A great deal of confusion has been created, because scientists talk about the “new virus” as if they understand its structure and genetic sequence.
No.
They’ve built a hypothetical structure, AS DATA. Nothing more. And then they gibber about what it means.
Hypothetical structure can't be emphasized enough. My 1st year of a Comp Sci PhD was spent in the area of bioinformatics -- the application of computer algorithms and heuristics into the assembly of hypothetical genetic sequences from segments of samples, and segments mined from genome databases.
ALL of these SARS-2 sequences are computer constructions built from the assumptions used in querying databases, like 80% similar to SARS-1. Which, in turn, has never been isolated or sequenced either (It's turtles all the way down!).