3 ms·

You can't prove it was not engineered or bred/selected (an ancient method of genetic engineering!). But... the burden of proof is on anyone asserting that it wa

• downerending 7y ago
  Perhaps, though in this case I'd put that burden as relatively weak. That is, we know that in principle it could have been made, even if we don't (publicly) know how that would have been done in 2019. An additional important point is that there's a middle scenario where a natural virus being studies could have been accidentally mutated and accidentally released. This might be all but impossible to distinguish between origin in the wild. I'd guess intentional manufacture as very unlikely, but sloppy lab practices as not likely but much more likely than that.
• dwd 7y ago
  There was a spike in non-influenza related pneumonia cases prior to the outbreak, particularly in Australia where it's not flu season. My wife caught it in early March and developed mild bacterial pneumonia but tested negative for flu and Covid-19. Part of the argument for natural evolution is that there are mutations that most likely occured in a human host as they indicated adaption to an immune response. My personal theory is that an individual infected with this unknown virus that was going around came into contact with the bat originated coronavirus in Wuhan (which may or may not have originated in the lab). RNA was exchanged and a novel variation emerged that was now both highly contagious and deadly. But I am not an epidemiologist.