Part II

The bat soup (bian fu tang 蝙蝠汤) has become one of the most infamous dishes during the COVID-19 outbreak around the world. Scientists have not confirmed whether bats are the natural host of the COVID-19 virus, although many studies did point out that the possibilities could be high. If you are interested in getting a gist of the current scientific reports on this issue, check out our post here [link to the summary of scientific articles].

Here are the major findings based on the news and tweets we collected:

1. The bat soup was first used as a general critique toward Chinese who eat wild animals but soon became a target for racist stereotyping;
2. Media is both fueling the stereotype of the bat-eating Chinese and helping debunk such a myth.

Part III

Since January 22, 2020, a tweet of a bat soup video posted by Chen Qiushi, a Chinese lawyer and citizen journalist, garnered much attention. Just for readers’ information, Chen followed the epidemic outbreak in Wuhan closely before and right after the lockdown of Wuhan city. His friends and family feared that he’d been silenced now. In his tweet, Chen expressed his disgust toward eating bats and warned the Chinese to stay away from eating wild animals. He did not specify where the video was taken or who took the video though.

Content translation: Does this thing look like death in your bowl? Before watching the documentary, bats lived in the cave and were excreted in situ. There was a thick layer of faeces in the cave, and various disgusting bugs lived in the faeces ... Can the Chinese completely give up eating wild animals after this incident?

As the tweets and postings of the bat-eating Chinese girl went viral in social media, other media outlets quickly followed up and expressed disgust toward the bat-eating Chinese woman. Here are some examples:

• “Ugh! The exposure of Chinese who eat bats” from Apple Daily on January 23, 2020
• “Revolting video shows woman devouring bat amid coronavirus outbreak” from New York Post on January 23, 2020;
• “CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Eating a bat amid coronavirus epidemic” from Toronto Sun on January 23, 2020
• “Coronavirus: Woman eats whole bat in disturbing footage after outbreak linked to soup” from Mirror on January 24, 2020.

Since the beginning of the 2019 novel Coronavirus (henceforth 2019-nCoV) outbreak, seeking for the origin of 2019-nCoV has been a hotly discussed topic on the Internet. People tend to be keen on finding the “culprit” to blame for what happened.

The first diagnosed cases were found to be connected to the Huanan South China Seafood Market in Wuhan (henceforth Huanan Market). The news began to draw attention to the illegal trade and consumption of wild animals in Huanan Market and suspected that the virus was transmitted from wild animals to humans.

The spotlight soon turned to bats - a mammalian animal known to be the reservoir host of numerous viruses. By the end of January, 2020, numerous netizens have raged at people who were hunting, selling, and eating wild animals, especially bats, blaming them for “catching” the virus and infecting the innocent others. Those who were found to have eaten bats in the past became victims of this cyber bully event, regardless of the specific contexts.

We are definitely not condoning the act of eating or selling wild animals. But, the question remains, what is the origin of 2019-nCoV? Does it really come from the bats and is transmitted to humans via close contact? Here, we review several peer-reviewed articles published to date that discuss the origin of 2019-nCoV.

Earlier studies of 2019-nCov (published in mid-late January 2020) mainly focused on describing the emergence and spread of 2019-nCoV. Researchers also tried to identify the origin of patient zero. They reported that the genome sequence of 2019-nCoV displays a high degree of similarity with the bat SARS-related coronaviruses, but whether bat is the original host of 2019-nCoV needs further investigation. Several studies presented detailed genomic sequencing analyses of 2019-nCoV and pointed to a bat origin for the 2019-nCoV.

Paraskevis et al.’s analysis proved that 2019-nCoV was closely related to a bat coronavirus (BatCoV RaTG13), and suggested a high possibility of a bat origin for the 2019-nCoV (published on Jan 29, 2020).

Similarly, Lu et al. discovered that the 2019-nCoV’s close relation to two bat-derived SARS-like coronaviruses. They pointed out that though bats are a plausible candidate for the original host of 2019-nCoV, wild animals sold at the Huanan Market might well likely be the intermediate hosts that helped spread the virus onto humans (published on Jan 29, 2020).

Chan et al. confirmed 2019-nCoV's close relation to bat coronaviruses and contended that further analysis is needed to determine its natural animal reservoir and possible intermediate hosts (Published on Jan 28 2020). The hypothesis of transmitting via intermediate hosts is also raised by Zhou et al. (published on Feb 3 2020). They further mentioned that how the 2019-nCoV is transmitted among hosts is still unknown, and the association between the 2019-nCoV and the disease has yet to be proven by animal experiments to fulfill the Koch postulates.

Li et al. discussed the genome plasticity of bat coronaviruses and their ability generate greater genetic diversity (via mutations and recombination), which will lead to a high chance of transmission across different species (published on Jan 29 2020). If assuming the 2019-nCoV does have a bat origin, then the characteristics of bat coronaviruses described above also apply to the 2019-nCoV.

The geographical origin of the 2019-nCoV is contested as well. Zhang et al. speculated that the 2019-nCoV may originate near Zhoushan or other places because the two bat coronaviruses that were found highly similar to the 2019-nCoV were collected in Zhoushan, Zhejiang, China. They examined 27 isolates of 2019-nCoV from Wuhan, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Thailand, who have all had contact with people from Wuhan. The 27 isolates can be divided into a minimum of six genotypes. The isolates from Guangdong and Zhejiang were likely infected from different places in Wuhan; the isolates from Thailand were likely infected from the same place in Wuhan (published on Feb 3 2020). Zhang et al. also pointed out that although there is likely to be one or more intermediate hosts of the 2019-nCoV (likely living mammals sold in the Huanan Market), it has not been officially confirmed. Li et al. also supported with the hypothesis that the 2019-nCoV is likely transmitted from bats to humans via an intermediate host. They also stated the need for conducting further fieldwork to confirm this hypothesis (Feb 9 2020).

According to our summary above, the peer reviewed articles all pointed to a highly possible bat origin with a highly probable intermediate mammalian host for the 2019-nCoV. However, exactly how the virus was transmitted from its original host to humans remains puzzling.

Although bat seems to be the most plausible candidate for the 2019-nCoV, none of the articles we reviewed one hundred percent confirmed 2019-nCoV’s bat origin. However, when the news of a possible bat origin was released on the Internet, netizens began to aggressively attack and blame people who have consumed bats and other wild animals in the past. But the truth is, we still do not fully understand 2019-nCoV’s origin and transmission routine yet.

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