3 ms·

Since we already know the virus shared up to 96% of the same DNA as horseshoe bat virus collected by Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2003 from a cave 600 miles a

Since we already know the virus shared up to 96% of the same DNA as horseshoe bat virus collected by Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2003 from a cave 600 miles away ... why are researchers still agonizing over all these alternative theories? The only place near Wuhan the virus existed prior to the outbreak was at the institute of virology. And the first places the outbreak occurred were in the immediate neighborhood of the institute. I'm really genuinely curious why bigtime news outlets keep talking about Vietnamese pangolins. [1] E.g., https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/17/coronavirus-start-chinese-lab-bats-attacked-scientists-peed-12252873/ https://metro.co.uk/2020/02/17/coronavirus-start-chinese-lab...

narrator 7y ago
It fits the narrative that this is mother nature's revenge for our abuse of cute animals. A lot of people believe this narrative, that mother nature will seek revenge for environmental degradation, especially when it involves cute animals, and it being true reenforces their feeling and hope that justice exists in the world, so it naturally occurs to them and they will look for information to confirm its truth. The way that harm to cute stuff can energize political ideology and activism should never be underestimated. To bring it back to Hacker News territory: One can use a cute mascot for one's company, especially if it's a consumer brand, so people will tolerate your bugs and frustrations more easily and have an irrational love for your company. Wufoo did this with dinosaurs and stuff. There's a great startup school video on this.
- pachico 7y ago
  Beyond any attempt to narrative, it is true we treat animals very badly.
  - pachico 7y ago
    It is quite frustrating that comments like this get downvoted. Can anyone tell me what's the reason behind it?
    - saxonww 7y ago
      I didn't downvote you, but I will tell you what I think: probably because the comment is seen as irrelevant to the discussion, and also because people who don't care about human treatment of animals don't want to see comments about human treatment of animals. First: the overall discussion is about where COVID-19 came from. Second: this thread is discussing whether it's a natural mutation and subsequent transmission vs. somehow engineered by China. The OP made the comment that they don't understand why people are spending time looking at alternative theories because they believe it's assured that this came from a Chinese virology research lab. Third: the comment parent to yours was a response to the OP saying the reason was because it fit the narrative of Mother Nature getting revenge on us for harming animals. This narrative was implied to be ridiculous; I suspect that most people in this thread do not believe 'Mother Nature' is an entity capable of taking deliberate actions like revenge. That comment was downvoted, probably because the commentariat here doesn't like sarcasm, but also maybe because they do not like to entertain nonsense. This kind of poisons the rest of the thread; here, there can be no legitimate meaningful followup comment to nonsense or in many cases sarcasm. I think that your reply pointing out that we do mistreat animals ends up being seen as irrelevant and not contributing to the discussion. Whether or not we mistreat animals may be relevant to the 'Mother Nature' idea, but since that is seen as irrelevant to the actual discussion about COVID-19 origins, there's no point in posting the reply and thus the downvotes ensue.
- tathougies 7y ago
  Yeah, I've seen a lot of people blame 'human encroachment' upon wilderness for this. These people of course ignore the entire history of humanity and somehow think this is new and that we're paying the price.
- vernie 7y ago
  Pangolins are definitely cute but horseshoe bats look like absolute shit so I reject your premise.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> why are researchers still agonizing over all these alternative theories? The evidence currently implicates a virus that jumped from pangolins to bats and then bats to humans (EDIT: bats to pangolins and then pangolins to humans [1]). Understanding that transmission mechanism is crucial to reducing the odds of it happening again. [1] https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-biology/CURBIO_CURRENT-BIOLOGY-D-20-00299-compressed.pdf https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-bio...
- TuringNYC 7y ago
  It could also help curtail the sales of specific animals in wet markets that are higher risk. Although as usual, this is looking back rather than looking forward.
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    This depends on the will of the Chinese government. They instituted bans on exotic wildlife selling and farming shortly after SARS, but then rolled it back when the furor died down. Exotic animals in wet markets are not consumed by the majority of the population; this is mostly driven by the Chinese rich. The industry has survived creating its first pandemic due to its lobbying power; let's see how it rides out the second one.
- basch 7y ago
  I thought it was bats to pangolins to humans. Same as the first sars coronavirus being bats to civets (paradoxurinae) to humans. The theory being, bats are natures reservoir of the parent virus, and SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 both descended from it, through an intermediate host.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > I thought it was bats to pangolins to humans You’re correct [1]. Thank you. [1] https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-biology/CURBIO_CURRENT-BIOLOGY-D-20-00299-compressed.pdf https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-bio...
Robotbeat 7y ago
Because good science is humble enough to humor and analyze reasonable alternate possibilities.
leetcrew 7y ago
isn't 4% difference in DNA pretty significant? that's comparable to the genetic difference between a human and a mouse, iirc.
- zip6 7y ago
  Human and chimp DNA is 96% the same according to [0]. I'm not a biologist so I have no idea if this logic is applicable to viruses. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/8/chimps-humans-96-percent-the-same-gene-study-finds/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/8/chimps-humans...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- romski 7y ago
  It’s not DNA, it’s an RNA virus. More changes happen with them.
  - cjf101 7y ago
    There's also a lot less genetic information in a typical virus than in a human, so each mutation represents a much larger percentage change. For context: The entire SARS-COV-2 genome is 29,811 nucleotides long. The human genome is around 3 billion base pairs.
- vikramkr 7y ago
  Quantifying differences is really difficult and the commonly cited numbers are kinda iffy as a rigorous measurement (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-does-being-99-percent-chimp-mean-180955645/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-does-being-99...) in the sense that the public interprets them - 99% comes from looking at single base pair changes only. For the coronavirus, it's an RNA virus so it'll mutate a lot faster than DNA viruses or organisms like us. And the generation time is gong to be a lot faster to allow for a lot more divergence more quickly than longer generation times in mammals.
TheBlight 7y ago
It would be like if a global pandemic was traced back to the U.S. 300 yards from Fort Detrick. Any rational person would take notice of this but instead it's labeled a conspiracy theory.
- paganel 7y ago
