The author is a novelist[1], not a subject matter expert on viruses. It's frustrating to have the author add his opinion. This sort of thing: > But in the clim

The author is a novelist[1], not a subject matter expert on viruses. It's frustrating to have the author add his opinion. This sort of thing: > But in the climate of gonzo laboratory experimentation, at a time when all sorts of tweaked variants and amped-up substitutions were being tested on cell cultures and in the lungs of humanized mice and other experimental animals, isn’t it possible ... I confess to having skimmed the article except for the final two sections, but the subject matter expert[2] I see quoted has this to say: > Baric said he still thought the virus came from bats in southern China, perhaps directly, or possibly via an intermediate host, although the smuggled pangolins, in his view, were a red herring. The disease evolved in humans over time without being noticed, he suspected, becoming gradually more infectious, and eventually a person carried it to Wuhan “and the pandemic took off.” Then he said, “Can you rule out a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably not.” So the SME thinks it's zoonotic. But proving it's zoonotic is not currently a question science can answer (apparently), and the SME is being responsible by saying so. The author is taking advantage of that fact (IMO) to write this long-form piece. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholson_Baker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholson_Baker [2] https://www.med.unc.edu/microimm/directory/ralph-baric-phd-1/ https://www.med.unc.edu/microimm/directory/ralph-baric-phd-1...