwide, and now learning of a widespread "Antifa hysteria" disabling the less capable and discriminating brains, e.g.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/opinion/antifa-protests.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=OpEd%20Columnists

 As well as Trump endorsing Chinese concentration camps for the minority Uyghur Muslims, gleaned from John Bolton's just released book. (Of course, 99% of Bolton's content , i.e. regarding Trump being chaotic, despotic  and "transactional" we already knew from earlier works - such as from authors like Michael Wolff, Bob Woodward,  James Comey and Cliff Simms.)   We are still not covering all bases in this time of historical upheaval.

Slowly retreating from the national 'radar'  - in the yen to return to normality -  is the persistent threat of the Covid 19 virus (SARS-COV-2)which is still filling up hospital ICUs and ravaging lives and lungs.    In addition, millions of people are disrespecting the virus - its very nature of transmission - by turning the wearing of masks into a tribal identity issue.   Beyond that, many of those non-mask tribes hail from red states and blame the virus and the bats carrying it for causing the lockdown and economic devastation - as opposed to Trump.

Let's recall again Trump wasted two weeks of critical time calling the pandemic a "hoax", after which he refused to organize a nationally coordinated response- forcing medical centers and health workers to compete for scarce ppe. He then stage managed chaotic  PR "briefings" which  overshadowed the medical professionals and substituted his own ignorant notions and beliefs.  One casualty? A young patient who came into the emergency room with damage to his intestinal tract after having ingested bleach. The incident occurred just days after Trump suggested that "injection" of disinfectants should be researched as a potential coronavirus treatment .   There followed  - on top of all Trump's other misfires- an intentional gutting and muzzling of the CDC which caused Laurie Garrett to deliver a scathing assessment on 'Democracy Now' 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_z297eni8c

As well as a withering piece on Trump's total incompetence:

 Trump Has Sabotaged America's Coronavirus Response

 
The Trumpistas tried to fight back by confecting a cockeyed conspiracy ideation that China was ultimately to blame. Indeed, a WSJ May 2 (p. A3) that "the Education Department has asked the University of Texas system to provide documentation of its dealings with the Chinese laboratory U.S. officials are investigating", i.e.  the Wuhan Institute of Virology and its researcher Shi Zhenghi.   The eminent scientist dubbed "Bat Woman" because of her work on bats.  All this despite the fact (ibid.):  "There is no concrete public evidence to confirm the theory the outbreak resulted from an accident at the lab."  And so "the current dominant theory remains that the bats passed the virus to humans either directly or indirectly."

WSJ columnist Matt Ridley showed the connection between bats and the virus in his article:  The Bats Behind The Pandemic', WSJ, April 11-12, p. C5.

Therein he noted that:

"Bats have supplied most of the dangerous new diseases of the past two decades including: rabies, Ebola, Marburg and other highly dangerous viruses...even the "tasty" fruit bats carry the Hendra and Nipah viruses - and have been responsible for "small but lethal outbreaks in South Asia and Australia"

""One quarter of all mammal species are bats - and they have lots of different viruses. They also fly so can carry diseases long distances."

But this may be giving bats too much of a bad name in terms of being the source of the new coronavirus as well as spreading it, while letting humans off the hook. Why are humans on the hook in the first place?  A recent (Feb. 18) article in The Nation by Sonia Smith sheds much needed light on how and why we are the real 'bad guys' and not the bats. Ms. Smith does concede that 60 percent of the most virulent microbial pathogens  that have emerged since 1940 can be traced to bats and other wild creatures.  But as she writes:

"That's not the fault of the wild animals.  Though stories illustrated with pictures of the wild animals (like the fruit bat, see photo) abound and identify them as "the source" of the current Covid 19 outbreak"  this is premature.  The reason is that most of the microbes "live harmlessly" in the bodies of the animals - including the horseshoe bat  (Rhinolophus affinis) the carrier of the Covid 19 virus.

But wait! Doesn't that make this bat the bad guy?  

Not really, because (ibid.):

"The problem is the way that cutting down forests and expanding towns and industrial activities creates pathways for the animal microbes to adapt to the human body...Cutting down bats' forests forces them to roost in trees in backyards and farms instead, increasing the likelihood that a human might take a bite of a piece of fruit covered in bat saliva. Or hunt and slaughter a local bat, exposing oneself to the virus sheltering in the bat's tissues."


So here's the point: viruses were on Earth billions of years before humans and there is no way all can be eliminated. In the case of their presence in bats and other wild creatures we behold a kind of peaceful co-existence.  The viruses just inhabit those animal tissues for the most part but don't kill the beasts. But when humans enter the picture - say by destruction of bat wild habitat- that's when things get ugly.