  What is more crazy is that there is no international pressure for China to at least temporarily close down that research institute. The international community should have also demanded for immediate inspections on the institute's premises as soon as this virus started going worldwide, for crying out loud, we've had wars started because of some aerial photos of some metal tubes in the Iraqi desert but instead this is treated like "super-power business as usual".
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Supermancho 7y ago
    > What is more crazy is that there is no international pressure for China to at least temporarily close down that research institute. Why is that crazy? Unless you're suspecting the Chinese of designing a fairly dull viral weapon that they first released on their own people, I'm not sure why anyone would care to go through the doors. Sweet jungle meat from a wet market is the likely source, as with many of these kinds of virii over the centuries.
    - paganel 7y ago
      > Sweet jungle meat from a wet market is the likely source There are numerous reports of the wet market source not being the actual source. I've never said that the Chinese have released this virus on purpose, I did in fact imply though that the Chinese created this virus on purpose (how it got out in the wild is anybody's guess). Having countries creating bio-weapons in 2020 should be grounds for war, no matter if they release it or not. Later edit: Now I saw that you said "dull viral weapon", what do you find so "dull" about a virus that has put the whole world economy on its knees in a matter of 4-5 weeks? Yes, it's not as gore-y as Ebola but it's an order of magnitude (at least) more effective in bringing us down as a species.
matthewmacleod 7y ago
_96% of the same DNA_ Humans and chimpanzees also share 96% of the same DNA – that's not as similar as it sounds.
- paganel 7y ago
  I think it kind of is when it comes to spreading diseases, that's why us humans eating great apes has had disastrous consequences for our health as a species in the past (the same goes for us eating pig brains)
royroyroys 7y ago
China seems to be looking to change the narrative and the history on where this started.
parshimers 7y ago
It wouldn't be the first time something like this happened, either. Russia accidentally released Anthrax[1] from one of their facilities in the late 70's, and it killed over 100 people in the neighboring town. Of course they tried to cover it up, and the truth did not come out until much later. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
- TheBlight 7y ago
  It wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened in China: https://www.scidev.net/global/disease/news/chinese-lab-accident-raises-sars-fears.html https://www.scidev.net/global/disease/news/chinese-lab-accid...
burkaman 7y ago
I think "we already know" is a little strong. Here's the only place I can find the paper they refer to: https://gofile.io/?c=D4zfxD https://gofile.io/?c=D4zfxD It is one page long, not peer reviewed, and says "96% or 89% identical". If I were a journalist, I think I would at least want to have an expert review the citations for those numbers, and the evidence that this particular virus was present at those labs.
- ashildr 7y ago
  Why would you? Posting nonsense is generating clicks and “Engagement“ just fine....
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mikeyouse 7y ago
This seems pretty outdated -- The Wuhan market and (proximity to the Disease Research center) has been IDed as the primary place where it spread, but is no longer considered the place where it originated. That's why we're still looking into the origins of this thing. The first case IDed by the Lancet had no exposure to the seafood market, but many later cases did (pg 499): https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2930183-5 https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820... A decent preprint from the US looking at the genetic origins: http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/398 http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/3... > It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus. As noted above, the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is optimized for human ACE2 receptor binding with an efficient binding solution different to that which would have been predicted. Further, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one would expect that one of the several reverse genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would have been used. However, this is not the case as the genetic data shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone17. Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in a non-human animal host prior to zoonotic transfer, and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer. We also discuss whether selection during passage in culture could have given rise to the same observed features.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- fishmaster 7y ago
  It "is not derived from any previously used virus backbone 17". That is supposed to prove anything?
f38zf5vdt 7y ago
Please don't parrot conspiracy theories. The virus shares almost 100% of its identity with known pangolin viruses. > The discovery of multiple lineages of pangolin coronavirus and their similarity to SARS-CoV-2 suggests that pangolins should be considered as possible hosts in the emergence of novel coronaviruses and should be removed from wet markets to prevent zoonotic transmission. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0 Edit: To clarify, these viruses have approximately 90% identity but in the (oft-suspected and brought up) ACE2-binding spike protein there is a ~97% sequence identity. > In particular, SARS-CoV-2 exhibits very high sequence similarity to the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses in the receptor-binding domain (RBD; 97.4%) ... Indeed, the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2 possess identical amino acids at the five critical residues of the RBD. There is another preprint that details more about betacoronavirus recombination. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.10.942748v1.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.10.942748v1.... It's almost certainly the product of a recombination event between a pangolin and bat betacoronavirus, since recombination aggressively involves the spike protein in betacoronaviruses. Since we already have a bat virus with high identity (96%) and now a spike protein with very high identity (97%), both in the same phylogenetic tree with origins to SARS-CoV-2, it's reasonably to assume that this is the product of natural recombinant evolution. Now, it might be the case that it's guided evolution in a Wuhan lab somewhere, but I don't really buy it. Nature is staggeringly good at producing new and innovating viruses, and I believe we will soon find more closely related ancestors to this virus.
- tropo 7y ago
  We know, from published scientific research in well-respected journals, that "guided evolution in a Wuhan lab somewhere" has been happening for many years. We also know that China has previously had several terrifying biocontainment failures with virus labs. Things got out, including coronaviruses, but were stopped before spreading far and wide. By the way, the very original conspiracy theory was eventually proven correct. Calling it a conspiracy theory was a great way to mock people who were pointing out the truth.
spacemark 7y ago
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-not-human-made-lab-genetic-analysis-nature https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-not...
tim333 7y ago
I think they found a Pangolin virus that matched 99% so that beats 96%. The source is still unproven.

