Was coronavirus pandemic predicted? Medical study from 2007 exposes China's responsibility in outbreak

As China attempts to shift blame onto the United States for the coronavirus outbreak, a medical paper published in 2007 appears to have both predicted the current pandemic and laid responsibility squarely at the feet of communist China.

The paper, published in Clinical Microbiology Reviews, is an examination of the SARS — which is scientifically known as SARS-CoV — outbreak in the early 2000s, its origins, and how a similar outbreak could come roaring back in the future.

SARS was traced back to the consumption of exotic animals, such as horseshoe bats and civets, and the areas where those animals are farmed and sold. These types of farms and markets are common in China, where overpopulation means finding non-traditional protein sources.

But that tradition could have deadly consequences, the study found.

In fact, the four Chinese scientists who authored the study more than a decade ago had an ominous warning that appears to be coming true in real time.

"The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb," the scientists wrote.

"The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored," they said.

Indeed, doctors now believe the first case of COVID-19 — which is also known as SARS-CoV-2 — originated in a market last November where exotic and live animals were sold.

From Live Science:

A 55-year-old individual from Hubei province in China may have been the first person to have contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus spreading across the globe. That case dates back to Nov. 17, 2019, according to the South Morning China Post. ...

Scientists now suspect this coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, originated in a bat and somehow hopped to another animal, possibly the pangolin, which then passed it on to humans. The disease is now spreading between people without any animal intermediary.

Unfortunately, tracing the disease is not easy.

Complicating matters is China's apparent refusal to be honest with the international community, which is now grappling from exponential growth in COVID-19 cases.

Not only is China now expelling American journalists from the country, but it was reported last month that Chinese scientists had proof of COVID-19 in December, but the communist government ordered the scientists to stop testing, destroy evidence, and censored local media from reporting on the disease.

There have been more than 200,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the outbreak began, including more than 7,300 in the U.S. as of Wednesday morning.

Unfortunately, more than 8,200 people have died from the virus.