It looks like the universe will not let me have a day off.

@Nature just released an Addendum on the WIV's first paper about COVID, explaining what's up with RaTG13, the bat coronavirus most closely related to SARS-CoV-2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2951-z

tldr from the Mojiang mine, 293 CoVs found, 9 were SARS CoVs, 1 was RaTG13 first published in 2016 (not cited in their original 2020 @Nature paper). The other 8 SARS CoVs? We have no insight to their sequences!

Why are we hearing about this in mid-Nov 2020 when their paper was released in January, saying that they first found a match in the RdRp between RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2 and then full genome sequenced RaTG13 to find a 96.2% genome identity match?

Furthermore, the Addendum doesn't explain why the published sequence doesn't match the raw metagenomic and amplicon sequencing trace data. How sure are we that this virus was not synthesized/cultured in the lab, a few base changes were observed and updated in the final genome?

ALSO 13 serum samples were collected from the 4 miners. And apparently these samples still exist and could be re-tested in 2020. Sure, these patients were not infected by SARS-CoV-2 but what about other SARS viruses?

How did they get from "We suspected that the patients had been infected by an unknown virus" to "the fungus turned out to be the pathogen that had sickened the miners, she says it would have been only a matter of time before they caught the coronaviruses" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/

I feel like we're playing a game of half-truths. "serum samples collected from 4 patients.. none of the samples gave a positive result (nucleocapsid, SARSr-CoV Rp3)"

Medical thesis: "WIV tested patients serum IgM, positive for virus"

PhD thesis: "4 people had SARS IgG"