narrator 7y ago

It fits the narrative that this is mother nature's revenge for our abuse of cute animals. A lot of people believe this narrative, that mother nature will seek revenge for environmental degradation, especially when it involves cute animals, and it being true reenforces their feeling and hope that justice exists in the world, so it naturally occurs to them and they will look for information to confirm its truth. The way that harm to cute stuff can energize political ideology and activism should never be underestimated. To bring it back to Hacker News territory: One can use a cute mascot for one's company, especially if it's a consumer brand, so people will tolerate your bugs and frustrations more easily and have an irrational love for your company. Wufoo did this with dinosaurs and stuff. There's a great startup school video on this.

pachico 7y ago
Beyond any attempt to narrative, it is true we treat animals very badly.
- pachico 7y ago
  It is quite frustrating that comments like this get downvoted. Can anyone tell me what's the reason behind it?
  - saxonww 7y ago
    I didn't downvote you, but I will tell you what I think: probably because the comment is seen as irrelevant to the discussion, and also because people who don't care about human treatment of animals don't want to see comments about human treatment of animals. First: the overall discussion is about where COVID-19 came from. Second: this thread is discussing whether it's a natural mutation and subsequent transmission vs. somehow engineered by China. The OP made the comment that they don't understand why people are spending time looking at alternative theories because they believe it's assured that this came from a Chinese virology research lab. Third: the comment parent to yours was a response to the OP saying the reason was because it fit the narrative of Mother Nature getting revenge on us for harming animals. This narrative was implied to be ridiculous; I suspect that most people in this thread do not believe 'Mother Nature' is an entity capable of taking deliberate actions like revenge. That comment was downvoted, probably because the commentariat here doesn't like sarcasm, but also maybe because they do not like to entertain nonsense. This kind of poisons the rest of the thread; here, there can be no legitimate meaningful followup comment to nonsense or in many cases sarcasm. I think that your reply pointing out that we do mistreat animals ends up being seen as irrelevant and not contributing to the discussion. Whether or not we mistreat animals may be relevant to the 'Mother Nature' idea, but since that is seen as irrelevant to the actual discussion about COVID-19 origins, there's no point in posting the reply and thus the downvotes ensue.
tathougies 7y ago
Yeah, I've seen a lot of people blame 'human encroachment' upon wilderness for this. These people of course ignore the entire history of humanity and somehow think this is new and that we're paying the price.
vernie 7y ago
Pangolins are definitely cute but horseshoe bats look like absolute shit so I reject your premise.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> why are researchers still agonizing over all these alternative theories? The evidence currently implicates a virus that jumped from pangolins to bats and then bats to humans (EDIT: bats to pangolins and then pangolins to humans [1]). Understanding that transmission mechanism is crucial to reducing the odds of it happening again. [1] https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-biology/CURBIO_CURRENT-BIOLOGY-D-20-00299-compressed.pdf https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-bio...

