More Covid-19/SARS2 developments

One of BBC's best-kept secrets is the (very) early Sunday morning science programme on Radio 5. Perhaps it is better known to a younger generation as a podcast, but it would be good to give more publicity about it to us oldies more used to listening the radio. Although Inside Science on Radio 4 is an enjoyable and varied update on things technical and scientific, the extra half-hour gives 5 Live Science the opportunity to examine a topic in depth. Last Sunday's programme ranged widely over the latest research, some of it (user warning) not yet peer-reviewed. This piece is a mish-mash of what I have gleaned from both programmes - probably with a bit of More or Less thrown in.

The most controversial suggestion was that SARS2 (which seems to be now a common designation in the scientific community) did not make the leap from animal to man in Wuhan as is generally accepted. The researcher putting forward this theory bases it, as I understand, on two facts: the precise SARS2 has not yet been found in ... and that there are B and C strains in circulation. Only A is found in Guangdong, so he reckons this is the source. An aternative interprettion is that it has had more time to mutate in Wuhan.

The other is the only school survey carried out in Israel (apologies for not finding a URI). From an admittedly low sample, it seems that peer-to-peer transmission between teachers is much higher than that from teacher to pupil, pupil to teacher or pupil to pupil , thelatter being the lowest. The general finding that children are least at risk from the virus is borne out. Although they can be infected, they tend to shake it off quickly (no evidence of it spreading to other organs like heart lungs and liver as with adults) and do not shed virus as readily  So perhaps Kirsty when she introduced her first tentative return to school in the  summer should have put teachers on a rota rather than the children.

[Later] Listening to that 5 Live Science programme again and more carefully persuades me of the strength of the case against Wuhan as the area where the virus first jumped from bat to human. It also further weakens the accusation that it escaped, or was deliberately constructed in, the laboratory there - not that president Trump ever listens to scientific evidence.

Pushing the date of the initial mutation back to 3rd September at the earliest also enhances the possibility that Covid-19 escaped China in the autumn of  last year. Maybe more cases of death previously ascribed to pneumonia in continental Europe as well as Guangdong should be reexamined.