There are a number of Trump loyalists who have been circulating the claim that “Covid19 originated in a Wuhan virology lab”. This claims lacks merit. in this article, we will briefly apply the concept of Occam’s Razor to the notion of how Covid19 originated, and look at several other factors that are counter to the virus lab origin claim. Occam’s Razor is a concept from science which declares that “given any problem or puzzle, the simplest possible solution is most likely the correct one.” The problem with human beings in general is that we have a natural tendency towards conspiratorial thinking, and conspiracy theories tend to spring up organically in any group of people when they are angry and scared. When applying Occam’s Razor we must put aside that tendency, focus on factors that are known to be present in a given environment, and consider factors that are so obvious that they can easily be overlooked.
It is an established fact that there are coronavirus variants circulating in wild Chinese bat populations. SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) were both coronavirus respiratory illnesses that are believed to have originated in bats. A coronavirus variant that was 96% similar to Covid19 was recently isolated in a Chinese province neighboring the Hubei province where the city of Wuhan is located. None of those claims are speculative. They are all backed up by existing science.
Bats frequently live in the rafters of old buildings, especially agricultural buildings where there are large numbers of insects for them to feed on. A Google search for the phrase “barn bat removal” returns over six million hits, including many articles which advise readers that bat removal is so difficult, that it’s often best to just leave them in place as they help reduce insect populations.
Bats are mammals who sleep while hanging upside down from rafters, which means that as they are sleeping, they would create respiratory exhalations including aerosolized droplets that fall to ground level. These kinds of aerosolized respiratory droplets have already been identified as a key transmission vector for the Covid19 virus. It is entirely plausible that if a coronavirus is circulating in a bat population, and that bat population rests in the rafters of an agricultural building, that a farmer who uses that building during his work would inhale respiratory droplets that fall down from the bats living in the barn rafters, and could thereby be exposed to a virus like Covid19.
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