TuringNYC 7y ago
It could also help curtail the sales of specific animals in wet markets that are higher risk. Although as usual, this is looking back rather than looking forward.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  This depends on the will of the Chinese government. They instituted bans on exotic wildlife selling and farming shortly after SARS, but then rolled it back when the furor died down. Exotic animals in wet markets are not consumed by the majority of the population; this is mostly driven by the Chinese rich. The industry has survived creating its first pandemic due to its lobbying power; let's see how it rides out the second one.
basch 7y ago
I thought it was bats to pangolins to humans. Same as the first sars coronavirus being bats to civets (paradoxurinae) to humans. The theory being, bats are natures reservoir of the parent virus, and SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 both descended from it, through an intermediate host.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > I thought it was bats to pangolins to humans You’re correct [1]. Thank you. [1] https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-biology/CURBIO_CURRENT-BIOLOGY-D-20-00299-compressed.pdf https://www.cell.com/pb-assets/journals/research/current-bio...

Robotbeat 7y ago

Because good science is humble enough to humor and analyze reasonable alternate possibilities.

leetcrew 7y ago

isn't 4% difference in DNA pretty significant? that's comparable to the genetic difference between a human and a mouse, iirc.

zip6 7y ago
Human and chimp DNA is 96% the same according to [0]. I'm not a biologist so I have no idea if this logic is applicable to viruses. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/8/chimps-humans-96-percent-the-same-gene-study-finds/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/8/chimps-humans...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
romski 7y ago
It’s not DNA, it’s an RNA virus. More changes happen with them.
- cjf101 7y ago
  There's also a lot less genetic information in a typical virus than in a human, so each mutation represents a much larger percentage change. For context: The entire SARS-COV-2 genome is 29,811 nucleotides long. The human genome is around 3 billion base pairs.
vikramkr 7y ago
Quantifying differences is really difficult and the commonly cited numbers are kinda iffy as a rigorous measurement (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-does-being-99-percent-chimp-mean-180955645/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-does-being-99...) in the sense that the public interprets them - 99% comes from looking at single base pair changes only. For the coronavirus, it's an RNA virus so it'll mutate a lot faster than DNA viruses or organisms like us. And the generation time is gong to be a lot faster to allow for a lot more divergence more quickly than longer generation times in mammals.

TheBlight 7y ago

It would be like if a global pandemic was traced back to the U.S. 300 yards from Fort Detrick. Any rational person would take notice of this but instead it's labeled a conspiracy theory.

paganel 7y ago
What is more crazy is that there is no international pressure for China to at least temporarily close down that research institute. The international community should have also demanded for immediate inspections on the institute's premises as soon as this virus started going worldwide, for crying out loud, we've had wars started because of some aerial photos of some metal tubes in the Iraqi desert but instead this is treated like "super-power business as usual".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Supermancho 7y ago
  > What is more crazy is that there is no international pressure for China to at least temporarily close down that research institute. Why is that crazy? Unless you're suspecting the Chinese of designing a fairly dull viral weapon that they first released on their own people, I'm not sure why anyone would care to go through the doors. Sweet jungle meat from a wet market is the likely source, as with many of these kinds of virii over the centuries.
  - paganel 7y ago
    > Sweet jungle meat from a wet market is the likely source There are numerous reports of the wet market source not being the actual source. I've never said that the Chinese have released this virus on purpose, I did in fact imply though that the Chinese created this virus on purpose (how it got out in the wild is anybody's guess). Having countries creating bio-weapons in 2020 should be grounds for war, no matter if they release it or not. Later edit: Now I saw that you said "dull viral weapon", what do you find so "dull" about a virus that has put the whole world economy on its knees in a matter of 4-5 weeks? Yes, it's not as gore-y as Ebola but it's an order of magnitude (at least) more effective in bringing us down as a species.

