ONE POPULAR BAT COVID-19 THEORY MAY ACTUALLY BE TRUE — STUDY
https://news.google.com/articl…=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
FOR DECADES, SCIENTISTS have been sounding the alarm on the rise in infectious diseases caused by climate change.
But despite bird flu, swine flue, mad cow disease, ebola, and more, these pleas were largely ignored by policymakers and the general public — until a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 jumped from animals to humans. And now here we are, at the one-year anniversary point of a global pandemic that has upended life as we knew it.
The trigger species has long been presumed to be bats — but exactly how the virus made the leap, and why, has been the subject of debate. Climate scientists would tell you it was our own fault, pushing into bats' wild habitats and bringing ourselves in to too close contact with the animals which carry these viruses.
Turns out, they are — at least in part — absolutely right. New research published Friday in the journal Science of the Total Environment provides concrete evidence for the theory SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, originated in bats.
Perhaps more importantly, the study explicitly links climate change to the uptick in bat species carrying coronavirus in China's Yunnan province, as well as in neighboring countries like Laos and Myanmar.