# About the origin of SARS-CoV-2

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/about-the-origin-of-sars-cov-2/13771>\
**Category:** Conversation\
**Tags:** Science, Article\
**Created:** [May 25, 2021, 7:39pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/about-the-origin-of-sars-cov-2/13771 "2021-05-25T19:39:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 252

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**Author:** ![Giltil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Giltil](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Giltil)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2021, 5:16pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/about-the-origin-of-sars-cov-2/13771/252 "2021-06-27T17:16:32Z")

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> [@Michael\_Okoko](#):
>
> Are we looking at the same data? If we are, then you should know this is a ridiculous statement. The h/m ratio for recombination between SARS-CoV-2 with other sarbecoviruses and merbecoviruses in the study was essentially the same

Although this observation favours the idea that SARS2 may have recombined with merbecoviruses, it doesn’t exclude the possibility that it could have resulted from convergent evolution, whose probability of occurrence, according to the authors, is 5% (see below).

_Of particular interest, we detected an array of 11 clustered homoplasies with similar genome distributions in SARS-CoV-2 and two genomes of bat Merbecoviruses isolated from Wuhan China (MG021452 and MG021451). However, simulations revealed that **this pattern has ~5% probability of resulting from convergent mutations** given the extent of saturation in the dataset_

So I stand to my claim you think is ridiculous, ie., _evidence for recombination between sars-cov-2 and merbecoviruses is not as compelling as you seem to think for it leaves room for another less likely but still plausible possibility._

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