3 ms·
It might be that people are taking issue with the survivorship-bias argument. The important question here is: Given a virus that is as well adapted to humans a
by mckirk 6y ago
It might be that people are taking issue with the survivorship-bias argument.
The important question here is: Given a virus that is as well adapted to humans as SARS-CoV-2, how likely is it that it emerged spontaneously (without a trace of any intermediate states, afaik) vs. how likely is it that it leaked from a lab that has high safety standards, but was probably producing viruses just like it.
It is indeed not surprising that the virus is well adapted to humans, seeing as we are experiencing a pandemic, but that is disconnected from wondering how it got to be so.
- Uberphallus 6y ago> (without a trace of any intermediate states, afaik) It's pretty clear that SARS-CoV-2 shares an ancestor with RaTG13 [0]. Their S-proteins, the main factor in human adaptation, are a 97.8% match, which can be explained with about a decade of divergence, putting the common ancestor somewhere in late 2000s. Why RaTG13 (then called RaBtCoV/4991) research was shelved by China, when it's been one of the suspects of the death of 3 miners with SARS-like symptoms in 2012[1], is the concerning part of it all. The chances of it being lab made/grown/modified are just way too slim. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41594-020-0468-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41594-020-0468-7 [1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/03/new-killer-virus-china https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/03/new-killer-virus-chi...