[DiogenesKynikos]

> You're saying animal -> human transmission of a human virus is equivalent to animal -> human transmission of a new virus.

You're making up an entirely arbitrary distinction.

> The palm civet SARS spike protein RBD did not gain the ability to bind human ACE2 many times.

You have no idea if this is the case. Most of these small outbreaks were not analyzed in detail (or even known about until well after the fact). The evidence shows that the virus was able to jump from animals to humans numerous times, and possibly spread in small clusters.

[COGlory]

No, they're two very different things, because one involves an adaptation. Once adapted, the rules of the game for cross-species transmission events are completely different.

Or do you maintain that a combination cross-species transmission and adaptation to the new host is as common as cross-species transmission of already-adapted viruses?

[DiogenesKynikos]

I see that you're trying to imply that SARS-CoV-2 was pre-adapted to humans, while SARS wasn't, so this is going in a conspiracy-theory direction.

I guess the Wuhan Institute of Virology also produced a special deer-adapted version which they released into the wilds of North America, and a mink-adapted version they released on farms in Denmark, and a hamster-adapted version, and a cat-adapted version, and on and on. Both SARS and SARS-CoV-2 have shown an ability to infect a range of different species.

[COGlory]

Nope, but you're doing a nice job illustrating the point I made in my very first post in this thread.

[DiogenesKynikos]

You haven't made a coherent point yet. You're trying to draw a distinction between zoonosis and animal-to-human transmission. The former literally means the latter.

And then claiming that the numerous independent clusters of SARS that popped up in wild animal markets across the Pearl River Delta aren't examples of zoonosis?