According to a new Canadian biologist study, the coronavirus evolved because of dogs eating bat meat. If this study proves to be correct, this new report may indicate that COVID-19 could be a byproduct of the evolution inside a dog's innards.
The Chinese practice of eating dog meat despite pressure to stop the practice, enabled a virus to jumpstart its evolution further.
A new theory to explain a dreaded virus
Sars-CoV-2 is thought to come from bats that have a variety of pathogens but remain unaffected when eaten by humans from infected animals. Next is the most dire virus to affect humans who should not be eating just any animal.
Consumption of animals like snakes and pangolins is rampant in China. This happens since wild animals are being sold as livestock at the Wuhan live animal market.
Xuhua Xia, a biology professor at the University of Ottawa examined 1,250 genomes from the coronavirus as Sars-CoV-2.
Prof. Xia said that the virus strains in snakes and pangolins were far from the coronavirus, and cannot be the connection from bats to humans.
The shorter version is that the proto-coronavirus was born inside the innards of dogs, that accelerated its evolution into the Sars-CoV-2 that produce the COVID-19. Dogs consumed in Wuhan transferred the virus to Wuhanese.
Now, feral dogs are suspect as carriers of a horrific disease.
However, Professor James Wood has a different report about this matter. The professor who works as head of the Department of Veterinary Medicine and a researcher in infection dynamics at the University of Cambridge was not impressed about this findings and expressed his objection.
He said,"I find it difficult to understand how the author has been able to conclude anything from this study, or to hypothesis much, let alone that the virus causing COVID-19 may have evolved through dogs."
He found the theory preposterous and unwieldy.
China has been rewriting the narrative of the coronavirus as of this writing.
He commented that it was all inference and no empirical data to back it up. Nothing in the study is sound, and he was concerned about the circumstances of its publishing in the journal which was a loose study.
It is not solid, as it was not a great concern for dog owners, how the proposition was explained.
Prof. Xia accepted the criticism and his theory as wholly speculative, and without enough data on all animals that have the virus.
He added the transfer of the virus via consumption by humans is a rare event, or there will be multiple outbreaks but not from Wuhan itself.
How the coronavirus fights back
Antiviral proteins (antibodies) will prevent viruses from multiplying and attack the viral RNA.
Proteins attack the CpG dinucleotides to destroy the coronavirus, but it reduced proteins to bypass the ZAP and infect the host cell.
The COVID-19 can evade the ZAP defence by stealth and avoiding detection it picks off host cells easily too.
Professor Xia's findings
The canine coronaviruses that afflict dogs' intestines were the same as Sars-CoV-2 which is very similar to bats.
It explains the evolution of the virus in a dog's digestive tract that explains the problems of COVID-19 patients complaining intestinal maladies. It connects to a large number of intestinal complaints too.
This was checked and it was found out that the virus is not efficient as claimed!
The result is that the assumption is debunked that dogs eating bat meat is the main cause of COVID-19.
