Abstract A recent study by Tang et al. claimed that two major types of severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (CoV-2) had evolved in the ongoing CoV disease-2019 pandemic and that one of these types was more ‘aggressive’ than the other. Given the repercussions of these claims and the intense media coverage of these types of articles, we have examined in detail the data presented by Tang et al., and show that the major conclusions of that paper cannot be substantiated. Using examples from other viral outbreaks, we discuss the difficulty in demonstrating the existence or nature of a functional effect of a viral mutation, and we advise against overinterpretation of genomic data during the pandemic.

中文翻译：

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没有证据表明 SARS-CoV-2 进化中有不同类型

摘要 Tang 等人最近的一项研究。声称两种主要类型的严重急性呼吸系统综合症冠状病毒 2 (CoV-2) 在 2019 年冠状病毒疾病大流行中进化而来，其中一种比另一种更具“攻击性”。鉴于这些主张的影响以及媒体对此类文章的广泛报道，我们详细审查了唐等人提供的数据，并表明该论文的主要结论无法得到证实。我们使用其他病毒爆发的例子，讨论了证明病毒突变功能效应的存在或性质的困难，并建议不要在大流行期间过度解释基因组数据。