There is another issue of concern that has so far gone unremarked.
The genetic analysis of the variants of the virus trace back to an estimated common ancestor on or about November 29, 2019.
https://nextstrain.org/ncovThe first human cases were identified about December 29th, implying infection no earlier than December 17, and more likely as late as December 24.
Yet the genetic tree shows several branching events about that time, and dozens of variants before that time. Please correct me if I am wrong. I am not a virologist. But, that would seem to suggest that the commonly presented story of a single infection from a single zoonotic jump at the Wuhan market in late December must be wrong. There has to have been, or seem to have to have been multiple infections in a short time frame with more than a dozen variants.
Alternately, there was a single infection back about November 20-24. And that infected person went undetected and gave rise to the variants.
The large number of variants all at once seems odd. They do fall into four or five fairly tight clusters, so perhaps the number of seeming variants is not unusual.
Still, this seems to point to two possibilities. 1) the zoonotic jump occurred a month earlier than has been believed, or 2) the zoonotic infection occurred many times with variants in a short period.
I have no idea what to make of that. And I don't know enough to know if this is usually seen to happen this way, or if this is unusual. It does look curious.
What most concerns me is that if there is a wild pool of the virus in some other species (most likely bats, next most likely snakes) which is rapidly mutating in that population, that it may be much harder to ultimately contain the disease. And the natural pool may be a source for continued new variants of the virus to emerge.
Sam
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. No matter how many times i re-read my post, dyslexia always gets the better of me.