Again, the fictional (2011) movie 'Contagion' probably has one of the most illuminating scenes - but near the end- on how "Patient Zero" (Gwenneth Paltrow's character ) became infected. To recount: we see a flock of bats originally perched on trees which then fly over a pig farm in Guangdong province and drop bat guano over the pig feeding area. The guano is already infected with the unknown virus. The pigs then consume the guano, and become infected themselves. 

 In the film the Chinese hog butcher slaughters one of these pigs, gets pig blood all over his hands - wipes it off.  He then greets Gweneth Paltrow's character (on a visit on behalf of her corporation) and she shakes the butcher's hand.  She then becomes "Patient zero" - which we learn only at the end- though we suspect it earlier.   When she then visits a bar full of people and glasses with which she makes contact, we know how this pandemic began.  Who is to blame? Well, not the bats whose habitat was violently upended by the industrial activity of Patient zero's corporation. In the words of biologist Christine Kreuder Johnson, Director for the Epicenter for Disease Dynamics at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine:
  

“Spillover of viruses from animals are a direct result of our actions involving wildlife and their habitat.  The consequence is they’re sharing their viruses with us. These actions simultaneously threaten species survival and increase the risk of spillover. In an unfortunate convergence of many factors, this brings about the kind of mess we’re in now.”

Something to consider next time we plan to barge into a bat's habitat- or that of any other creature. Want to keep viral outbreaks down? Then we need to stop invading the living spaces of other animals with which we share this planet.  In the case of bats, before we contemplate slaughtering them to protect human health, we may want to consider their role in global biodiversity and ecosystem health as well as beneficial neighbors. Included in the last are:their role in pollination, dispersal of fruits and consumption of insects - especially those responsible for many dread human diseases.  As one scientist has pointed out: "The good they do outweighs any potential negatives."

In the meantime we can assert the real 'bad guys'  are the  HUMAN cretins who continue to threaten public health officials, both via  social media and live - including showing up at their homes with weapons.  Idiots like the "Freedom Angels" that stalk and harass health officials online (e.g. on Facebook) as well as other misfits, worms and vermin.  And what are all these crazies exercised about? Well, being mandated to wear masks, and practicing social distancing - the only ways to avoid another lockdown, or nationwide quarantine.   The only practical means to avoid hundreds of thousands more infections and hospital ICUs being flooded with desperately ill Covid patients.

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Market for bats in Yunnan province - ripe and ready to go for Bat soup.   The continued invasion of certain bat habitats to raid for food ensures endless pandemics, and is definitely connected to climate change.

The horsehoe bat (Rhinolophus affinis) the prime culprit in the spread of Covid-19.

"RaTG13 is the name, rank and serial number of an individual horseshoe bat of the species Rhinolophus affinis, or rather a sample of its feces collected in 2013 in a cave in Yunna, China. The sample was collected by hazmat -clad scientists from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan that year.  Stored away and forgotten until January this year, the sample from this bat contains the virus hat caused Covid-19."-  Matt Ridley, 'The Bats Behind The Pandemic', WSJ, April 11-12, p. C5

Matt Ridley's revelation of the bat identity that's spawned the current Covid-19 pandemic was an eye opener for many, especially as he drilled down deep to show what we're up against.   Below, I summarize some of the main findings from his must read WSJ piece;:

-  In an initial foray into Shiton Cave, south of Kumming, Chinese scientists found viruses in the bat droppings and anal swabs "that were more similar to human SARS than anything fond in palm civets, the small mammals until then presumed to be the source of the human infection."

-  Back in the lab the researchers "found that one of the viruses in the droppings, called W1V1, as able to thrive in monkey and human cells- specially engineered to activate the gene for ACE2 rcceptors.  These are the ones that provide the 'lock' to which the coronavirus' protein spike can fit as a key."  This is the lock and key that showed humans could catch SARS from bat droppings and which is the key to the horrific respiratory distress suffered by many patients.

- In 2016, Ralph Baric and collegaues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "found the same bat virus  could infect live mice that had been engineered to express the same gene for the ACE 2 receptor."  According to the paper published in the wake: "The virus was poised for human emergence,"

-  The role of an animal called the Pangolin, e.g.


was considered in terms of its possible role in the spread of the virus.This was especially given "an illegal pangolin trade  for traditional Chinese medicine brings people into close contact with sick animals."  However, while the role of pangolins in the spread of SARS-COV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) remains unclear, "a closer look at the genome (published last week by Maciej Boni at Penn State and David Robertson at Glasgow University)  "found that human versions of the virus were more closely related to the RaTG13 horseshoe bat sample found in a cave."  

