Perhaps a good idea to skip the next dinner with “bat soup”
Those three types of betacoronaviruses can latch onto proteins studding the outside of lung cells, and penetrate much deeper into the airway than cold-causing coronaviruses, says Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, M.D. The 2019 version is “a disease that causes more lung disease than sniffles,” Fauci says.
Damage to the lungs can make the viruses deadly. In 2003 and 2004, SARS killed nearly 10 percent of the 8,096 people in 29 countries who fell ill. A total of 774 people died, according to the World Health Organization.
MERS is even more deadly, claiming about 30 percent of people it infects. Unlike SARS, outbreaks of that virus are still simmering, Fauci says. Since 2012, MERS has caused 2,494 confirmed cases in 27 countries and killed 858 people.
Bats are often thought of as a source of coronaviruses, but in most cases they don’t pass the virus directly on to humans. SARS probably first jumped from bats into raccoon dogs or palm civets before making the leap to humans. All the pieces necessary to re-create SARS are circulating among bats, though that virus has not been seen since 2004 (SN: 11/30/17).
MERS, meanwhile, went from bats to camels before leaping to humans (SN: 2/25/14).
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-new-wuhan-coronavirus-stacks-up-against-sars-mers