4 ms·
Of course that says little about SARS-CoV-2 relative to all the other viruses we don't know about, either sitting in a Chinese government lab, or in a bat cave
by teorema 5y ago
Of course that says little about SARS-CoV-2 relative to all the other viruses we don't know about, either sitting in a Chinese government lab, or in a bat cave somewhere.
I guess I don't find the argument "we can't figure out how to reconstruct SARS-COV-2 from known viruses" very convincing on either side.
- Jarwain 5y agoThat's fair. I wouldn't say that it's "we can't figure it out" but rather that "doing so takes a lot of mutations and thus resources that may be difficult to do under the table" Sitting in a cave somewhere implies not being studied, right? Which is more the "natural mutation" thing. Sitting in some government lab is a different story and depends on belief in scientific institutions to do science and publish peer reviewed papers and all that jazz.
- gabaix 5y agoAnother question is how you can make a virus evolve in the direction you want. 20 years of bat evolution would not necessarily bring a furin cleavage site, so how do you make sure it does?