zlacker

I believe that the preferred theory at the moment is that MERS originated in bats and was transmitted to camels before jumping to humans.

Bats can easily come in close contacts with people and cattle even when they are not actively hunted.

You also make a good point that we're discovering very early cases in the EU and US, which show that this all started earlier than the explosion in Wuhan.

I seem to recall reading articles suggesting that the jump to humans may have occurred more than a year before Wuhan.