Question: What do you think caused the corona virus in your opinion other than what was on the news? Like how did it occur?

Michael Schubert answered on 19 Mar 2020: last edited 19 Mar 2020 3:46 pm

This particular coronavirus, which is called “SARS-CoV-2”, had been around for quite a while in bats. Bats have a very strong immune system – much stronger than ours – and so the virus had to evolve to be very strong as well, so that it could manage to infect the bats. The virus can also infect another kind of animal, called a pangolin, which looks a little bit like a pinecone when it curls up!

Coronaviruses are good at jumping from one animal to another (including humans), so many scientists now think that SARS-CoV-2 jumped from bats into pangolins, and then from pangolins into humans. (Some think it went straight from bats to humans with nothing in between, but it’s hard to be sure at the moment.)
SARS-CoV-2 is very good at infecting humans, because our immune system is not as strong as a bat’s. It is also very good at spreading. The city where it started is very crowded and also has a lot of travel in and out of the city, so the virus could start spreading very quickly. After that, people who didn’t know they had it kept on travelling and passing it around. That’s how we got to the point we’re at today – and that’s why it’s so important to be careful about staying in when you’re ill and not joining large crowds at the moment.