Regarding the overall similarity to Yunnan sequences: OK, fair enough. But frankly, this just further tips my intuition toward an accidental escape from the Wuhan lab. It seems there is a lot of research activity devoted to collecting viruses in Yunnan. And, in keeping with your personal account of the critters inhabiting your local environs (which I do not think of as replete with Karst geology; correct me if I’m wrong), I keep finding myself wondering… Why do the researchers’ collection sites emphasize locations so far from Wuhan? Surely there must be bats in and around Wuhan. Is it simply the case that most of the coronaviruses that can infect both bats and humans come from the Yunnan region?
Regarding the spelling of Fra. William of Ockham: I wonder why references to the “razor” so frequently use the “Occam” spelling? I suppose it has to do with the Latin phrase “novacula occami” recorded by Libert Froidmont. And there we arrive at a dilemma: If William merely expressed a philosophy without explicitly invoking the steely metaphor, perhaps the naming rights should go to Prof. Foidmont. (In fact, it seems there is little in William’s surviving writings that really justify singling him out for edgy parsimony, related antecedents going back at least as far as Aristotle.) Nevertheless, if English-speakers are going to translate “novacula” to “razor,” it would only seem consistent to restore what is considered to be the English spelling of William’s birthplace. Thanks for prompting me to look into the matter.