matthewmacleod 7y ago

_96% of the same DNA_ Humans and chimpanzees also share 96% of the same DNA – that's not as similar as it sounds.

paganel 7y ago
I think it kind of is when it comes to spreading diseases, that's why us humans eating great apes has had disastrous consequences for our health as a species in the past (the same goes for us eating pig brains)

royroyroys 7y ago

China seems to be looking to change the narrative and the history on where this started.

parshimers 7y ago

It wouldn't be the first time something like this happened, either. Russia accidentally released Anthrax[1] from one of their facilities in the late 70's, and it killed over 100 people in the neighboring town. Of course they tried to cover it up, and the truth did not come out until much later. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak

TheBlight 7y ago
It wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened in China: https://www.scidev.net/global/disease/news/chinese-lab-accident-raises-sars-fears.html https://www.scidev.net/global/disease/news/chinese-lab-accid...

burkaman 7y ago

I think "we already know" is a little strong. Here's the only place I can find the paper they refer to: https://gofile.io/?c=D4zfxD https://gofile.io/?c=D4zfxD It is one page long, not peer reviewed, and says "96% or 89% identical". If I were a journalist, I think I would at least want to have an expert review the citations for those numbers, and the evidence that this particular virus was present at those labs.

ashildr 7y ago
Why would you? Posting nonsense is generating clicks and “Engagement“ just fine....

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mikeyouse 7y ago

This seems pretty outdated -- The Wuhan market and (proximity to the Disease Research center) has been IDed as the primary place where it spread, but is no longer considered the place where it originated. That's why we're still looking into the origins of this thing. The first case IDed by the Lancet had no exposure to the seafood market, but many later cases did (pg 499): https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820%2930183-5 https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2820... A decent preprint from the US looking at the genetic origins: http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/398 http://virological.org/t/the-proximal-origin-of-sars-cov-2/3... > It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of an existing SARS-related coronavirus. As noted above, the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is optimized for human ACE2 receptor binding with an efficient binding solution different to that which would have been predicted. Further, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one would expect that one of the several reverse genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would have been used. However, this is not the case as the genetic data shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone17. Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in a non-human animal host prior to zoonotic transfer, and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer. We also discuss whether selection during passage in culture could have given rise to the same observed features.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fishmaster 7y ago
It "is not derived from any previously used virus backbone 17". That is supposed to prove anything?

f38zf5vdt 7y ago

Please don't parrot conspiracy theories. The virus shares almost 100% of its identity with known pangolin viruses. > The discovery of multiple lineages of pangolin coronavirus and their similarity to SARS-CoV-2 suggests that pangolins should be considered as possible hosts in the emergence of novel coronaviruses and should be removed from wet markets to prevent zoonotic transmission. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0 Edit: To clarify, these viruses have approximately 90% identity but in the (oft-suspected and brought up) ACE2-binding spike protein there is a ~97% sequence identity. > In particular, SARS-CoV-2 exhibits very high sequence similarity to the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses in the receptor-binding domain (RBD; 97.4%) ... Indeed, the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2 possess identical amino acids at the five critical residues of the RBD. There is another preprint that details more about betacoronavirus recombination. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.10.942748v1.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.10.942748v1.... It's almost certainly the product of a recombination event between a pangolin and bat betacoronavirus, since recombination aggressively involves the spike protein in betacoronaviruses. Since we already have a bat virus with high identity (96%) and now a spike protein with very high identity (97%), both in the same phylogenetic tree with origins to SARS-CoV-2, it's reasonably to assume that this is the product of natural recombinant evolution. Now, it might be the case that it's guided evolution in a Wuhan lab somewhere, but I don't really buy it. Nature is staggeringly good at producing new and innovating viruses, and I believe we will soon find more closely related ancestors to this virus.

tropo 7y ago
We know, from published scientific research in well-respected journals, that "guided evolution in a Wuhan lab somewhere" has been happening for many years. We also know that China has previously had several terrifying biocontainment failures with virus labs. Things got out, including coronaviruses, but were stopped before spreading far and wide. By the way, the very original conspiracy theory was eventually proven correct. Calling it a conspiracy theory was a great way to mock people who were pointing out the truth.

spacemark 7y ago

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-not-human-made-lab-genetic-analysis-nature https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-not...

tim333 7y ago

I think they found a Pangolin virus that matched 99% so that beats 96%. The source is still unproven.