But stunningly,  the same analysis showed that "the most recent common ancestor of the human virus and the BaTG13 virus lived at least 40 years ago."  So it is unlikely the cave in Yunnan (1,000 miles from Wuhan) is where the first Covid-19 infection happened or that the culprit bat was taken from that cave to Wuhan to be chucked into a bat soup.  And the kicker: 

"Somewhere much closer to Wuhan there is another colony of bats carrying the same kind of virus"  so that "it looks like a horrible coincidence that China's Institute of Virology - where human cells were being experimentally infected with bat viruses- happens to be in Wuhan, the origin of today's pandemic".   Never mind coincidence! Look for the Reich conspiracy mongers to use it to invent nonsense that this is a Chinese "bio-weapon" or some such rot.

Ridley in his extensive piece goes on to note that bats are "sold directly to restaurants throughout China and southeast Asia, but no direct evidence if their sale to Wuhan's wet markets have come to light."

Which is gratifying to know, so that rational people (including you, Bill Maher) -will now be justified in just calling it Covid-19 and not the lurid "Wuhan virus".   What is not gratifying to learn is that the Yunnan cave sample shows the bat virus didn't need to recombine with viruses in other species in a market to be infectious to people. Instead, "the role of the wet markets may be that other animals got infected there and produce much higher loads of virus than the bats alone would, amplifying the infection."   This, in fact, was the conclusion of one Australian virologist working at a lab with Covid-infected bats in Singapore - and featured on an MSNBC special on the pandemic. She opined to Richard Engel that virus-laden bat guano contaminated a hog pen and got on a butcher's hands - which were then indiscriminately wiped onto another surface- then picked up by an unsuspecting third party.  
More worrying even is the potential for many future pandemics, epidemics, i.e.

"All over Asia and Africa human beings encounter horseshoe bats, any one of which could be carrying a virus that could start an epidemic if amplified in a market or similar setting. Bats have supplied most of the dangerous new diseases of the past two decades including: rabies, Ebola, Marburg and other highly dangerous viruses."

Above all this shows humans need to stay out of bat habitat - invading their caves, or catching the little beasts to put into soup or other exotic dishes. As Ridley points out, even the "tasty" fruit bats carry the Hendra and Nipah viruses - and have been responsible for "small but lethal outbreaks in South Asia and Australia."    More worrisome yet is that bats are long-lived mammals like we are and often live in congested conditions - citing one single bat roost in Texas with 20 million bats  at certain times of the year.  All of which portends a nonstop battle with viruses associated with these critters, and how our encroachment into bat habitats puts us all at risk.  I.e. "One quarter of all mammal species are bats - and they have lots of different viruses. They also fly so can carry diseases long distances."

These findings also torch the claims of a wingnut  WSJ hack named Andy Kessler,  ‘Coronavirus Shatters Complacency’, April 13, p. A15) that:

“The pandemic has awakened us from climate nightmares” 

 By his arguments and clueless statements he  reveals (again)  the inability of the Journal’s stable of neolib capitalists to integrate disparate concepts, realities. In this case, failing to grasp that the pandemic, indeed, is a direct offshoot of humans’ failure to take climate change seriously – and act responsibly.  How so?

Hunting, farming and the global movement of people to cities – and concomitant invasion of wild animal habitat - has led to massive declines in biodiversity and increased the risk of dangerous viruses like Covid-19 spilling over from animals to humans.

We now know  142 viruses have been transmitted from animals to humans over many years, and many have been matched to the IUCN’s red list of threatened species.  The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that the spillover risk was highest from threatened and endangered wild animals whose populations had declined largely due to hunting, the wildlife trade and loss of habitat.  As the paper summary put it:

“Human encroachment into biodiverse areas increases the risk of spillover of novel infectious diseases by enabling new contacts between humans and wildlife … We found that species in the primate and bat orders were significantly more likely to harbor zoonotic viruses compared to all other orders,”

In the words of lead author Christine Kreuder Johnson, director of the EpiCenter for Disease Dynamics at the One Health Institute, of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

“Spillover of viruses from animals are a direct result of our actions involving wildlife and their habitat.  The consequence is they’re sharing their viruses with us. These actions simultaneously threaten species survival and increase the risk of spillover. In an unfortunate convergence of many factors, this brings about the kind of mess we’re in now.”

Adding:

“We need to be really attentive to how we interact with wildlife and the activities that bring humans and wildlife together. We obviously don’t want pandemics of this scale. We need to find ways to co-exist safely with wildlife, as they have no shortages of viruses to give us,”.

This comports totally with what former Vice President Al Gore told Bill Maher on last Friday night's Real Time – in respect of humans encroaching on wild animal habitat and especially using these animals indiscriminately as exotic food.  It also dovetail with Matt Ridley's excellent WSJ review article (April 11-12, p.  C 3) I summarized in this post.

  The takeaway is that only an idiot or congenital moron would fail to see the connection between climate change and  plundering endangered wildilife habitat  (or the habitats of exotic or dangerous species like horse shoe bats). The latter in a dumb effort to get strange food or make way for human engineering projects (such as depicted in the 2011 film, 'Contagion.)

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